Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Ahmed Moor: It's Time to Dismantle the Palestinian Authority

"Salam Fayyad is surviving on borrowed time - or money. By now everyone's aware that the Netanyahu-engineered "economic miracle" is the predictable result of periodic cash injections into a closed economic space. Pretending that Palestinian growth in the West Bank is viable is like pretending a six-year-old is rich because his mother handed him twenty dollars.

But it's more insidious than that. The unsustainable bubble economy fails to capture the means of production and therefore strengthens the occupation. That's because the European donor funds (that's how the Europeans remain 'relevant' to the 'peace process' -- they pay for what Israel breaks) are meted out in salary form to sustain Fayyad's repressive police statelet. "
Those salaries are then spent on regular commodity goods -- yogurt, laundry detergent, cellular phones -- that are either produced by Israel or are subject to exorbitant import tariffs. At the same time, Israel imposes anti-market, anti-competitive, protectionist economic policies in the West Bank and Gaza to prevent the genesis or development of genuine Palestinian industry. The result is a badly developed Palestinian service economy whose primary function is to consume Israeli goods.

Israeli reliance on captive Palestinian markets was on full display recently. Fayyad (to his credit) implemented a modest boycott policy in the West Bank. Palestinians were asked to avoid consuming settler goods and they did. The Yesha Council -- a settler umbrella organization -- incisively proclaimed that "this is economic terrorism." Naturally, the prospect of being prevented from exploiting Palestinian markets and the implications for colonists' standard-of-living must have been terrifying.
Read more-The Huffington Post

No comments:

Post a Comment