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Pockets Of Palestinian Wealth Mask Peace Hurdles

Arthur M. Horwitz

B

eyond the shadows of 19 United
Nations-managed refugee camps
in Palestinian-controlled areas of
the largely Muslim West Bank lies a paral-
lel Palestinian society with flashes of rela-
tive luxury.
A new study by Israeli-based research-
ers finds "a surprising degree of luxury"
alongside a poverty rate of 18 percent.
It's a revealing study given all the
politicking that has waylaid Palestinian
advances and the lack of meaningful
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The study
offers a richer picture of the riddle that is
the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (P.A.).
"After receiving
billions of dollars in
Western aid over many
decades, major improve-
ments are visible in the
standard of living in
the West Bank, as seen
in newly constructed
fillib- buildings, late-model
Robert Sklar cars and luxury items,"
Contributing
states Luxury Alongside

Editor

Poverty in the Palestinian
Authority, an internet
publication of the right-
leaning Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
(JCPA).
In a provocative passage, the study
contends, "While the Arab world is in the
throes of a major meltdown with wide-
spread violence and destruction in Syria
and Iraq, together with serious instability
in Lebanon and Egypt, daily life for Arabs
in the West Bank offers a stark contrast to
those scenes of violence and decline:'

PRESSING ONWARD
Illustrating the better-than-portrayed
way of life emerging in nooks of the West
Bank, the JCPA cites extensive foreign
aid (about $2 billion each year), a high
literacy rate and rising life expectancy. The
West Bank's 2.5 million Arabs also enjoy
an improved water supply, thanks to an
Israel-P.A. water pact.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has stirred international ten-
sion for erecting a security fence and
imposing security checkpoints, but 92,000
West Bank Arabs work in Israel, drawn by
employers offering better pay and benefits.
(The P.A. poverty rate still approaches 20
percent).
Government repression of Arabs in the
Gaza Strip, ruled by the terrorist orga-
nization llamas, tempers hints of West
Bank "luxury:' At one time, Fatah, which
harbors its own terrorist wing (Al Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades), and llamas flirted with
a unity government. Fatah and llamas
still seek a Palestinian state uniting the
P.A. and Gaza with Arab-dominated east
Jerusalem as the capital.

MSU Professor Yael Aronoff

Hamas'

repression of Arabs

in the Gaza Strip

tempers hints of

West Bank "luxury."

DIVISIVE WEDGES
Further factors limiting economic growth
in the West Bank and keeping the benefit
of such growth from being widely shared
among West Bank Arabs include P.A.
corruption, diversion of some assistance
funds to terrorist activities, lack of sub-
stantial international investment and, at
times, Israeli restrictions (often security
prompted).
Daunting as such hurdles are, they
shouldn't diminish the P.A. pursuit of
economic incentives, says Yael Aronoff,
the Michael and Elaine Serling and
Friends Chair of Israel Studies and
director of Jewish Studies at Michigan
State University. The associate profes-
sor of international relations told the IN:
"Economic development in the West Bank
can, I think, foster interests in peace and
against the use of violence:'
While former P.A. Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad made significant inroads in West
Bank state and institutional building as
well as economic development, Aronoff
notes, current P.A. President Mahmoud
Abbas has focused on international diplo-
matic efforts, presumably to win statehood
via the U.N. instead of direct, bilateral
negotiations with the Jewish state.

EXHIBIT A
Ramallah, which I visited during a
2015 Israel mission organized by the
Association of Reform Zionists of

America, is the most cosmopolitan and
prosperous West Bank city under P.A. con-
trol. It's the de facto capital and home of
Birzeit University. The Square of Lions, the
Palestine Trade Tower and Yasser Arafat's
Tomb, a haunting tourist site of sorts, are
located there. The JCPA observes, "It is
difficult to get a table in a good restaurant.
There are new apartment buildings, banks,
brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships
and health clubs:'
In sharp relief, a Ramallah street mural I
noticed urged Israel to free Marwan Hasib
Ibrahim Barghouti, the popular Palestinian
political leader whom Israel convicted in
2004 and sentenced to five life sentences for
murder in connection with terrorist attacks.
Israel continues to raid West Bank com-
pounds that make and deal in illegal arms.
Other West Bank cities with emerging
"luxury" include population hubs like
Nablus and Hebron, the biblical city of
Bethlehem and the new city of Rawabi,
according to the JCPA.

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CHANGING COURSE
While some West Bank Arabs may live
"luxuriously: the Palestinian people
remain hijacked by Fatah and llamas
operatives more inclined to demonize and
delegitimize Israel than to serve their own
people. Imagine if Palestinian leadership
cared more about spreading the wealth
than discrediting Israel.
The 2015 United Nations Human
Development Index, a composite statistic
of life expectancy, education and income
per capita indicators, ranks the U.N.-
recognized "state of Palestine" 113th, on
par with neighboring Egypt — within the
"medium human development" range.
Israel ranks 18th, in the "very high human
development" range.
Redirected energies toward peace by at
least Fatah in the West Bank might lessen
that gap. Professor Aronoff chides both
Netanyahu and Abbas, dogged by mistrust
among constituents toward the other side,
for being "unwilling to take the political
risk that pushes the process forward:'
I offer as examples Abbas' rejection of
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's overly gen-
erous land offer in 2008 and Netanyahu's
tunnel vision on settlement expansion.
Aronoff points as well to the Palestinian
wild card, llamas, not only its "continued
official opposition to a two-state solution:
but also its "continued use of terror as a
tactic to disrupt the achievement of that
goal:'
Equally corrosive is the P.A. practice of
payouts to Palestinian terrorists and their
families.
Corners of luxury in the West Bank
shouldn't cloud the politics at the core of
the stagnated Israeli-Palestinian peace
process. *

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6 September 22 2016

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