The World Bank agrees: Israeli policies aim to destroy the national
capacities of Palestinians. Inter-Palestinian rivalry should not abet
this project, writes Ramzy Baroud*
The numbers are grim, whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian economy is in one of its most wretched states, and the
disaster is mostly, if not entirely manmade, thus reversible.
The World Bank made no secret of the fact that Israeli restrictions
are largely to blame, as poverty rates in the Gaza Strip and West Bank
have soared to 79.4 per cent and 45.7 per cent respectively. It
concluded: “With a growing population and a shrinking economy, real per
capita GDP is now 30 per cent below its height in 1999.” “With due
regard to Israel’s security concerns, there is consensus on the
paralytic effect of the current physical obstacles placed on the
Palestinian economy,” it added.
With a declining economy, lack of developmental projects and
Israeli restrictions, Palestinians are increasingly reliant on foreign
aid, which is largely controlled by political interests. For example,
the US proved more generous than ever in supporting the Ramallah-based
government of Mahmoud Abbas as it led an international regime of
sanctions and embargo against the Gaza-based Hamas government. Such
funds are often conditioned on such murky concepts as “cracking down on
the terrorist infrastructure”, which is duly understood as fighting
those who challenge Israel and Palestinian Authority (PA) rule in the
West Bank.
Nonetheless, even if the PA had no history of corruption and
genuinely intended to invest in a sustainable economy, no truly free
and independent economy can flourish under occupation, whose very
intention is the disempowerment of Palestinian workers, farmers and the
middle class. It is these strata of Palestinian society that have led
the struggle to end the occupation on the one hand and to resist local
corruption on the other.
Indeed, Israeli restrictions are not coincidental and hardly
confined to the classic reasoning pertaining to national security. “In
reality, these restrictions go beyond concrete and earth-mounds, and
extend to a system of physical, institutional and administrative
restrictions that form an impermeable barrier against the realisation
of Palestinian economic potential,” the World Bank said. It concluded
that more aid would not revive the Palestinian economy, unless the
above restrictions are removed.
But these restrictions represent the backbone of Israeli policy;
removing them would deny the Israeli government political leverage over
Abbas’s government. By extension, the US is in no mood to help
Palestinians develop a strong economic base and infrastructure, enough
to spare Palestinians the indignity of living on international donor
handouts.
In the West Bank, Palestinian economic woes are compounded by a
terrible water crisis, a nightmare for farmers who are already
struggling to endure Israeli water theft and disproportionate water
distribution. According to a recent report by the Israeli human rights
group B’tselem, an Israeli household consumes on average 3.5 times as
much water as a Palestinian household. The group blames Israel for its
discriminatory policy and tight restrictions that prevent Palestinians
from drilling new wells. One fails to see how Israel’s “security”
concerns can ever justify Israel’s plundering of Palestinian water
using West Bank aquifers while many Palestinian families in cities like
Jenin have been denied water since April.
While many farmers found themselves unable to preserve their
livelihoods, ordinary people have to spend a significant proportion of
their meagre incomes buying water. A recent UN report, cited by news
agencies, estimated that Palestinians in the hardest-hit communities
spend 30 to 40 per cent of their incomes to purchase water delivered by
trucks. How can a sustainable economy with a sensible growth level be
achieved under these circumstances?
If the situation is difficult in the West Bank, it’s impossible in
Gaza. A report in March sponsored by Amnesty International, Care
International UK, Christian Aid, Oxfam and others, described the
situation in the Strip as the worst humanitarian crisis since the
Israeli occupation of 1967. The report called on Israel to change its
policies towards Gaza. A few months following the release of the
report, Israel seems to be stiffening its control over the impoverished
Strip, rendering its hapless 1.5 million inhabitants more miserable by
the day.
According to the report, 80 per cent of the Gaza population relies
on food assistance. Some 1.1 million people receive their food aid from
UN agencies, which are themselves struggling to operate under fuel cuts
and the near-total isolation of Gaza.
Unlike the West Bank, Gaza’s aim is hardly economic development but
mere survival. Gaza’s reliance on food aid has increased tenfold since
1999, according to the report. Concurrently, 98 per cent of Gaza’s
factories are no longer functioning, leaving thousands unemployed and
wreaking havoc on the income of numerous families.
Coupled with inner-Palestinian violence, US-led international
sanctions and the perpetual Israeli siege and violence are destroying
the very fabric of Palestinian society in Gaza while turning the West
Bank into a charity-based society, with funds provided largely as
political incentives with hardly any long-term vision.
Equally disheartening is that the PA in the West Bank has actively
shut down Muslim charities, kindergartens, orphanages and schools in
the ongoing tit-for-tat action between rivals Fatah and Hamas. It’s
intolerable that the animosity between both parties has reached a point
of victimising the most unfortunate in society: orphans, widows and the
physically and mentally impaired. Some 82 children didn’t return to
school this year — they were killed in the previous year. And over one
million students will have to negotiate their way around 600 Israeli
military checkpoints. With the shutting down of Muslim charity-run
schools, hundreds of students will lose their right to education. But
this time, Israel is not the one entirely to blame.
Palestinians cannot survive on handouts through a charity- like
economic system. They need, and deserve, sustainable economic
development, with a long-term vision, one that can overhaul the
economies of the West Bank and Gaza and make use of the precious human
resources available. Israel will do its utmost to undermine such a
possibility, as it has done for decades. This represents the very
struggle that Palestinians are undergoing: between their need to break
free, and Israel’s insistence on maintaining its matrix of control.
Without proper channels to empower the Palestinian individual and
community, Palestinians will remain economically disadvantaged and thus
politically handicapped. This is hardly a recipe for an equitable,
lasting peace with justice.
* The writer is editor of PalestineChronicle.com.