Palestine's impossible dream

Gardian

Lavish, unrealistic plans for Palestinian development are a dangerous alternative to the struggle for independence

Yousef Munayyer

Artists’ sketches of the proposed new city, Rawabi, which is six miles north of Ramallah and hopes to attract young professionals. It includes apartment blocks, olive trees and shaded walkways.

Photograph: Public Domain

Recently I received a very impressive full-colour booklet printed on expensive paper advertising a development project. The ambitious plan is to build a new Palestinian city, "Rawabi", in the West Bank.

The glossy images inside are not of the Palestine I know. The bulldozers are not demolishing homes, they are breaking ground to make room for the new city.

Suited, Palestinian elites appear in lush boardrooms with international partners. The white, symmetrical buildings, typical of hilltop Israeli settlements, are instead part of the scale-model of the future development.

It's crafted for secular, western investors. Women pictured do not wear the traditional headscarf common among most Palestinian women, and the longest beard belongs to an Orthodox Christian priest. The booklet also portrays a Palestine sans occupation: independent and capable of securing investments.

The reality is radically different; Israel occupies the West Bank and blockades Gaza. Israel continues to control the West Bank through checkpoints and roadblocks that often arbitrarily close. Water is disproportionately dominated by a settler class that is privy to Jewish-only roads.

Rawabi may not even succeed. Its plot is surrounded by Israeli settlements and the roads which will connect it to other cities have not been approved by the ultimate authority over the territory: the Israeli government.

Rawabi, itself, is not problematic. Rather the growing, fanciful discourse that it fits into, a discourse that emphasises development before independence, is the greater cause for alarm. This is evident in a new document by the Palestinian Authority (PA) entitled Palestine: Moving Forward about the vast institutions the PA seeks to develop to "establish the state of Palestine in two years." (Hussein Ibish discussed it here on Cif yesterday.)

But given the realities of occupation, the same realities ignored in the shiny Rawabi booklet, one has to ask: "Moving forward towards what, exactly?"

With little change on the political front, exacerbated by expanding settlements, home demolitions in Arab East Jerusalem, and Israeli statements about retaining settlements deep inside the West Bank and controlling the Jordan Valley, it is hard to imagine these conditions foster a move forward at all. Instead, the development initiatives, in the actual political context, move Palestinians in three directions, and none of them are toward freedom from occupation:

1. Sedation – The development narrative temporarily assuages Palestinians who have long been living under occupation. Success stories about growth, increased wages, drops in unemployment and the sight of new buildings being put up in the centre of town eases people away from desperation. Israel facilitated this, to the extent that it suited their security, by permitting limited room for Palestinian development and growth in Palestinian cities in the West Bank. The measly economic success makes Palestinians hope for a brighter future despite the occupation. The masses were pulverised to the point that they have begun accepting the false choice between moderate quality of life and political freedom/self-determination.

2. Dependency – While most states wish they could escape the dependency curse, the institution-building initiatives outlined by the PA seem endanger the future economy of perpetual dependence. The economy in the West Bank is already highly dependent on Israel. Severed unnaturally from what was historically one economy, the West Bank will depend on Israel into the future. With no achievable state in sight to undergird the independence of a Palestinian economy through policy, Palestinian development is inevitably going to hit a glass ceiling structured by Israel interests.

Additionally, the document indicates that executing these plans requires exorbitant international investment. Only 25% of the costs are already funded, whereas 51% await international donor and investment money. International money comes with international strings. For a nation trying to achieve liberation, compromised economic independence will undoubtedly yield compromised political independence, making the struggle for a just resolution to the Palestinian question more difficult. Any state that accepts significant external support for domestic institution building should be concerned about its independence in the future – for stateless Palestine the concern should be even greater.

3. Division – The plan includes an important yet inconspicuous footnote regarding Gaza. Plans for Gaza's development will be implemented "after the Palestinian National Authority has the ability to do so". Until a political solution to Palestinian division is reached, development plans will go on in the West Bank and not in Gaza. Since such a deal seems remote, and the continuation of Palestinian division suits the interests of Israel, the dominating power, it is unlikely that change for Gaza is near. Therefore, the groundwork is laid for an increasing gap between the quality of life for Palestinians in Gaza and those in the West Bank, and also between a small, elite business class that stands to benefit from some projects and the majority of the Palestinian population that does not. The economic differences will permeate political and cultural dialogue as Palestinians in the West Bank will seek to live, while Palestinians in Gaza will seek to survive.

Development is not a bad thing. Every nation aspires to develop and build its political, economic and cultural institutions. However, a Palestinian national strategy of development that ignores the context of occupation and divorces itself from the struggle for independence is not only naive and irresponsible, but it may have dangerous implications for the future of Palestine and its people.

River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian