The bubble will burst …Economic hit men in Ramallah

from Requiem of a Revolution

Last year at the prestigious (and imperialist) Herzliya conference in Israel, Ben Bernanke, the chief of the federal reserve, concluded that the talks and peace process itself resulted in 3% growth of the economy.

We should note here that he said the process, not the actual settlement, but the perpetual talks have lead to this growth. The economic occupation that is penetrating the occupied Palestinian territories like a deadly plague is difficult to imagine, and what even more difficult is to come up with solutions to counter this economic bubble that will defiantly burst.

Netanyahu, Israel prime minister, has always lobbied for an economic peace and not actual peaceful settlement. Meaning , behind the apartheid wall, let’s give the Palestinians an illusion of an economic stability, thus they shy away from resistance and if they do resist, they can through simple monetary policies or a simple siege, break their bone and turn this open air prison into an impoverished area.

We can see how this play turned out well for the Israelis last week. As soon as Fatah and Hamas reached a unity agreement, Israel disconnected all the revenue of taxes Israel owes to the Palestinians, thus leading to a tightening in the budget which made thousands of government employees go this month without pay, as their salaries were withheld. So in less than 24 hours Israel was able to inflict an economic crisis on the Palestinian authority and the territories.

Furthermore, there are 10,000 employees that work for exceptionally high salaries in the Palestinian territories in the medium of non government organizations (NGO) that are heavily funded by the European Union and the US. Those organizations lead projects to allow the PA to launch a viable state when the process come to fruition. That is at least their public agenda. In reality those NGOs are conditionally funded to force the PA into concessions with projects that can both good and bad. But the NGOs don’t interfere in the peace process directly, the fear as I see it is: Sooner or later the donor nations will not continue funding the NGOs because they have crisis to worry about at home. US public debt has reached new astronomical figures. 

The German government is dealing with a financial crisis on its door steps with the PIGS ( Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) and therefore sooner or later nations can not indefinitely sustain funding NGOs in the Palestinian territories. Thus the bubble will burst and ultimately and possibly the PA will find a surge of 10,000 people unemployed at once. 

In a country where there is usually one breadwinner per household this will lead into to an economic catastrophe. Furthermore, the PA government is employed 20% over capacity and can’t take any more workers. Also unemployment runs high in Tul Karem in the north of the West Bank which stands at an unusual real rate of 74%, second highest to Gaza, which after years of siege and destructive war runs at 75% unemployment rate.

This means that bubble Ramallah lives in, and I state Ramallah because Nablus and Bethlehem are not on par economically as Ramallah will eventually burst. I am sure Dr. Salam Fayyad is aware of that. If he does not, then he should rescind his economic doctorate and go sell falafel instead. But he is playing the game the US is telling him to do through cluster screwed economic models that the World Bank and the IMF design. 

The same institutions that wrecked havoc in Latin America from Mexico to Argentina. Unfortunately, I am not an economic prodigy and can’t come up with an innovative economic model that can sustain a nation that doesn’t control any ports , roads, water , air, and financial control over it’s revenue. Thus the only solution given is that the bubble will have to burst, and we will have to return to normalcy and get adjusted back into real wage rates that are not exacerbated by conditional economic funding by NGOs or the World Bank.

The good news is that Palestinians, at the end of the day, live in tribal socialist society by culture. Even big cities like Ramallah or Nablus or Jerusalem consist of families that have been rooted in those areas for hundreds of years. After the bubble bursts there is hope that the adjustment will return Palestine into the socialist living form that existed for hundreds of years through the family, the tribe, and the land they farm or commercial property they own.

The only solution really is to listen to Palestinians in 1948 who have longed advised their brothers in the West Bank to turn the struggle into a one state solution. A solution that down the road will lead to peace and coexistence and will not economically be devastating. Is this idea far fetched? Yes … Are there many against it? Yes…. But will it happen in the future? Of course. History repeats itself.

In the mean time, I will have to explain this to all the foreign and local NGO and PA elite employees that party at Beit Anisa or Urjwan in the posh areas of Ramallah. I doubt any will listen.