Palestine Economy
Updated 2023-11-14
2012-03-12 Palestine’s Golden Oil Underneath much of the Middle East lies the world’s oil supply, which is pumped year-round to keep the global economy humming along. In one special place in the Middle East—better known as the Holy Land—a different type of oil reigns supreme: olive oil. In this strategic region in the Levant, Palestine has a large amount of land devoted to the olive tree; about 45% of agricultural land in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) is planted with twelve million olive trees, the vast majority of which are in the West Bank, and its valuable, healthy fruits take center stage in the political conflict between Palestinians and Israelis every harvesting season.
Land is at the core of this conflict. Israel’s military has confiscated land for illegal Israeli settlements, erected an illegal “Separation Barrier” that separates Palestinian farmers from their plantations, and has not spared Palestinian olive groves: it has uprooted olive trees as a way of punishing the population. The vast majority of Palestinian olive trees are in the West Bank, which has 739,500 dunams (184,875 acres), or 98.6% of the total, whereas, the Gaza Strip had only 11,200 dunams (2,800 acres) of olive trees, which is 1.4%. However, in the Gaza Strip, over 7,300 dunums (1,825 acres) of land along the perimeter fence with Israel, previously cultivated with olive trees, were leveled during Israeli incursions in recent years. An olive seedling can take several decades to fully mature and many of Palestine’s olive trees are hundreds of years old. The horrifying reality is that Israel has added olive trees to their campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and the result is that Palestine’s golden oil is becoming scarcer and much more dangerous to harvest. https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2012/0312bahour.html
2009-06-09 The Physical and Economic Devastation of Gaza In late December 2008, Israel launched a massive military attack against the Gaza Strip. Israel’s three-week action caused massive damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure. It is too soon to know the full cost of the damage. But what we do know is that the attack came at a time when the Palestinians—on the West Bank and all the more so in Gaza—already faced dire economic circumstances.
The 1993 Oslo accords appeared to signal a new prospect for peace and prosperity for Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, however, within a few years after the signing of the accords, social and economic indicators for the Palestinian community began to deteriorate sharply. Since the mid-1990s, Palestinian poverty, malnutrition, and unemployment rates have all risen dramatically while school enrollment rates have fallen—all signs of an economy in crisis.
Why has the population become so impoverished in a period when peace was supposed to be at hand? Much of the economic devastation results from Israeli policies that have increasingly isolated the Palestinians, who until the mid-1990s were highly dependent on Israel for work. Following Oslo, Israel increasingly restricted Palestinians’ movements, not only banning entry of both Palestinians and their goods into Israel (what the World Bank calls “external closure”), but also erecting military checkpoints and road blocks between Palestinian communities (“internal closure”), and implementing curfews that prohibit residents from leaving their homes for hours and sometimes days at a time. The annual number of days of closure has ranged from 100 to over 250 (in 2002). The impact of new restrictions was particularly acute for Gaza where, in the early 1990s, 40% of workers crossed into Israel every day for work. By 2000, that figure had dropped to 15%. (On the West Bank, the rate declined from 30% to 20% over the same period.)
Pressure from business sectors that relied on cheap Palestinian labor at first led to periodic reversals of Israel’s closure policy. Eventually Israel began replacing Palestinian workers by opening its borders to international migration, with workers from as close as Lebanon and as far away as Mexico coming to work in the agricultural fields and service sectors. Although most come on temporary work permits, many stay after their visas expire, with the result that Israel now faces a growing problem of illegal migrants. https://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0609olmsted.html
2003-11-03 Backs to the Wall Uncertainty about the future intensified for Mufida Ahmad’s family this year when a mammoth wall ripped through their land in the West Bank village of Jayyus. Ahmad and her husband had bought the quarter acre for $1,400—a hefty but hopeful investment for the family of seven. On it, they cultivated eight olive trees. To pay for the land, and pay off a $4,000 bank loan they had taken to meet the family’s basic needs, Ahmad worked nine hours a day in a sewing factory for a mere $150 a month. But the trees, land, and future for which they had sacrificed have all disappeared under the Israeli Separation Wall.
The Wall—called a “security fence” by the Israeli government and the “Apartheid Wall” by Palestinians—is actually a series of walls, razor wire, electrified fences, trenches, and watchtowers flanked by a 30- to 75-yard “buffer zone” which the Israeli military patrols. The first phase of construction was launched in June 2002 and finished just 13 months later, in July of this year. The completed section stretches for 90 miles in the northwestern West Bank districts of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Qalqiliya. At several points it cuts almost four miles into the West Bank (which spans only 35 miles at its widest section; see the map on p. 29). The Wall has already resulted in Israel’s de facto annexation of fertile Palestinian agricultural land, groundwater wells, and 10 illegal Israeli Jewish-only settlements. Although the first phase of construction was declared complete, demolitions and razing continue around it. The Israeli government has announced three more building phases and it plans to finish the structure by 2005. https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2003/1103mair.html
2003-05-00 A Palestinian Labor Leader Speaks Out In the three years since the current intifada, or uprising, began, the already-fragile Palestinian economy has nearly broken down. Under military and economic siege, entire economic sectors have collapsed. Unemployment runs well over 50%, with 411,000 people out of work. Almost half of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and food shortages have struck certain areas. The besieged and directionless Palestinian Authority (PA) appears unable to meet the staggering crisis.
In this context, the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) is focused on the literal survival of its members and their families. As one of the largest nongovernmental organizations in Palestine, the PGFTU is responding to the mass deprivation by stepping into a role previously fulfilled by the PA: providing an economic and social safety net for its members. The federation delivers unemployment and health insurance benefits to tens of thousands. PGFTU also continues its long-term struggle to build a movement for workers’ rights in Palestine, and recently succeeded in pushing the PA to establish a set of working labor laws. With 500,000 public and private worker-members in the West Bank and Gaza strip, PGFTU represents 75% of the Palestinian workforce. That’s a unionization level most unions in the West would envy. But its members have faced conditions that no one would envy. https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2003/0503aruri.html
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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict
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