Originally posted by Falcon Horus
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n 2008, Belgium signed a cooperation programme worth 50 million euros with the Palestinian National Authority. The emphasis there was on education and local authorities. On 23 November 2011, a new four-year cooperation agreement worth 71.6 million euros was signed during the Joint Commission in Ramallah. The new programme therefore contains over 20 million euros (40%) more than the previous, and assures continuity through continued presence in the same two concentration sectors: education and local authorities.
That's over 120 million Euros in total since 2007, which is over $135 million. I underestimated by 30%.
And that's just direct funding. Belgium is notoriously non-transparent about its financing of the NGOs, but Broederlijk Delen alone got over 300 000 Euros earmarked for Palestinians, Oxfam-Solidarité got over a million Euros for the same, Solidarité Socialiste got over 300 000 Euros et cetera. Now, the way the humanitarian industry works is a lot like money laundering - the web is long. Every one of the big names financed by the governments funds its own network of smaller puppet NGOs, and they often cross-pollinate - multiple puppets receive funding from multiple donors to make the endgame of these government grants harder to trace. Broederlijk Delen finances Zochrot, Breaking the Silence, Gisha, Adalah etc. Oxfam-Solidarité specializes in funding NGOs with medical names which do politics instead of medicine, like the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, Health Work Committees etc.
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