BAHOUR: Growth that Palestine can believe in 1Mar10 March 1, 2010
A West Bank quarry abandoned by its Palestinian operator, Aiser Ziadan, after Israel declined to renew his permit.
by Sam Bahour - The Guardian - 1 March 2010
A serious misconception is being propagated by the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah. Media, international organisations, foreign governments and Palestinians-at-large are being coaxed into believing that the flurry of economic activity in the West Bank is economic development towards statehood. The facts on the ground rip this argument to pieces, just as Israel continues to micromanage the economic pieces of the intended future state of Palestine towards systemic stagnation.
I can already hear the voices – “but be positive”, “we must start from somewhere”, “we are acting unilaterally toward statehood”, “but we had 7% GDP growth last year,” etc. Being positive is one thing, but being delusional and acquiescing the military occupation that controls every serious aspect of our lives, especially the economic ones, is unacceptable.
I don’t question the well-meaning intentions (with the exception of the occupier) of all the economic players involved in promoting this misconception that West Bankers are on a rapid train of economic growth.
The Palestinian leadership has very little – or any – political capital left, so focusing on economic activities – something I attest is very different than economic development toward statehood – is expected. Add to this the fact that some key Palestinian players, namely prime minister Salam Fayyad, have already started campaigning for the possible presidential elections, and one can easily see the self-serving need to participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony every day or two.
The Israelis could not ask for better. Under the cloak of the Israeli prime minister’s slogan of “economic peace”, Israel has been able to pull the wool over the world’s eyes as it creates irreversible facts on the ground, such as illegal Jewish-only settlements, and continues to squeeze the Palestinian society so hard that many Palestinians are voluntarily emigrating – something Israel failed to totally accomplish forcibly during multiple military adventures, most notably in 1948 and 1967. This slow but steady exodus is emptying Palestine of its human capital which is already severely depleted by the restrictions placed upon us.
The donor community, which continues to generously prop up the Palestinian government in Ramallah also can’t really be blamed for wanting to have an economic framework to justify its continued financial support to the Palestinian Authority. The states behind these funds have been politically handicapped for decades as they await the next US political cue. The next best thing for them is to claim institution building and reform within the context of economic peace. The mission of Tony Blair, the Quartet’s special envoy, is exactly that: an economic mission and not a political one, even though the Quartet is a political animal (US, Russia, EU and the UN) that carries the last remaining clout to address the core political issues that are bottlenecking serious resolution of the conflict.
International organisations are not fully to be blamed. They only have the tools that they use to measure economies of sovereign states, the likes of GDP, GNP and growth ratios. So, when I must drive one hour farther to reach my destination because Israel erected an illegal separation barrier, or when roads throughout the West Bank are prohibited from being repaired by the Israeli military which causes constant damage to my car, this is all great news for Palestine’s GDP since I’m spending more on petrol and visiting my car repair shop more frequently. That said, almost every one of the reports emerging from these specialised organisations, such as the World Bank, are more truthful to the reality on the ground than most others. This can be seen by a few sentences in the World Bank’s latest report:
“Over time, however, the apparatus of control itself has gradually become more sophisticated and effective in its ability to interfere in and affect every aspect of Palestinian life, including job opportunities, work, and earnings. Extensive and multilayered, the apparatus of control includes a permit system, physical obstacles known as closures, restricted roads, prohibitions on entering large areas of land in the West Bank, and most notably the Separation Barrier. It has turned the West Bank into a fragmented set of social and economic islands or enclaves cut off from one another.”
I could go on.
The facts are sitting in broad daylight for those willing to seek them out. The Israeli military occupation is alive and well in every nook and cranny of Gaza and the West Bank, especially in Jerusalem. Forty per cent of our population under occupation in Gaza is being purposely strangulated. Sixty per cent of our total population – refugees and those in the diaspora – are not even in the conscience of most players’ minds.
Economic activity, in which I am involved (and of which I am proud), is happening and that should not be news in and of itself. It should also not be toted as economic development. Yes, Palestinians wake up every morning and go to work just like the rest of the world, despite the most strangling economic restrictions that they have ever faced.
However, economic development and growth which is worthy of building toward an economy of a future state is nowhere to be found. How could it be? All key aspects of a true economy are squarely in the hands of Israel, our occupier. Israel, alone, holds the levers to our water, movement, access, all borders, airspace, electricity, electromagnetic spectrum, just to name a few. A new building in Ramallah, or 100 for that matter, make for good ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but are as far from economic state building as is wrong is from right.
An Israeli friend noted to me the other day a different way to look at what’s on the table. Being positive, I’m willing to accept Binyamin Netanyahu’s “economic peace” when he and his country become serious about releasing the economic resources of Palestine that they fully control. Short of that, we Palestinians will keep picking up the pieces of our lives until that inevitable day of reckoning arrives when Israel will have to look at itself in the mirror and accept what it found there as real – one state of apartheid.
Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American freelance business consultant and serves as a Board of Trustees member at Birzeit University. He is also a Director at the Arab Islamic Bank and the community foundation Dalia Association. www.epalestine.com
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We go over and over and owev and over the Israeli abuse of mankind…not merely the Palestinians. Ari be Menashi wrote that the spy programme Israel created and sold world wide to governments so they could spy on every electronic transaction of their country whilst pretending such a thing would never be done, shock…horror at the suggesion…had been responsible for tens of thousands of assassinations…and that was back in 1981 before the USA became even more seriously involved with underwriting Israeli massacres and Israeli atrocities of many other kinds.
We know that in 1967 in the mendacious “defence” of Israel that the US Government was conspiring with Israel to have the USS Liberty attacked and all hands killed so that USA would have a “reason” to invade the middle east and particularly Egypt where Israelis were committing horrors and atrocities on unarmed people worthy of their old allies the SS. We know now that Israel is a different organism altogether from “Jews” and the Jews make no secret of it in protests…but our media does.
Admiral McCain ordered the American fighters to return when they scrambled to protect Libery as Israel straffed and bombed it.He then demanded absolute silence from the remaining crew.One broke that silence years later and thus we know of this Israeli/American conspiracy in which American servicemen and their ship were to be sacrified to justify war. Israel’s demand of USA was “to attack the arabs and kill as many as possible to keep them off our borders”. America has done that in Palestine and Iraq and 911 was a transparent device, which delighted Israelis in America who were involved, to attack a country demonised by USA and Israel but which represented a massive achievement for the modenisation of Islam and its citizens.
Leaders implanted by USA only last until their job is done. Diem was assassinated on CIA arrangement, Hussein’s attenpted assassination was CIA organised and then the conspirators were themselves executed after the SIA, as it did with the French in Indochina,,walked away and left them to die. Numerous covert attacks into Iraq by Israel’s “special forces” and Mossad were designed to make it appear Hussein was a mass murdering brute whenin fact Israel has committed appalling crimes in the region and in Iraq itself.US destabilisation of any government and country, democratic or not which always result in massacres and weapons being sold…is world wide but so also is deep penetration and manipulation of our countries by Mossad. Ostrovsky describes their facilities, and in USA as just oe example,that not only are forged passports and car registraton and hire readily avilable but body disposal, the altering of hospital records, the changing of patients and patieents’ ID’s the changing of military personnel and records, military and indusctrial espionage on a grand scale, misinformation given to US agencieds in exchange for good material, assassinations are rife and university “dayanas” by the thousands aid Israeli espionage an assassination requirements.
Whilst Israel, in this brutal atheistic Khazar form, exists and spreads like bowel cancer there is no chance of world peace without its New World Order being in complete military control of us…if you call that “peace”.
It is not that Israel does not deserve ‘existence’ but that it lost any right to exist by its own relentless criminality . It has proven itself from the 1930′s when it freely colluded with the Reich which formed “Israel” in Caanan that it is a bad neighbour, untrustworthy and immoral and unethical as we see those terms. It is a cancer on our planet and the ‘real’ jews there would probably agree with me. Israe; also peforms (ben Menashe) chemical and biological experiments on “sone dissident jews, Palestinains captured in Istael and poor blacks in Sowheto hospital”..confirmed for me by a South African officer.
Istael is the new S/S, the new Gestapo, yet it is presented as the final place where poor wandering jews have finally by the decency (in deaing with stolen property) of UK (against whom the Iralis plotted in WW11)and the USA (where sionist groups demanded jewish refugees be returned to Germany for “more to be achieved for us by their suffering” and where wealthy investors, later sanctified) financilally and practically supported the German war effort against the real ‘allies’ and mankind)
The ridiculous and irrelevant “Balfour Document” has been used like the bible to justify he heinous act of introducing genocide by Hhazars on the Palestinians and Lebanese, Egyptians and Syrians. It is imprtant to them Iran be discredited and unable to defend itsef hen its turn comes. Egypt has capitulated. Even in his bried comment on Israel it should be evident that Palsetine is a whipping boy and a project usedin the creating of Israel’s New World Order in whch torture, dispossession and assassination will be the tools of control. It is shouting this at us and we are as a rule ignoring it…..so don’t be surprised at the economic assassination of Palestine by Israeli faux jewish and obsessed if not crazy ultra orthdox IDF abbattoir workers thugs. These along with Mossad are its Israeli Schutzstaffel and Gestapo….assasinating “undesirables” and “obstructors” such as for example a couple of German politicians and now following Arrafat whom they murdered, at least one of ther own prime ministers, and numerous other “leaders” yet another “Hamas” leader. They are demonstrably following the lad of its parent the 3rd Reich psychotics. The similarities must be abundantly logical and clear as Israelis colluded with the Reich…were actually organised and enabled by the Reich before and during WW11. Western court are dedicated to keeping the lid on the truth about Israel and the Holocaust, feeling like outraged citizens protecting “the jews” from another “holocaust” but in reality, often inadvertently,ensuring people are too frightened to did deeply into hisory and demand the release of pertinent documents so that the New World Order is kept safe.
Three of the other great contributors and political power brokers in Israel are the de Rothschild and Rockefeller enterprises, The Masonic Freemasonry movement (well evident in the Israeli Architecture of the Justice Building and which has a monument of large proportions)which was taken-over (infiltrated”) in Europe by de Rothschild (A,M Bauer of Frankfurt Ghetto now the worlds richest and reportedly unaudited family and business ) in the 18 thcentury and Murder Inc criminal Meyer Lansky. One rotten apple in the barrel is a problem??…try three.Henry Kissinger and Rafe Emmanuel are but two of the deadbeat conspirator who have contributed to Palestinian suffering and Israeli meglomania.Rafe (named after one of his father’s zionist terroist friends was kept on by Obama even though, born in the USA he was permitted to serve his time in the IDF..(imagine a, American born Muslim trying to serve in an Islamic army!!)..and was filmed repeatedly stabbing a table with a knife at a conference and dinner because someone had criticised Bush and Emanuel was seemingly at point of psychosis as he raged and threatened. We live spoonfed on lies and misdirection and “problem resolution” by Bilderberger supporting media magnates and the American propaganda machine which invades our towb and our magazines, theatre and TV and worse, our governments.
Zionist organisms have seemingly limitless influence in western countries supported bu some of the worst of all..the Christian Zionists who excuse any horror trough the bible and justify without any knowledge at all, the “right” of “Jews” to “the promised land”. Why Palestine?..because post the so called “exodus” which is largely a litany of lies the Egyptian “Jews” invaded and took over Canaan and having later lost “their” lands and “Jerusalem” have intended from days before the Jesus event to “recover” the lands they stole. Palestine has existed and tolerated Jews for over 1200 years but the epicentre for World Domination has very effectively been placed in Palestine and called “Israel;” Israel robs Palestine of imports needed to fix infrastrycture machiery for example and then years later puts the cargo to public auction.Israel is not our “earth mother” it is Luciferian devil incarnate which we, often calling ourselves “christians” hail worship excuse and beain dead or brain corruoted support.Don’t ever expect a “fair go” from Israel it is rotten to its core.
Please excuse my spelling errors…hope more or less readable….I have focus problem with my glasses and don’t see the errors until format becomes large..also I do not attack jews or try to turn people against them,rather the opposite. It is Israel which is NOT jewish but Khazar and run by “war-criminals” if one can call invasion a “war” ….as was Russia which was overturned by zioniists using fake names like “Lennin” and “Trotsky” to sound “Russian” and underwritten I believe by the parties who control the American “Fed”….the central bank. The purpose was political control, political change, to punish the Tsar’s family and helpers as an ancestor had refused de Rothshild the licence for the Russian central bank and to exterminate enemies of the burgeoining New World Order, which included catholics and intellignt “old-order” jews..