Opinion Editorials, May  2008

Investment under the shadow of colonization

By Nasser Lahham

Ma'an's Chief Editor
 
Bethlehem - Date: 21 / 05 / 2008  Time:  12:06

The Palestine Investment Conference opened on Wednesday with the participation of more than 1,000 businessmen and investors from all around the world, including the United States, Europe, the Arab states and Israel.

Two billion dollars in business projects will be proposed at the three-day meeting.

Even though 'investment' and 'colonization' are contradictory, investment is needed for security and political stability to flourish. There is one possibility for people under occupation and that is to create a resistance economy.

In the Gaza Strip, since Sharon and his settlements and army withdrew it has not been possible for any authority to set up even a plastic greenhouse since the Israeli bulldozers raze lands there regularly.

Palestine is an occupied country with an occupied economy. As such, businesses in Palestine face a number of challenges:

First: According to the Paris agreement signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, the Palestinian Authority can only import goods through Israeli ports, crossings, and airports. Palestinian businesses have to pay Israeli taxes and customs, artificially raising the price of goods and services in the occupied territories to the same level as Israel. Israel’s economy, moreover, is supported by a social welfare system, in which even a “poor” Israeli gets at least 7,000 Israeli shekels a month, more than the monthly salary, of a minister in the Palestinian cabinet.

Second: if a Sudanese businessman wants to sell watermelons to the Palestinian, these watermelons have to pass through the Israeli port at Ashdod where Israeli taxes and customs are added to the price. The result is that the watermelon's price in the Palestinian market is higher even than in Israel.

Third: Arab businessmen will try their best to help the Palestinians and the local investment. But still this is not practical unless the Paris convention is cancelled.

Forth: While small medium-sized business may survive the occupation, large-scale projects usually do not. We should pay more attention to the small and medium-scale agricultural and industrial.

Fifth: Most Palestinians depend on agriculture; however, the Israelis are attempting to destroy this sector intending to make Palestinian society a consumer society.

Sixth: The most important investment to be made in Palestine is an injection of freedom, and we ask Arab and foreign investors to help us win our economic and political liberty.

Investment conference begins in Bethlehem

Date: 21 / 05 / 2008  Time:  13:37
Bethlehem – Ma’an –

An international investment conference intended to raise capital for the Palestinian private sector is opening in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Wednesday.

More than 1,000 people from around the world are expected to attend the conference. Two billion US dollars in industrial, agricultural, IT, and tourism projects will be presented. The Palestinian Authority, under appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, is summit as a step towards rebuilding the Palestinian private sector in order to build the economic base of a future Palestinian state.

Critics view the conference as, either an ineffective measure that will ultimately fail in as a result of Israel’s constraints on the Palestinian economy, or, worse, a step that will normalize and stabilize an illegal foreign occupation.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday morning. Conference CEO Hassan Abu Libda said that 105 Palestinian businessmen from the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip had been allowed to travel to the West Bank for the conference. Approximately 300 Palestinians from the Diaspora are also attending the conference, mostly from Jordan, Abu Libda said.

Among the boldface names attending the conference are Quartet Representative Tony Blair, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, and Jordanian Minister of Industry and Trade Amer Al-Hadidi.

Official delegations were also sent from United Nations, the World Bank, European Union, China, Egypt, Germany, Norway, Slovenia, the United States, Qatar, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Britain. Most of the participants are from the Arab world, especially Jordan and the Gulf states.

The presence of six Israelis at the conference raised eyebrows among Palestinians. The conference has been criticized for viewing the Israelis as partners, rather than occupiers.

Abu Libda responded that Israel is the largest export market for Palestinian goods.

Palestinian officials held Wednesday’s press conference in Bethlehem’s Intercontinental Jacir Palace hotel, less than one hundred meters from the Israeli (illegal Land-Grab, Apartheid) separation wall, and across the street from Azza’, a registered Palestinian refugee camp.

Sam Bahour, a prominent Palestinian businessman, was concerned that the investors who are traveling to the West Bank for the conference will not be allowed to re-enter in the future, without an international team of organizers negotiating the entry permits.

Bahour said, "real investment in Palestine starts with real access to all of the occupied Palestinian territory – the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip."

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