This aid is a sign of our confidence in the Palestinian Authority with respect to the remarkable reform and transparency efforts it has undertaken since 2007. The results achieved now allow us to say that the Palestinian Authority is ready to establish a functional and viable state, as the international financial organizations and the donor community quite rightly stressed.
France has continuously supported the work carried out by Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. With this contribution she will have paid euro105 million to the Palestinian Authority in budgetary aid alone since the International Donors' Conference for the Palestinian State in Paris in December 2007. She intends to continue her budgetary support for the consolidation of the Palestinian institutions. The French and Palestinian parties agreed that a small portion of the first instalment of the 2012 budgetary aid would be allocated to the Palestinian Authority's priority projects in East Jerusalem and Area C.
Furthermore, France is implementing numerous development projects in the West Bank and Gaza through the French Development Agency (euro88 million since the Donors' Conference) and the cooperation activities of her Consulate General in Jerusalem.
France takes this opportunity to again urge all donors to do more to support the Palestinian Authority at a time when it finds itself in a very precarious financial situation. Israel must also do more to help the Palestinian Authority by allowing it to increase its own revenue and thus reduce its dependency on foreign aid, and by removing the existing constraints on Palestinian economic development, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. (...)