Disaster of Israel's making

The “Gaza and Jericho First” stage of the Oslo Accords, provided the perfect opportunity for gambling tycoons to bypass Israel, where gambling is illegal. The casino took in about $1 million a day from Israelis streaming into occupied Jericho for the pleasure of gambling while the Palestinians were barely able to put food on the table.

When the Gaza airport and seaport were finally built due to European Union efforts, along with roads, waterways and the Palestinian broadcasting station, Israel destroyed each of them, citing security reasons. Conservatively, Israel's destruction of infrastructure has been estimated at $3.5 billion in damages, while lost potential income for the Palestinian economy has been estimated at about $6.4 billion; the total loss far exceeding the overall international assistance received by the Palestinian people from 1994 to 1999.

The pauperisation of the Palestinian economy was further exacerbated by the punitive closure of Palestinian society. A complicated system of checkpoints and roadblocks severely restricted the movement of Palestinians and goods, and prevented Palestinians from travelling to Israel for work. Unemployment hit record highs, going from less than 7 per cent before 1993 to 25 per cent in the West Bank and 39 per cent in Gaza in the first quarter of 1996. Israel had created a Palestinian economy deeply dependent on its own during the previous 30 years, which meant that closure was now far more devastating than it would have been otherwise.

As the living standards plummeted and destitution pervaded, every level of Palestinian society reacted angrily. But Palestinian violence was not wholesale. Subjected to a barrage of provocations, minority groups and traumatised individuals committed most of the violence with homemade weapons. One of those early provocations was a terrorist attack which killed 50 praying Palestinians in a Hebron mosque commited by right wing extremist Baruch Goldstein, who is today venerated by the Kach settler movement to which he belonged.

Nevertheless, Israel launched reprisals each time against the entire Palestinian population - almost half under the age of 15 - using the powerful force of its military arsenal in defiance of international law, which prohibits collective punishment.

International public opinion has not been swayed then, or now, by the non-violent efforts of Palestinian resistance carried out weekly by community groups in towns and villages all over the West Bank. Instead, it remains fixated on Palestinian armed attacks and suicide bombings without any regard for the disintegration of Palestinian society under Israel's humiliating control and human rights abuses.

By 2000, the Palestinians were highly charged, especially after Arafat was derided for refusing to negotiate “peace” when he walked away from then prime minister Ehud Barak's much lauded “generous” offer at Camp David. Concessions on Jerusalem and the Palestinian right of return were not his to make and Barak knew it. To bolster his own political ambitions, Barak, now Defence Minister, was able to persuade the public that Arafat had pre-planned an Intifada (uprising) while negotiating peace, and had sought to destroy Israel through the return of millions of refugees.

Israeli researchers though have shown that the heads of Israel's Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet security service dismissed the existence of any such plan.

At the same time, Israel increased its settlement expansion in the Occupied Palestinian territories, in spite of the Oslo Accords prohibiting “any change in the status of the West Bank ...”. Throughout the past 15 years, successive Israeli governments have all continued to build these illegal housing estates for waves of Jewish settlers from abroad, while the Palestinians are being pushed into arid areas creating a series of disconnected Bantustans much like what was created in apartheid South Africa.

Despite Israeli-only roads, concrete walls, electric fencing and military zones separating the two peoples, Israel promotes these modern housing estates as “normal” developments. In effect, it has forced the Palestinians into a system of complete dependency where Israel controls all borders, Gaza's territorial waters, and 80 per cent of all the water resources.

Prevented from producing and competing with Israel's economy, the Palestinians became forced consumers, a situation perpetuated by foreign aid. Effectively, international donors foot the bill while Israeli companies reap the profits out of the desperate need of an entire population under Israel's occupation. Foreign aid has done nothing to revitalise the economy, and has only made the Palestinians one of the most aid-dependent populations in the world. According to the latest World Bank report, “aid and reform are unlikely to revive the Palestinian economy unless Israel removes economic restrictions at the same time”.

Even so, with a staggering 97 per cent of Gaza's industry now inactive due to Israel's punitive sanctions, removing those restrictions will not bring about economic recovery any time soon, if at all. The magnitude of social destruction is incomprehensible as 1.4 million people grapple with failing sewers, sewage-polluted water, rationed food, practically no electricity or fuel, and a crumbling infrastructure of roads, schools, hospitals, transport system and other normal municipal services. This systematic “de-development” is spiralling into an unprecedented humanitarian crisis likely to have grave political consequences.

Today, Israel will cite the demographic problem it faces with a Palestinian population fast catching up in size to the Israeli population. It is a problem of Israel's making, and one that it could solve tomorrow if it was not moving systematically and determinedly to expand its territory and fulfil its colonial ambitions for a Greater Israel.

It will not be long before the 4 million Palestinians being herded into reservations will be as much a problem for Israel to police as it will be for the Palestinians to endure.