The impact of the EU aid on the stateness of the Palestinian entity

Abstract

The thesis considers the extent to which did international aid, in particular form the EU, impact on the stateness of the Palestinian Entity and help the emerging Palestinian Authority acquiring state features. Nine features of stateness are developed (territory, people, recognition, monopoly of violence, extraction capacities, regulation and rule of law, bureaucracy, central administration, and services) to those a tenth dimension is added, Regime. The thesis suggests analyzing EU aid intervention through looking the potentiality, intentionality and reality of aid project. It concludes that at certain stateness attributes, EU aid managed to help; in others it failed to do so. Reasons for this, varies from political, managerial, lack of interest, or absence of a vision about how to achieve Palestinian stateness. The thesis argues that in order for aid to maximize its benefit, it must be based on such a stateness vision and in that both the Palestinians and the donor community must agree and collaborate. In the absence of such vision, aid risks being unsustainable.