Harry Targ
Global
Economic Context
Looking at the last third of the
twentieth century, Canadian economist James Davies, in a study prepared by the
World Institute for Development Economics Research, wrote “income inequality
has been rising for the past 20 to 25 years and we think that is true for
inequality in the distribution of wealth.” In 2000 the study showed that the
top 1 percent of the world’s population accounted for 40 percent of its total
net worth, with the bottom half owning 1.1 percent. Edward Wolff, another
economist participating in the study, wrote “With the notable exception of
China and India, the third world has drifted behind.” (New York Times, December 6, 2006).
The starkest interpretation of
this kind of data was reflected in a 2003 article by Egyptian economist Samir
Amin. He asserted that the global economy is creating what he called “the
precarious classes.” Both in agriculture and manufacturing they cannot count on
day-to-day remunerative activity to survive. Amin estimated that 2/3 to 3/4 of
humankind are among the “precarious classes.”
Relevance
to the Middle East in the 21st Century
A financial publication entitled
“Arab Banker” printed a summary of a 2007 World Bank study, “Two Years After
London: Restarting Palestinian Economic Recovery.” The World Bank, the Arab
Banker, and other sources presented the following alarming data:
-The percentage of Gazans living
in poverty steadily increased from 1998 (21.6%) to 2006 (35%).
-Israeli policies barring imports
and exports which isolated Gaza from the Israeli and global economy made
matters worse; a 90 % decline in Gaza’s industrial operations occurred between
the 2006 parliamentary election victory of Hamas and 2007.
-Industrial employment in Gaza
declined from 35,000 in 2005 to 4,200 in 2007.
During the first decade of the
new century, comparative economic data on Israel and the occupied territories
indicated that West Bank and Gaza gross national product per capita was about
10 percent of that of Israel.
More recently, the United Nations
issued a report entitled “Socio-Economic and Food Security Survey 2012: West
Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestine.” This report was produced under the auspices of
the Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, and the World Food program.
It documented a connection between food insecurity in Palestine and external
constraints on the economies of the West Bank and Gaza imposed by occupation
and blockades. Among their findings were the following:
-34 percent of Palestinian
households, comprising over 1.5 million people, live in situations of food
insecurity (19 percent in the West Bank and 57 percent in Gaza).
-Food insecurity increased since
2009, derived from growing unemployment, declining purchasing power, and slowed
or abandoned aid thus decreasing jobs, income, and consumption.
-Food insecure households (often
with larger families) are more likely to experience disabilities and chronic
illnesses.
The report made three general
recommendations: lift the embargo on Gaza, increase West Bank access to the
Israeli economy, and support efforts to increase economic productivity in the
West Bank and Gaza.
The
Middle East Wars
The contested land of Palestine
had been largely populated by Muslim peoples from the 7th century until the
mid-twentieth century. In 1947, the year
that the United Nations recommended the partition of Palestine into two states,
only 1/3 of the land’s inhabitants were of Jewish background. On May 14, 1948,
David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and the
chairman of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, declared the establishment of a new
state of Israel, and the first Middle East war between the new Israeli army and
Arab states ensued. Palestinians and Arab neighbors regarded the creation of
the new state as an occupation of the historic residents of the land. Over the
course of this first Middle East war and those that followed hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians became a displaced population.
Subsequently wars occurred in
1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and intermittently from the 1980s until today. (In the
1967 war Israel occupied, the West Bank, Gaza, the Old City of Jerusalem, the
Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights, formerly Syrian land). These wars were
fought between Israelis, Palestinians and states neighboring Israel. Disputes involved
multiple issues including the legitimacy of the state of Israel; Israeli
expansion, particularly its continuing construction of settlements in the West
Bank and the displacement of Palestinian people; the rights of Palestinians
inside Israel, and control of water and land throughout the region. Various
organizations challenging the Israeli state and land expansion emerged over the
last fifty years including the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and
Hezbollah. Several nations supported contending parties to the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict such as the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold
War, former European colonial powers such as Great Britain and France, and
neighboring Arab and other Muslim states.
The United States became Israel’s
main ally during all these years. Since 1979 Israel has been the largest
recipient on a per capita basis of foreign assistance from the United States of
any of the latter’s clients. In addition, Israel has become the best equipped
and most powerful military force in the region, largely due to the billions of
dollars of US military assistance. Israel is the only state with nuclear weapons
in the region. In a recent budget decision, the United States has agreed to
provide military assistance totaling $3.8 billion per annum for ten years to
Israel beginning in 2019.
Finally, pro-Israel lobby groups
in the United States support continued military and economic aid to Israel.
Israel, with United States support, opposes serious negotiations with what is
now the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza. It is
expected that recent West Bank/Gaza Palestinian agreements will harden Israeli
opposition to serious negotiation.
Of course, Israel opposes initiatives
from peace groups in the US and the international community. Currently,
militant pro-Israel lobby groups as well as the Israeli government are
pressuring Congress to pass legislation overturning Obama administration
accords with Iran on nuclear weapons. Many also advocate US-led military action against Iran.
Violence and instability in the
region, the tragedy of 9/11, worldwide terrorism directed against US targets,
and insurmountable and spreading conflicts have been directly related to
Israel’s economic isolation of and military actions toward the Palestinian
people and the continuing US support of Israel’s policies. Within the United States,
critics of US support of Israel are excoriated and politicians are intimidated
such that policy debate on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians inside Israel
as well as economic embargoes and military attacks on interim Palestinian
institutions and people in Gaza and the West Bank are largely censored from
public discourse.
The particular mantra of
rightwing groups, Republicans, Trump administration spokespersons, and many
Democrats in 2017 is to label any critics of Israeli policy as “anti-Semitic.”
Some of the strongest voices opposed to the total United States military and
economic support for Israel come from progressives in the Jewish community. More
Jewish people are becoming critics of Israel’s inhumane treatment of the
Palestinian people. Many of these people proudly identify with their historical
heritage of support for social and economic justice all around the world and
are outraged by recent disingenuous claims of sympathy for the Jewish people
from Conservative politicians in both political parties, think tanks and
religious lobby groups, and sectors of the mainstream media.
Politics
and Economics of the Middle East Today
Nar Arafeh, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford
University, challenges the idea that economic development in the West Bank and
Gaza alone could bring peace to the region. She argues that unless economic
change is coupled with increased Palestinian political rights in the region resistance
to Israel’s political/military domination will continue.
As to economics, although
Palestine is expected to experience 3.5% growth in GDP in 2017, that growth is
largely based on construction, presumably rebuilding housing units destroyed by
Israeli bombs. She points out that the boost in construction in recent years in
the West Bank and Gaza is coupled with economic stagnation including low growth
and inadequate wages, increased unemployment, and declining foreign assistance.
Israel controls the flow of labor from the West Bank to production sites as
needed and limits more substantially Palestinian labor from Gaza. Arafeh says that
“The ‘Palestinian Economy’ is a political construct,
shaped to serve the more powerful player: Israel.” (Nar Arafeh, “Palestine’s
Economic Outlook-April, 2017. Al Jazeera).
And on the human rights front, an
Amnesty International report entitled, “Israel and Occupied Palestinian
Territories Report 2016/2017” stated that:
Israeli forces
unlawfully killed Palestinian civilians, including children, in both Israel and
the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and detained thousands of
Palestinians from the OPT who opposed Israel’s continuing military occupation,
holding hundreds in administrative detention. Torture and other ill-treatment
of detainees remained rife and was committed with impunity. The authorities
continued to promote illegal settlements in the West Bank, including by
attempting to retroactively “legalize” settlements built on private Palestinian
land, and severely restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement, closing some
areas after attacks by Palestinians on Israelis. Israeli forces continued to
blockade the Gaza Strip, subjecting its population of 1.9 million to collective
punishment, and to demolish homes of Palestinians in the West Bank and of
Bedouin villagers in Israel’s Negev/Naqab region, forcibly evicting residents.
What
Does This Mean?
First, violence and political
instability in the world is intimately connected to the absence of economic
well-being. The economic crises faced in
recent years in the industrial capitalist world are small compared to the
punishing crises of survival that some countries of the Global South still
experience in the 21st century; countries and territories of the Middle East
are prime examples.
Second, data suggests clearly
that in the occupied territories (the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights,
all conquered in the 1967 Middle East war) the notion of “precariousness” (joblessness,
land theft, food insecurity, grotesque economic and political inequalities) is
an apt way to describe the condition of the Palestinian people.
Third, shifting currents in
Palestinian politics have been connected to patterns of economic growth and
decay. In the 1950s and 1960s, secular leaders in the Arab world, including
Palestinians, offered a vision of economic change and political autonomy for
their people that was processed in Washington and European capitals as
threatening to dominant economic interests. President Nasser of Egypt who
opened relations with the Soviet Union and began to talk about Arab Socialism
was a prime target of concern. Paradoxically, the US began to support political
actors in the region with a religious agenda, countries such as Saudi Arabia
and later in the 1980s followers of Osama Bin Laden who were fighting Soviet
forces in Afghanistan. In the 1980s also the United States supported Hamas in
Palestine.
There is no easy solution but the
United States and other wealthy countries have an obligation to participate in
a disinterested economic reconstruction of the occupied territories and support
for complete political autonomy of the Palestinian people. Only that will break
the back of anger, hatred, and political instability. The United States should
stop fueling the violence in the region by ending military aid to Israel.
Economic reconstruction requires negotiation toward the creation of a viable secular
Israeli state in which all participate or a separate Palestinian state with
land repatriation and guarantees of security from Israeli military attack. In
addition, Israeli settlements in the West Bank need to be dismantled. Economic
development must be coupled with economic justice.
In the United States, the
political climate needs to begin to change so that a resumption of frank
dialogue can proceed concerning foreign policy toward Israel, ending the
violence in the region, and supporting economic justice and political rights
for the Palestinian people. For example, is it wise and humane for the United
States to commit $3.8 billion annually in for military aid to Israel for the
next ten years?
Labeling those who propose different
United States foreign policies toward Israel as anti-Semitic do a disservice to
peoples of the region and defame US activists, including Jews, who support
peace and justice for the Palestinian people.
