The World Economic Forum (WEF) on Monday discussed ways to develop the flagging Palestinian economy as officials from its private and public sector blamed Israeli security measures for their woes.
”I told Colin Powell this morning that we don’t want more free trade agreements with the United States. We want only to be sure that we can move our people and our products,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said.
Shaath was speaking at a WEF session devoted to shoring up the Palestinian economy after Powell, the US secretary of state, detailed a plan by Washington to help the Middle East set up a free trade area with the United States.
”The problem is simply our inability to move our people and our products because of the Israeli siege imposed on the occupied territories, ” Shaath said.
Citing security measures, Israel has clamped down on the Gaza Strip and West Bank, crippling economic activity and exacerbating unemployment and revenues in the impoverished territories.
A report by the World Bank in February warned of acute malnutrition among the Palestinians, saying an estimated 60% of the population lived on less than two dollars a day.
It also reported more than 50% unemployment and an economy that has halved in size since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, attributed chiefly to Israeli closure of Palestinian areas.
”We talk alot about political terrorism but there is an economic terrorism: it is discriminating and killing jobs,” the chairperson of Palestine Cellular Communications Zahi Khouri said at the session.
To illustrate the problem they face, Shaath and Khouri cited the Karni industrial zone between Israel and the Palestinians on the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
”It would have become a major high-tech zone but it is impossible because of the Israeli closure and the horrible routine of so-called security arrangements,” Shaath said.
Khouri noted that it takes ”five days to move our products through Karni, while the Israelis move their products within hours”.
”This means that the cost increases up to six fold for the Palestinians,” he added.
Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom had said on Sunday that he discussed with the Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad ways of ”forming a common project … in Karni in order to try to develop this area”.
Palestinian officials and experts played down the importance of these remarks, saying there was nothing new in it and that trade cooperation with Israel is hostage to the blockade imposed on the territories.
Palestinian Trade and Economy Minister Maher al-Masri said the Karni project emerged several years ago and was due to provide jobs for 20 000 workers but only 800 have secured positions because of the blockades.
Although several WEF debates were devoted to the Palestinian economy over the past three days, the politics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict dominated discussions so far.
”We have tried on several occasions to raise the issue of the Palestinian workers and the problem of unemployment but they are less attractive than political issues,” Palestinian Labour Minister Ghassan Khatib said.
”The forum did not come up with many tangible proposals to bolster the Palestinian economy because it is mainly focusing on dialogue,” he said, adding however that peace was the key to a flourishing economy. – Sapa-AFP