West Bank Flourishing
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Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, has written an article in the Wall Street Journal today describing the surprising economic situation in the West Bank. It begins:
Imagine an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage. Where in today’s gloomy global market could one find such gleaming forecasts? Singapore? Brazil? Guess again. The West Bank.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the West Bank economy is flourishing. Devastated by the violence and corruption fomented by its former leadership, the West Bank has rebounded and today represents a most promising success story. Among the improvements of the last year cited by the IMF and other financial observers are an 18% increase in the local stock exchange, a 94% growth of tourism to Bethlehem—generating 6,000 new jobs—and an 82% rise in trade with Israel.
Not surprisingly, you almost never ever read anything about this in any of the mainstream media, most likely because they want you to still believe that every Palestinian is living in squalor at the hands of the “merciless” Israelis. As long as the Palestinians can be portrayed as hapless victims, the Israelis can be portrayed as “violent oppressors”, which suits the MSM just fine.
So, while the average MSM-reading stooge is sitting there pitying the Palestinians from his 300-square-foot studio apartment in Manhattan while eating a sandwich of cucumber and tofu on spelt bread, there are Palestinians busy returning from their day at the spa and the fancy malls back home to their luxurious houses to sit down to a nice dinner of roast lamb, steak, and wine.
If you think this is hyperbole, read on:
Since 2008, more than 2,000 new companies have been registered with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Where heavy fighting once raged, there are now state-of-the-art shopping malls.
Encouraged by the restoration of law and order, the local population is streaming to the new malls and movie theaters. Shipments of designer furniture are arriving from China and Indonesia, and car imports are up more than 40% since 2008.
In fact, remember those pictures in the MSM of a dilapidated Jenin, supposedly bulldozed to rubble by the Israelis? Well, here are a couple of more realistic pictures:
Oren goes on to point out that those daring to acknowledge this success are still reluctant to attribute any of the credit to Israel, a fact with which even Tony Blair has agreed in a recent statement:
Israel, too, has contributed to the West Bank’s financial boom. Tony Blair recently stated that Israel had not been given sufficient credit for efforts such as removing dozens of checkpoints and road blocks, withdrawing Israeli troops from population centers, and facilitating transportation into both Israel and Jordan. Long prohibited by terrorist threats from entering the West Bank, Israeli Arabs are now allowed to shop in most Palestinian cities.
Further, several Israeli-Palestinian committees have achieved fruitful cooperation in the areas of construction and agriculture. Such measures have stimulated the Palestinian economy since 2008 resulting, for example, in a 200% increase in agricultural exports and a nearly 1,000% increase in the number of trucks importing produce into the West Bank from Israel.
Oren then wraps up this rare insight into the West Bank economy by contrasting its success with the failure of the Palestinians on the political front, and then contrasting its success with the failure of Gaza, its sister-region, who, under Hamas’s leadership, has been focusing its spending instead on weapons, terror, and war.
The West Bank’s economic improvements contrast with the lack of diplomatic progress on the creation of a Palestinian state. Negotiators focus on the “top down” issues, grappling with legal and territorial problems. But the West Bank’s population is building sovereignty from the bottom-up, forging the law-enforcement, civil, and financial institutions that form the underpinnings of any modern polity. The seeds of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called “economic peace” are, in fact, already blossoming in the commercial skyline of Ramallah.
The vitality of the West Bank also accentuates the backwardness and despair prevailing in Gaza. In place of economic initiatives that might relieve the nearly 40% unemployment in the Gaza Strip, the radical Hamas government has imposed draconian controls subject to Shariah law. Instead of investing in new shopping centers and restaurants, Hamas has spent millions of dollars restocking its supply of rockets and mortar shells. Rather than forge a framework for peace, Hamas has wrought war and brought economic hardship to civilians on both sides of the borders.
The people of Gaza will have to take notice of their West Bank counterparts and wonder why they, too, cannot enjoy the same economic benefits and opportunities. At the same time, Arab states that have pledged to assist the Palestinian economy in the past, but which have yet to fulfill those promises, may be persuaded of the prudence of investing in the West Bank. Israel, for its part, will continue to remove obstacles to Palestinian development. If the West Bank can serve as a model of prosperity, it may also become a prototype of peace.