A rise in GDP may look good on paper, but it obscures the public's daily hardship and the need for real political changes
Sam Bahour
(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.)
guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 March 2010
"......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......
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."
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