Putting the Economic Cart before the Political Horse
Posted by saifedean on September 18, 2007
Normal service resumed
Anyone who had hopes that Gordon Brown’s tenure as Prime Minister might herald a positive in change Britain’s policy towards Palestine should begin to get disappointed.
On September 17 The British Treasury released a report that Mr. Brown had commissioned while he was still Chancellor about the economic situation in Palestine. Once one cuts through the rosy rhetoric and the NGO language (“co-operation”, “historic opportunity”, “better future”, “material stake in the future”) and some curtailed token criticisms of Israel, what emerges is the rotten core of the usual wrong-headed Blairite nonsense.
The report states that “the current vicious cycle of poverty and unemployment contributing to instability and conflict, and in turn further poverty and unemployment, must be broken.” How to break this, of course, is by instituting economic reforms in Palestine that will generate employment, raise hopes for the future, and then generate a shiny happy Palestinian population that will make peace with Israel. This is bullshit, to put it mildly.
The report cleverly returns to placing the root of the problem at the foot of the Palestinian economy, ignoring that the real root is the occupation, persecution and racism that are not only the root of the conflict, but the root of Palestinians’ misery and economic problems.
The only way there will ever be any hope for a Palestinian economy recovering and prospering is by ending the occupation and the Palestinians having a sovereign state that can determine its own future. Once that happens, there will be a good chance for a peaceful solution, and in turn more economic progress. To continue to peddle the line that economic development is needed as a prerequisite for independence is at best stupid, but more likely criminal excuse-peddling to justify doing nothing except giving some token aid.
India did not need to develop its economy before British colonialism ended. Nor did East Timor need to become Singapore before the Indonesians stopped massacring its population. South African blacks could not have prospered economically before apartheid ended, and to suggest that economic development of the Bantustans in the 1980’s was the real key to a peaceful solution in South Africa would’ve been a sick joke that only white-supremacists could’ve contemplated. In all those cases, it was the occupation, colonization, and racism that were the root of the problem. It was only when these were removed that there was a chance for some economic progress in those place. And in all of these places no self-respecting adult was stupid enough to suggest that the economics is what needs to change before the political situation changes.
The situation is no different in Palestine. All talk about the economy being the key to peace is a load of nonsense aimed at justifying inaction towards the real problem: the occupation. If Mr. Brown really cares about the Palestinian economy and Palestinians’ future, there is only one thing he can do: work at ending the occupation. Unfortunately, he seems more interested in carrying on the Blair line of yielding to the Americans entirely when it comes to Palestine. After all, it is much easier to just recycle some of Blair’s old “economics-first” ideas into brand new shiny reports than to actually do something that might anger the de-facto British Foreign Office in Washington.
Karma Nabulsi has an excellent article on this in The Guardian which concludes:
The latest initiative from the government suggests improvements driven by private investment. The absurdity of proposing to stimulate investment in this hell - where because of Israeli closures and checkpoints Palestinians cannot trade between their own towns much less with the outside world - or the fact that the present economic catastrophe is a direct consequence of the military occupation, gets no acknowledgement here. By avoiding the real issue of Israeli intransigence, and with no plan on tackling it, neither jobs nor justice are on offer to Palestinians. They expect international support to help them win their freedom - or at least not assistance in their oppression. As Mary Anderson, a contributor to the Chatham House book, explains: if you can do no good in Palestine, at least do no harm.
