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GUEST: Naseer Aruri, Chancellor Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science at University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth; Chair of the Board of Directors of the Trans-Arab Research Institute; member of the Executive committee of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, and author of many books including “Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Role In Israel and Palestine”

With Hamas’s recent victory in the recent Palestinian Authority elections, the US and European Union have followed through on their promise to cut aid. Also, Israel has suspended monthly payments of about $50 million in tax receipts that it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. It has also severed all Israeli bank ties with the Palestinian banking system. According to government officials, Hamas has inherited a worse economic situation in the Palestinian Authority than it had imagined, with no hidden stores of funding to avert a looming fiscal crisis. International aid agencies like the Nobel prize winning Doctors Without Borders, as well as Oxfam, have denounced the US and EU aid cuts. In response, Arab nations like Syria and Qatar have promised to make up the short fall. Russia and Iran have also pledged aid.