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To Reboot Gaza, Look to Jenin in the West Bank

(Jerusalem Post) Dave Harden - During the Second Intifada, Jenin was the most dangerous city in the West Bank, home to at least 28 suicide bombers who killed 124 Israelis. Then in the mid-2000s, in the northern West Bank along the Jenin-Jalameh corridor close to northern Israel, the U.S. and Israel promoted trade and economic opportunity to stabilize the region and marginalize Palestinian rejectionists and militias. The Americans provided $10 million in assistance for the Jenin trading corridor that leveraged an estimated $500 million of sustained, private sector trade which fundamentally changed the economic, security, and social fabric of the northern West Bank. During the 2014 wave of lone-wolf attackers, almost none were from Jenin. Massive continued humanitarian aid, as being discussed for Gaza, alleviates suffering but creates a welfare dependent, failed society. To reboot Gaza, look to Jenin in the West Bank where economic opportunity has changed almost everything. The writer, managing director of the Georgetown Strategy Group, was an American diplomat who led the U.S. assistance mission to the West Bank and Gaza for more than a decade.
2018-08-06 00:00:00
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