Luxury Alongside Poverty: The Other Side of the West Bank Palestinian Story

In communities throughout the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, a surprising degree of luxury exists alongside the poverty. This study includes “A Photo Album of Palestinian Luxury in the West Bank,” offering a more complete picture of living standards there. The truth is that alongside the slums of the old refugee camps, which the Palestinian government has done little to rehabilitate, a parallel Palestinian society is emerging.

Researchers: Yael Kaplan, Ryan Hartney, and Andrew Felsenthal..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
05 November '15..






...The Other Side of the West Bank Palestinian Story

There is more to this story, a side often overlooked. In communities throughout the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, a surprising degree of luxury exists alongside the poverty. After receiving billions of dollars in Western aid over many decades, major improvements are visible in the standard of living in the West Bank, as seen in newly-constructed buildings, late-model cars, and luxury items.

This study offers an often overlooked window into life in the Palestinian Authority. The empirical data, together with the photographic evidence sourced here, provide a more complete picture of living standards in the West Bank. The truth is that alongside the slums of the old refugee camps, which the Palestinian government has done little to rehabilitate, a parallel Palestinian society is emerging.

Marwan Asmar, a Jordan-based journalist with a PhD in political science from Leeds University in the UK, described this phenomenon upon returning to the West Bank after 30 years:

There has been a total transformation since I was last in Howara in the West Bank in 1985. One can see a buzz of activity at the shops, restaurants, offices and cafes. This wasn’t the sleepy village I saw long ago. Buildings, villas, mosques and rest areas have been constructed everywhere. There is even a swimming pool.

This was certainly not the picture I had in mind. This was not the picture the media presents – of Palestinians surviving on daily wages of $2 as pointed out by the World Bank, of high unemployment and pockets of poverty. The people I spoke to here said many worked as laborers in Israel and were paid high daily wages. This is how they could build their houses, they told me.

(Click here to read the full study)

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Salam Fayyad’s blood-soaked overdraft

Ruthie Blum..
Israel Hayom..
07 September '12..

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is in a real pickle these days. This is not because the Democratic National Convention ended up having to overturn its initial omission of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in its platform – though that might have felt to him like the icing on his otherwise collapsing cake.

Indeed, Fayyad has begun to bear the brunt of the disastrous Palestinian economy and the steep rise in food and gas prices. So, this week, when Palestinians took to the streets of Ramallah and other PA-controlled cities to protest high unemployment and low living conditions, they did so by demanding that he resign. Oh, and while they were at it, they burned his effigies – you know, in the “budding democracy” fashion of their brethren across the Middle East.

Well, Fayyad – who is a favorite among foreign diplomats (Israeli ones, too), on account of his modern appearance and the lip-service he pays to the economic and political values of Western societies – knows a dangerous internal situation when he sees one. He is aware, too, that Fatah officials have it in for him.

This explains why he has stated that he “takes responsibility” for his failures on the one hand, while blaming others on the other. Take a wild guess who those “others” are.

According to Jerusalem Post Palestinian Affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh, “During a meeting with Italian Foreign Mininster Giulio Terzi di SantAqata in Ramallah, Fayyad blamed the economic woes of the Palestinians on Israel. Fayyad complained that Israel was obstructing the PA government's efforts to develop Area C of the West Bank, which is exclusively under Israeli control. He said that the Palestinians were unable to control their resources in this area because of Israeli restrictions. He added that the Israeli blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was also hindering the development of the Palestinian economy.”

This was him leading up to doing what PA leaders do best when in the presence of their European and American champions: cry victim and appeal for money. Indeed, says Abu Toameh, this is just what Fayyad had indicated in an interview on the Voice of Palestine radio station prior to his meeting with the Italian foreign minister, “that the PA was hoping Congress would approve the U.S. Administration's request for $200 million in aid to the Palestinians.”

The rest of us ought to pray that the request is denied. This is because, wherever such a bundle would be spent in the PA, not a penny of it would go to improving the lot of average Palestinians.

PA GDP proportional to percentage working for Israelis

Elder of Ziyon
05 January '10

From Ma'an:

Of every 100 Palestinian workers, 11 work in Israel and the settlements compared to 10 in 2009, a new survey from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics found.

The increase helped push up the Palestinian GDP per capita, in what was counted as a year of growth across the region.

Palestine's Gross Domestic Product increased by about 9 percent during the first three quarters of 2010 compared with the same period of 2009.

Released on Monday, the survey said growth was concentrated in economic activities with largest share in construction with a growth rate of 36 percent, followed by agriculture and fishing, wholesale and retail trade, transport, storage and communications, services, and public administration.

GDP per capita for Palestinian areas increased by 5 percent during the third quarter of 2010 compared with the same quarter of 2009, spurred mostly by an increase of three percent in the number of workers in construction, industry and the service sector.

Which means that since the settlement freeze ended, with Arabs working to build houses in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, the Palestinian Arab GDP for the fourth quarter should go even higher.

(Read full "PA GDP proportional to percentage working for Israelis")

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Why Does New York Times Compare Gaza Mall To American Malls--But Not West Bank Mall?

Daled Amos
23 August '10

Let the message go out: We will not be defeated.
Ethan Bronner, New York Times

True, Bronner is not referring to the New York Times, but to the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza--it just appears that he got caught up in his own enthusiasm.

Actually, Bronner's enthusiasm runs throughout his article Gaza Mall Seeks to Make Statement of Resolve. It seems to dictate not only what he writes, but also what he leaves out.


When Bronner writes that Gaza, famous for its misery, has a shopping mall, it is apparent that he is referring to life in Gaza--not to the misery that rockets fired from Gaza by its Hamas leaders are causing Israeli civilians in Sderot, and elsewhere.

Bronner also goes to great pains to point out the limitations of the Gaza Mall:

(Read full post)

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What's Wrong: Demanding A Stable Compromise Peace or Refusing to Make Peace at All?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
02 July '10


It's amazing how rarely any mainstream Israeli view--excluding the far left, which provides good anti-Israel ammunition, and, rarely, the far right, to make them look stupid--gets into many of the American media's most elite organs. I'm not referring here to regular news articles but opinion pieces, columnists, and editorials. Often, it is incredibly easy to give a strong, accurate, and persuasive response to claims being made or ideas being promoted by this media. Yet since no one is allowed to do so, these rather silly and ignorant arguments go largely unanswered.

Here, for example, is the always anti-Israel Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times who writes:

"Israel has a point when it argues that relinquishing the West Bank would raise real security concerns. But we must not lose sight of the most basic fact about the occupation: It's wrong."

Even his opening sentence acknowledging that Israel has real concerns is a rarity. That's progress perhaps. But I'm not sure what the sentence "It's wrong" actually means. I can think of dozens of things in the Middle East, or in the world, that can said to be "wrong," yet what counts in international affairs is survival and reality, not the highly selective use of one-sided moral judgments.

For example, it's wrong to ask Israel to take dangerous risks and possibly commit suicide. It's wrong to take sides with radical movements and dictatorships against democracies. It's wrong to help establish on the Mediterranean Sea the long-term rule of a repressive revolutionary Islamist, antisemitic, genocidal, terrorist regime that oppresses women and Christians while being a client of Iran. Yet these wrongs for some reason don't seem to bother the current foreign policy establishment.

Moreover, the most basic claims made about Israel are simply inaccurate: There is no "occupation" (not in the way people in the West generally speak of it, which seems to assume the situation of 1967-1993 still prevails) and Israel's policy is quite right on this matter.

(Read full article)

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A little rain on the Palestinian parade

Nathan Brown
Foreign Policy
01 July '10

Since June 2007 -- and the split of the Palestinian Authority in two halves, one running Gaza and one running the West Bank - U.S. policy has banked heavily on an attempt to back the West Bank half, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. When the Obama administration took office in January 2009, it doubled down on the U.S. bet on Abbas and Fayyad. Fayyad has responded with an ambitious program that is designed to provide the institutional basis for a Palestinian state. His unassuming style, honest and capable administration, and sometimes soothing words have led to a host of international paeans to "Fayyadism." Salam Fayyad is held to be quietly building a Palestinian state rather than waiting for international actors to deliver one.

There is no doubt that Fayyad as an individual has some real virtues: a measure of personal integrity, an ability to convey an attitude that politics is about public service rather than personal aggrandizement, and a shift from revolutionary rhetoric to practical action. But is Fayyadism building a Palestinian state?

No.

And in a recent trip to the West Bank, I could not find a Palestinian who thinks he is. I report more fully on my findings in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that was released today.

There are those who admire and participate in Fayyad's efforts to be sure. And there is much to admire in Fayyad. But even those participating in his project would be the first to admit -- along with Fayyad himself -- that the effort cannot be sustained unless it is supported by a diplomatic process that also points to Palestinian statehood. And nobody believes there is such a viable process right now. The only question that most serious observers debate is whether hope for a two state solution is dead, dying, or merely in hibernation.

But there are three other problems with pinning our hopes on Fayyadism as the basis of a two-state solution.

(Read full article)

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New Poll Shatters Myths on Gaza Blockade and Settlement Freeze

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
18 June '10

A new poll by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shatters several myths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first is that Israel’s blockade of Gaza in general, and its botched raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in particular, has only strengthened Hamas.

The poll, conducted between June 10 and 13, found that “despite the events associated with the Free Gaza flotilla and the Israeli attack on it,” there was “a significant improvement in the status of Salam Fayyad and his government.” If elections were held today, 45% of Palestinians would vote for Fatah and 26% for Hamas, compared with 42% and 28%, respectively, in March. Most interestingly, Fatah trounces Hamas among Gazans: 49% to 32%. Fayyad, who had zero political support when he took office three years ago, would now edge out Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in a presidential matchup, 36% to 32%. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would rout Haniyeh, 54% to 39%; that is up from 50% to 40% in March.

Why the upsurge? Because the blockade is working: “Only 9% say conditions in the Gaza Strip today are good or very good while 35% say conditions in the West Bank are good or very good.” Moreover, while 62% of Gazans and 60% of West Bankers “feel that their personal safety and security and that of their family are assured,” the Gaza figure is down from 70% in March, while the West Bank figure is up from 55%. Strong majorities in the West Bank say the economy, health care, education, and law enforcement have improved since Fayyad became prime minister.

Myth No. 2: Palestinians’ prime concern is ending Israeli settlement construction.

(Read full post)

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