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Palestinian Demonstrations Raise Hopes

(Jerusalem Post) - According to Dr. Hillel Frisch of Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, the civil unrest in the Gaza Strip might be a positive development, in terms of lessening popular support for suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks inside Israel and, ultimately, in helping to get the peace process back on track. The Islamic organizations are at the root of this economic misery because they were originally behind the suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks that led to closure of the Israeli market to Palestinian workers. The suffering is even more acute in Gaza, with one million people, because there is little in the way of local work or farming. Most Gazans are urban dwellers and landless, and the poverty is much harsher than in the West Bank. In the mid-1990s, as many as 150,000 Palestinians worked in Israel, and their combined earnings totalled more than $100 million a month -- more than the entire PA budget. In Gaza, employment in Israel coupled with the work that this generated locally in the form of taxi drivers, garage mechanics, and the like, accounted for 50% of all economic activity. Even if all the wealth were to be more evenly distributed by the PA instead of going into the pockets of the officials, and there was no corruption, it would still be insufficient to cover the loss of income due to the closure of the Israeli workplace. There is no substitute for the Israeli labor market for the Palestinians, and especially those living in Gaza, even if international relief agencies such as UNRWA provide them with staples to prevent starvation. "I believe and hope that these grassroots hunger demonstrations are a positive development which might turn into a lobby for political and military moderation," Frisch said.
2002-07-03 00:00:00
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