The European Commission, the executive body of the European Community, has announced a new $12 million financial aid program to improve economic and social conditions for Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The grants will be aimed at financing programs on credit in order to increase the Palestinians’ level of self-help, including local employment and income from agriculture, industry and the service industries.
Funding also will be geared to the improved functioning of local Palestinian institutions, with particular attention given to health, sanitation and education.
The money is the latest in a series of increasingly large grants and aid programs approved by the E.C. to help the Palestinians improve their standard of living and enable ongoing health care in the territories.
The project was launched in 1987, when the E.C. inaugurated a program of direct aid to the Palestinians in the territories. This year, in addition to the newly allocated funds, the Palestinians will receive emergency food assistance of some $9.5 million and $7.2 million in economic assistance following the Persian Gulf War.
Last December, the E.C. announced it would provide some $6 million to eight private hospitals in East Jerusalem and the Israeli-administered territories, which were deprived of usual avenues of assistance, particularly Kuwait, because of the Gulf crisis.
The E.C. then planned up to $17 million in general assistance to the territories by 1992.
The announcement of further economic aid to the Palestinians was made just prior to Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy’s upcoming visit to Paris.
Levy is due there Wednesday for talks with the three leading E.C. foreign ministers about possible E.C. participation in a proposed Middle East peace conference.
The meeting will be the second between Levy and the Europeans in less than three weeks.
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