Annette Young is pleased to welcome Joost Hiltermann, Special Adviser for MENA and training for the International Crisis Group. He sees the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis not as an approaching emergency, but as an ongoing process of institutional and economic erosion. The PA has already lost much of its capacity to provide essential services, pay public-sector salaries in full, maintain infrastructure, and sustain education and health care. All the while, settlement expansion, settler violence and Israeli restrictions are occurring alongside financial measures that are threatening Palestinian institutions and economic life.