Analysis: World Bank policies persistently fail Palestinians
By Alaa Tartir and Jeremy Wildeman – Ma’an – 28/10/2012
The Middle East featured prominently on the agenda of the recent annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Tokyo. But how relevant are these agencies’ policy prescriptions in the context of conflict? In the case of the occupied Palestinian territories they are not only inappropriate but also harmful.
And yet both institutions have relentlessly dished up these prescriptions for the past two decades. To understand why they are so harmful, it is useful to deconstruct the policy recommendations in the World Bank’s latest growth report for the Palestinian territories.
The Bank’s growth report provides a breakdown of the current state of the Palestinian economy, which it describes as fragile and dependent on foreign aid. The report’s frank conclusions are largely unsurprising: aid-based growth is unsustainable, especially because aid levels are expected to decline over time.
The surprising part of the report lies not in the Bank’s negative prognosis of the Palestinian economy, but rather in its recommendations. It calls for the Palestinians to emulate the Asian tigers by “adopting an outward orientation and integrating into world supply chains.”
Just how a people that exercises no control over its own land, borders and natural resources can carry out such export-based growth is not explained. The report further recommends that the Palestinian Authority “should strive to build a business environment that is among the best in the world and not merely on par with its neighbors.”
This is utterly impossible under prolonged occupation, where Palestinian civil and property rights are ignored by an Israeli state that is simultaneously engaged in the mass-expropriation of Palestinian land. The business climate is so bad that one report suggested certain Palestinian businesspersons even prefer to invest in Israel.
The report also repeats a dangerous belief long propagated by the World Bank: that the Palestinian economy can benefit from deeper integration with the Israeli economy.
Actual experience indicates otherwise. The Palestinian economy has been de-developed since 1967, as US scholar Sara Roy’s work has shown, and Palestinian industry has been deliberately sabotaged in favor of Israeli industry, as economist Shir Hever documents.
Classic World Bank economic assumptions that recommend “free trade agreements between a future Palestinian state, Israel and neighboring countries” have never been embraced by Israel.
Palestinians cannot exploit “competitive advantages” because Israel deliberately prevents them. Instead, integration has been one-sided, allowing Israel to exploit a captive Palestinian market cut off from the outside world.
It is vital to understand the extent to which much of the World Bank’s policy advice is destined for failure because it exercises enormous influence on foreign aid to Palestinians, and its recommendations form the basis on which international donors design their aid programs.
In fact, it designed the aid regime adopted by the international community during the Oslo Peace Process of the early 1990s. Since that time, the Bank has prescribed policy recommendations for donors that do not take into account the human reality of Palestinians struggling to survive for decades under a violent military occupation and in colonial conditions.
Nor have the international community and those many prominent international bodies engaged in the ‘peace process,’ such as the World Bank, held Israel to account for its actions.
Indeed, the Bank sanitizes the language it uses when criticizing the occupation, employing euphemisms that downplay the effects of occupation while focusing on the Palestinians when giving reasons why Bank recommendations have failed.
As they met with the world’s delegations in Tokyo, did the World Bank and IMF question their policies and the need to actually reflect the facts on the ground?
Until and unless they do, they will waste valuable time and resources and distract Palestinians from what should be their primary goal: Ending the military occupation as a first step toward sovereignty, freedom, and self-determination.
Until Palestinian rights are secured, it is meaningless to develop aid programs that do not take into account the full impact of the occupation and the expropriation of Palestinian land.
The Bank’s growth report is useful only in revealing that the Palestinian economy is in a critical state of disrepair. Its inability to provide policy recommendations that properly account for the effects of occupation renders its advice irrelevant.
It is time to look for alternative models of aid, ones that do not simply seek new ways for the Palestinians to cope with life under occupation, but rather challenge the status quo while enabling Palestinians to survive, by, for example, promoting investment in smallholder agriculture.
This alone can lead to real economic growth and sustainable development.
Alaa Tartir is Program Director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and author of The role of international aid in development: the case of Palestine 1994-2008 (Lambert 2011). Jeremy Wildeman, an Al-Shabaka Guest Author, co-founded the Nablus-based charity Project Hope. The full policy brief on World Bank policies by al-Shabaka is available here.
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Report: Israel urges US, EU to send funds to Ramallah
Ma’an – 11/09/2012
BETHLEHEM – The Israeli government has appealed to Washington and the EU to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to rescue the collapsing Palestinian economy amid mass protests in the West Bank, Israeli media reported Tuesday.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has said the Palestinian Authority is unable to pay August salaries in full or on time because donor funds have not arrived. He said last week the PA was waiting for the US Congress to approve a request by President Barack Obama’s administration to pay $200 million to the Ramallah government.
The Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv said the European Union had reduced its financial aid to the PA due to economic crisis in Europe.
Protests against rising costs of living in cities across the West Bank have called for the resignation of Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas, and demanded the cancellation of the PA’s economic agreement with Israel, the Paris Protocol.
In Hebron and Nablus on Monday night, protesters threw rocks at PA security forces and dozens of security officers and demonstrators were injured.
Israel fears that demonstrations and strikes in cities across the West Bank against rising costs of living could weaken the PA and its security services, which coordinate with Israeli forces under agreements laid out in the Oslo Accords, Maariv reported.
Israeli officials fear protests could develop into a third intifada and the collapse of the PA, and protesters might attack Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, the report added.
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From the Archives
UN declares war on ‘dangerous’ conspiracy theories
‘World is not secretly run by elites’
Free West Media | August 5, 2022
UNESCO says it is seriously concerned about the increase in “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories”. And they plan to put an end to it through a network of informants.
“Conspiracy theories can be dangerous,” the UN agency warned. “Often they ignore scientific evidence and polarize society with dire consequences. This has to stop.”
Unesco’s director-general warned that “conspiracy theories” could cause damage to people as well as to their health. “They reinforce misconceptions about the pandemic, reinforcing stereotypes that can fuel violence and violent, extremist ideologies,” said Audrey Azoulay.
The UN agency has launched a campaign to help people identify, debunk and report “conspiracy theories” to prevent them from spreading further.
This campaign is being carried out in collaboration with the European Commission, Twitter and the World Jewish Congress. The UN has created a toolkit to “debunk” such theories and smear anyone who dares to claim that governments are not fair and transparent.
The UN also warned that George Soros, the Rothschilds and Israel should not be linked to “alleged conspiracies”.
World events “are not secretly manipulated behind the scenes by powerful players with malicious intent,” the UN agency maintained.
And if anyone therefore comes across someone who believes that the world elite is plotting to consolidate power or direct events, then that person needs to take action. According to the UN agency, when meeting a “conspiracy theorist”, under no circumstances should one enter into a discussion. … continue
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