Smoke rising over Gaza City following an Israeli Air Strike. (Amir Farshad Ebrahimi/Creative Commons)

Excitement turned to disappointment this week as we learned that the $900 million dollars pledged by Secretary Clinton in Cairo for the rebuilding of Gaza was not actually destined for the war-ravaged coastal strip, but was instead heading to help prop up the fragile and emasculated government of Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. We were given several days to let the $900 million dollar number sink in before the Obama administration had to clarify the figures and point out that only a third of the money would be going to Gaza. There would have been nothing wrong with simply pledging $300 million at the conference in Cairo, and using the gesture as an outstretched hand of support from an incoming administration that many hope will be more even-handed than its predecessors. But in trying to inflate figures by including money destined for the West Bank, the outstretched hand felt more like a slap in the face to the residents of Gaza.

Regardless of the exact figure, anyone involved with reconstruction will tell you that the amount of aid is not nearly important as how that aid is spent. The US State Department, USAID and all other US government agencies have been banned by Washington from entering Gaza since 2003, when three US contractors were killed there by a roadside bomb. For five and a half years, the US has had no direct eyes on the ground in Gaza and, as a result, has virtually no ability to track where and how this, or any infusion of cash is spent. All US government aid will therefore have to go through a variety of contractors and private organizations. After they get their piece of the pie, how much will be left for actual reconstruction? Of course, one could argue that that’s the simple cost of doing business. Fair enough.

But who will be determining where the money is spent? Will Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Government in Ramallah have a say in the spending? With Hamas in control of the local municipalities in Gaza, how much funding can go towards rebuilding public works and municipal facilities before the US government is essentially rebuilding “terrorist” infrastructure?

Is the safest option therefore to require that the $300 million only be used to help rebuild the 4,000 private homes that were destroyed in the Israeli air and ground offensive? Here we run into the same problem. Some of the homes destroyed were specifically targeted because they are owned by members of Hamas. With Hamas controlling all branches of municipal government in Gaza, anyone employed by the city, including garbage collectors, school teachers, and traffic police, are employees of Hamas. So does the school teacher’s house get rebuilt but not the traffic policeman? How can we begin to delve into this tangled mess without direct eyes on the ground?

If the US government really wants to help rebuild Gaza and show the Palestinian people that it is genuinely interested in creating a viable Palestinian state, then delivering cash will not be enough. For more than five years, Washington has argued that it’s too dangerous to have US personnel on the ground in Gaza. Meanwhile, in Iraq and Afghanistan, US personnel are facing far more serious dangers every day and are delivering successful and effective aid to help rebuild these countries destroyed by war. If we really want to make a difference that can be seen and felt on the ground, then the time has come for the Obama administration to revisit the ban on US personnel in Gaza and show the Palestinian people that we will help them reach their goals and will do so hand in hand and face-to-face, not just through bank transactions.

Matthew Olsen is a political policy advisor and travels frequently to Gaza as the director of Explore Corps, a nascent US-based nonprofit that develops and runs outdoor education and youth recreational programming in the Gaza Strip.

You can takepart and learn more about Explore Corps, and see a trailer for the upcoming documentary, God Went Surfing with the Devil, about one of the projects Explore Corps is doing in the Gaza Strip.