Nic, I got some numbers for you...

Ok, so Isreal has $154,500,000,000 dollars GDP, from CIA. The total US aid is approximately $3 billion (from a anti-aid site). I'll call it my original estimate of $4 billion. (thats 4,000,000,000). As a percentage of GDP of Israel the US aid is 2.6%. I am going to state that I have my doubts that if we cut off aid to Israel that it would cease to exist. Now, lets look at aid to Palestine, which has a fun time chanting "Death to America!" US aid has averaged $85 million per year since 1993. (see this) Ok, so the GDP of the West Bank and Gaza was $3.273 billion in 2003, and about 5.4 ish billion as a max since 1998. (from pipa.gov.ps) So I'll use 5.4 billion as the GDP (even though they make less now, not sure about 2005 numbers though). So approximately we give the Palestinians 1.57% of their GDP in aid. Considering their anti-US stance, I find that the aid given seems reasonable. Using the $3 billion dollar number for Israel, we arrive at 1.9% of the GDP in aid.

I don't really have a point, except that Israel wouldn't be extremely effected by the lack of United States aid. Whether that is a smart plan or not I leave up to the reader. The Palestinians need to step up and use the aid that we give them, like the Israelis did. Not hating on us would help also. They have been getting away with growling at the hands that feed. I found it amusing that Israel gave Palestine tax money that it collects, and that they held it back from a government that is openly hostile (why couldn't they be closeted hostile like the PLA?)

About the Israel economy,
"Once a traditional economy based mainly on agriculture, light industry and labor-intensive production, Israel has matured into a knowledge-based economy with internationally competitive telecommunications, IT, electronics, and life sciences industries.  As a result of its small size and limited natural resources, Israeli industry is export-driven and capitalizes on a highly skilled, educated and innovative workforce." (from www.israel-mfa.gov.il)

Please check sources/data/math. I didn't know how this would turn out before I found the numbers. I had a hunch about the aid and it turned out to be correct. It might be interesting to look at aid/person, I think that that would end up showing more aid per person to Israelis because I have a hunch that the Israeli people are slightly more productive per person.

Ok, so I had to look it up. Using a population of 7,026,000 in May 2006 (est) from wikipedia for Israel. The Palestinian population is approximately 2.5 million (low end). Curiously, the wikipedia GDP for Israel is higher, so it would just lower the percentage of GDP in aid to 1.84% to 2.45%. The per capita aid is $426 dollars per Israeli, and $34 per Palestinian. That tells a slightly different story. In that case you can see that we spend more money on each Israeli. 12.5 times infact. Thats a pretty large difference, if one uses the high population estimate, then it obviously would increase in difference. The question is whether aid should be given per person, or as a percentage of GDP (or world-usefulness).

Comments? I know I learned something, I didn't know that the per person disparity was so high. Now, I might have included the Palestinians in the Israel calculation (it wasn't clear). If you remove them, then it would just go up even more. The aid to Palestinians has been varying wildly, so all of these calculations are sort of average-y/order of magnitude.