In Gaza, there is considerable uncertainty as to how reconstruction funds might be spent, since donors don't want Hamas to be able to claim any of the credit, and the PA has no real administrative control on the ground (although, ironically, it continues to pay the salaries of Gaza civil servants). Moreover, unless 1) Israel opens the border to construction materials it is almost impossible to do any reconstruction (especially since most of the cement factories in the Strip were destroyed in the recent fighting), and 2) unless Israel opens the border to regular commerce the reconstruction makes little difference (since the economy was already sharp decline due to closure).

When one looks at polling data from the territories it is hard to see much correlation between aid and attitudes, or indeed between any socio-economic indicators and political attitudes. I suspect who controls Gaza reconstruction, and how much there is--however important in a humanitarian sense--will only have marginal effects on the political views of Gazans, or the balance of power between Fateh and Hamas.

In Lebanon, Hizbullah has certainly spent money faster (in its areas) than has the weak and often very ineffectual Lebanese government. The conventional view of this is that it purchased Hizbullah considerable good-will. I'm doubtful, to be frank: I think other factors account for most of its support among Shi'ites, and its reputation among southern Sunnis and Christians has probably never been worse.



I don't doubt at all that money greases the wheels of politics, and that patronage can be an effective tool of stabilization and regime consolidation. However, this is not always the case: normative/ideological and other concerns are also important, and although some people, causes, and groups can be bought, others can't. People are also perfectly capable of taking aid and still disliking you! Social science has done a poor job of determining when patronage works, and when it backfires.

Donors also have a terrible tendency to throw around big offers of assistance, to the point of frankly making up pledging numbers for press releases that bear only passing resemblance to likely disbursements.
They then fail to deliver or deliver slowly, for both good and bad reasons). This can create a real crisis of unmet expectations among locals, who start to wonder why they aren't seeing any of the promised benefits.


Regards sources on all this, Shep Forman and Stewart Patrick, eds. Good Intentions: Pledges of Aid for Postconflict Recovery (2000) has a lot of useful comparative studies. I did considerable work on assistance to the Palestinian territories, pre-intifada. I'm not aware that anything systematic has been written about Lebanese reconstruction.