USAID and the pacification industry in Palestine

Like other forms of US assistance, USAID was all about normalising the colonisation of Palestine through cash for compliance. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) opened its office in Palestine back in 1994. While the short-term negative impact is apparent, the utility of USAID and other US funding becomes questionable when put in the larger political context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. To distribute its funding, USAID established a complex system of background checks, alongside an Orwellian set of conditions. Normalisation through people-to-people programmesA lot of USAID funding went into initiatives that sought to normalise Israeli colonisation by seeking to establish connections between Palestinians and Israelis.