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Peace Parks and Pipedreams

[Jerusalem Post] Dan Diker - Quartet envoy Tony Blair has announced a major initiative to create thousands of jobs for unemployed Palestinians. However, since Oslo's inception in 1993, the often naive enthusiasm for these types of economic projects undertaken on behalf of the Palestinians has killed most of the projects while they were still on the drawing board. Other forms of economic cooperation have frequently ended up enriching local business warlords and terror groups. For example, Israeli business magnate Stef Wertheimer's multi-million dollar project in the mid-1990s to develop an industrial park near Rafiah in southern Gaza crashed and burned when Arafat's local financial warlords got involved demanding their share of the action. Other Israeli-led initiatives between 1995 and 2000 to build industrial parks in West Bank cities such as Tulkarm and Kalkilya also failed. The idea of Israeli and international investment and ownership and cheap Palestinian labor has been a fatal flaw. This master-servant business structure reinforces a Palestinian sense that Israel is creating a New Middle East by "conquering" the Palestinian economy and creating an economic "occupation" in the name of the peace process. Finally, Hamas and Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigade will not accede to Israeli- and Western-owned factories or businesses operating in the Palestinian areas. Hamas and Fatah's destruction of the Erez and Karni industrial zones in Gaza illustrate their intentions.
2007-11-28 01:00:00
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