Well who would have believed it?


By Advis3r
July 19, 2011
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From Tim Marshall in Sky News:
An African UN worker in the West Bank recently remarked to a mutual friend 'When people see me coming they see a walking ATM machine'.

Driving through Ramallah, and then Jericho, the other day I was reminded of that quip as I looked at the smart restaurants, sparkling new hotels, and the scale of building work.

The Palestinian Authority likes to boast about the West Bank' s 8% economic growth, so does the Israeli government, which uses it to suggest that a prosperous Palestine would make an easier negotiating partner. They also know the Palestinians have more lose if a 3rd Intifada breaks out.

What they fail to remind us is that there are well over 200 NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza, and 30% of the GDP here comes from international aid. Palestinians are among the most foreign aid funded people in the world and the place is awash with money.

... Palestine is addicted to aid and as long as you are addicted you are in thrall to your supplier.

The billions that pour in here mean the Palestinian Authority does not need to try very hard to deliver the services expected by voters, it also stifles the private sector, inflates wages and causes an internal 'brain drain'.

The restaurant I went to in Ramallah had a line of expensive cars outside and ranks of NGO workers picking their way through an expensive menu inside. The NGOs do fine work alleviating suffering, helping projects with expertise etc, but they also recruit the best of the local talent and take advantage of their charitable status to get tax breaks.

No Palestinian business can compete with NGOs which routinely triple what a local firm would pay. Many NGOs fork out 'danger money' and even 'hardship payments' to both local and international staff which further undermines the local private businesses. So the NGOs get the brightest and the highest paid, and the private firms get the rest but without the tax exemptions.

“Palestine is the best-kept secret in the aid industry,” a medical NGO worker recently told This Week In Palestine, “People need field experience and Palestine sounds cool and dangerous because it can be described as a war zone, but in reality it’s quite safe and has all the comforts that internationals want.'

...Palestine remains a friendly place, welcoming, hospitable, full of air con, hi-fi, wi-fi and wine. Journalists also take advantage of this state of affairs, writing of the poverty and suffering of Gaza for example, before retiring to very expensive sea front hotels after an excellent dinner in one of the expensive fish restaurants.

(h/t Serious Black)

COMMENTS

suzanna

19 July, 2011 - 14:33

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Israel is the highest per capita recipient of foreign aid in the world.


suzanna

19 July, 2011 - 14:54

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Israeli colonisation and a decades long military occupation have put immense pressure on Palestinian society in the OPT. The economy has been reduced to a stunted aid-dependent shadow, a process that began long before the second Intifada. Post Oslo, average unemployment rose by over 900% between 1992 - 96 while real GDP fell by 37%.
That was nothing compared to the first two years of the second Intifada, as the Palestinian economy experienced one of the deepest recessions in modern history - worse than the United States in the Great Depression or Argentina in 2001. By 2005, over 60% of Palestinian households in the OPT were either in poverty or deep poverty.
Collective punishment is routine, producing conditions designed to push Palestinians into leaving the land coveted by Israel. Israel's apartheid rule has territorially fragmented the OPT into an archipelago of landlocked sovereign zones, subordinate Bantustans that Israeli architect Eyal Weizman describes as 'a permanently temporary Palestinian state'.


Advis3r

19 July, 2011 - 15:22

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Suzanna more blatant lies - the Palestinians are the highest per capita recipients of aid

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22967.pdf
ask them where it has all gone?
Post Oslo unemployment rose and growth reduced as a consequence of the policies of one person the kleptomaniac Yasser Arafat and the kleptocracy he created- amazing how post Oslo and the arch terrorist's entry into Ramallah the Palestinian economy simply unravelled and imploded. And then the Palestinians start a bloody uprising and the terrorist murder of hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians in shops buses restaurants and hotels and Suzanna blames the consequent fall in the Palestinian economy on Israel! The Jewish people does not have to covet the land it already belongs to it it has never belonged to a people called the Palestinians just get over it.


suzanna

19 July, 2011 - 15:29

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By 2000, the West Bank had already been fragmented into 227 separate enclaves, with only 17% of the entire territory under full Palestinian control. Around 88% of these cantons were LESS THAN two square Km in size. The strategically placed colonies, the segregated roads, The Separation Barrier: Israel’s iron grip on the OPT has only grown stronger with time.


Advis3r

19 July, 2011 - 15:38

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These statistics are meaningless if you don't explain that the kleptocracy that was running the Palestinians was stealing all the money - fool!!! There are no segregated roads what site are you printing this from dummy - Palestinians were banned from certain roads because they could not be trusted not to shoot at Israeli cars as they passed them. Actually 98% of Palestinians are under the control of the PA any more lies muppet? Israel cannot colonize its own land only the Arabs can do that since they never had sovereignty over it.


Advis3r

19 July, 2011 - 15:40

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Suzanna carry on posting your rubbish Tim Marshall at long last now has your measure.


amber

19 July, 2011 - 16:20

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Suzanna, are you trying to be ironic? The Palestinians receive more aid per capita than any other people/country on earth.


amber

19 July, 2011 - 16:21

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Suzanna, Judea and Samaria are not

1. "occupied"
2. "Palestinian".

Never were - at any time in history. But then, facts aren't your strong point.


amber

19 July, 2011 - 16:24

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Let's now compare to the apartheid policies of the Palestinians. the PA under Fatah has legislated that any Arab selling land legitimiately to a Jew is liable for the death penalty. No Jew is allowed to live in any areas run by the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, the most disgusting racist antisemitic propaganda spews forth from official Palestinian media, and Palestinian schoolchildren are taught the virtues of murdering Jews.


amber

19 July, 2011 - 16:25

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Suzanna, of course, has no problem wiuth any of this.

perhaps she should wonder why the Israelis are in Judea and samaria in the first place - something to do with a genocidal war launched by the Arabs against the Jews.

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