Sharon Glueck

North Miami Beach

Considering the Palestinian economy

After being fed a constant diet of sob stories about the impoverishment of the Palestinians’ being attributable to the U.S.-initiated economic boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, it is now known that economic aid to the Palestinians actually increased from $1 billion in 2005 to $1.2 billion in 2006, without even taking into account the hundreds of millions smuggled in from Muslim countries.

But, we are told, it is the fault of Israel, now totally removed from Gaza and with only a security presence in the West Bank, that the Palestinian gross domestic product per capita has dropped 40 percent, because of Israeli security restrictions. Nowhere is it suggested that the Palestinians could have those restrictions removed merely by ending their violent intifada of terror and rocket attacks and their preparations for further warfare.

And, in truth, those security restrictions barely hamper the Palestinian economy, which is hardly functioning for much weightier reasons. It was never viable on its own, but only as an appendage to the vibrant Israeli economy, from which the Palestinian chose to sever their relationship for nationalistic ( i.e., xenophobic) reasons. It is not independently viable, because it is not directed towards producing anything of economic value. Palestinian society is geared to producing only children and jihad, with almost all of its young men under arms in various militias, rather than in economically productive jobs.

Perhaps if the international dole were conditioned on the Palestinians’ relinquishing their jihadist program – by disarming, demobilizing, disbanding their terrorist apparatus, and ceasing the indoctrination of the young into genocidal pursuits – they could create a functioning economy, especially with the assistance of Israel, which always has stood ready to aid peace-seeking Arabs. But the international community has its own demons to slay before it would ever pressure Arabs to do anything that might benefit the Jewish State, even if the benefit to the Arabs would be magnitudes greater and the ultimate drain on its own resources greatly reduced.