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One of the most persistent and constant themes in both the Israeli
and the international approach to the Palestinian issue has been the
notion that the road to peace has a strong economic dimension. According
to this thinking, if the Palestinian economy and institutions of
governance are developing and Palestinians are feeling more prosperous
and hopeful regarding their material future, the chances for a
successful peace process increase, the prospects for a Palestinian state
improve, foundations are laid for Palestinian-Israeli trust and, at a
minimum, the danger of violence subsides.
Norway has been a
prominent and consistent advocate of this approach, both by generous
economic support (close to 11 billion Norwegian kroner since 1993) and
taking a leadership role internationally in offering external support
for Palestinian state development aschair of the Ad Hoc Liaison
Committee (AHLC), Local Development Forum (LDF) and the Joint Liaison
Committee (JLC). Oslo is in good company. The pre-1948 British Mandate,
the Zionist movement and the post-1967 Israeli occupation all adopted a
similar policy.
Along with many aspects of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process, this “economic peace” approach has
failed. The time has come to reassess it.
To be sure, economic
well-being is a good thing. Many Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza
Strip, are extremely needy. The very existence of the Palestinian
Authority with its multiple benefits for Palestinians in the West Bank
is dependent on generous international grants. All these development and
aid projects are vital and should continue. But not if the primary
rationale is peace.
This conflict does not derive from economic roots and it is not fed by economic deprivation.
This conflict does not derive from economic
roots and it is not fed by economic deprivation. It is political, with
an increasingly strong element of religious extremism on both sides. In
the Israeli-Palestinian case, enhanced trust is not a corollary of
prosperity and prosperity has not nourished peace.
As far back as
Britain’s 1937 Peel Commission report on the emerging conflict, the
“conciliatory effect on the Palestinian Arabs of the material prosperity
which Jewish immigration would bring in Palestine” was found to have
failed asa catalyst for coexistence despite British mandatory
expectations to the contrary. Indeed, as early as 1923 Revisionist
Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky condemned the concept that “the Arabs
will voluntarily. . . . sell out their homeland for a railroad network.”
Yet
immediately after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June
1967, it proceeded to ignore these admonitions. Israeli Minister of
Defense Moshe Dayan threw open the green line boundary and encouraged
Israelis and Palestinians to go back and forth and interact at the
commercial level. Legions of Palestinian day laborers came to work in
Israel. Both sides prospered. Israeli security officials responsible for
the Palestinian territories were certain a formula had been found to
prevent violence and ensure harmony despite the failure to find a
political solution.
It took 20 years, until the outbreak of the
first intifada in December 1987, to prove them wrong and force at least a
partial closing of borders and imposition of restrictions on economic
interaction. Yet the emphasis on prosperity as an ingredient for peace
continued. In July 2000, when I represented Prime Minister Ehud Barak in
recruiting American Jewish and media support for a hoped-for
breakthrough at Camp David, a key talking point was the need for
Washington to provide funds for Palestinian desalination projects and
for refugee compensation in order to facilitate the political process.
In
2002, after two intifadas, the international community pressured
Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to appoint a distinguished
international economist, Salam Fayyad, as finance minister—from 2007
until 2013 he was also prime minister—again on the assumption that
economic development and interaction with Israel would help advance a
peaceful settlement. In 2007, too, the “Quartet” (a peacemaking
initiative involving the US, EU, UN and Russia) delegated former British
prime minister Tony Blair to promote economic development in the
territories as a key ingredient of an eventual peaceful settlement (he
resigned in 2015). Earlier, in 2005, outgoing World Bank president James
Wolfensohn served briefly as the Quartet’s representative for the
abortive project of promoting economic development in the Gaza Strip as
Israel withdrew.
In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud campaign in
Knesset elections featured an “economic peace” platform for developing
the Palestinian Authority as a necessary prelude to peace talks. To this
day, hard-line Israeli politicians like Naftali Bennet promote ideas
for developing the 40 percent of the West Bank that is under full or
partial PA control (areas A and B) as a means of ensuring peaceful
interaction in the absence of a viable peace process, which they either
oppose or do not believe is feasible.
Further, the international
community has responded to all three mini-wars between Israel and
Gaza-based Hamas since 2007 by pledging heavy infrastructure aid for the
Strip and its population on the assumption that Gaza’s severe economic
plight and its war damages, rather than Hamas’s extremist Islamism, are a
major cause of these conflicts. In May 2015 President Obama, in
declaring that there was no chance for a peace process in the year
ahead, nevertheless allowed that the US would seek to create “business
opportunities and jobs” in the Palestinian territories in order to build
trust between the two sides.
both Palestinian intifadas erupted at times of relative prosperity
All these “economic peace”
approaches have failed. They grossly undervalue the Palestinian national
drive: the political, ideological and (increasingly) Islamic currents
that inform the Arab side of the conflict. This in turn points to a
serious lacuna in strategic understanding on the part of both Israelis
and third parties. Perhaps to drive home the point, note that both
Palestinian intifadas erupted (in 1987 and 2000) at times of relative
prosperity; and as noted, even the Palestinian revolt against the
British Mandate that broke out in 1936 began at a time of economic
progress.
Today, Israeli security authorities seek to bring more
West Bank laborers to work in Israel and to deliver more goods and
services to the Gaza Strip, arguing that this will distance Palestinians
from terrorism. As individual breadwinners, perhaps. But this approach
has failed repeatedly at the societal level.
By all means, give
the Palestinians development aid. But let us not delude ourselves that
this will facilitate a two-state solution anytime soon.
For that
to happen, we must first witness radical changes in both sides’
leadership profiles, a far-reaching mutual readiness to cease insisting
on totally deadlocked narrative demands like recognition of a Jewish
state and the right of return, and a much calmer Arab Middle East.
This piece was first published on Verdidebatt.no on 14 March 2016.