bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable /
Edition 21
A Palestinian View:
Dependency and exploitation
by Ghassan Khatib
Palestinian labor in Israel was one of the early
attributes of the relationship of dependency between Israelis and
Palestinians. It was also one of the clearest features of the Israeli
economic exploitation of occupied Palestinians.
It was thus part of a comprehensive and systematic cluster of
policies that aimed at achieving the maximum level of economic exploitation,
including the stealing of water from Palestinian aquifers, the using of
Palestinian tourist sites for the benefit of the Israeli economy, the
confiscating of Palestinian land for the benefit of Jewish settlers, and the
overall restructuring of the Palestinian economy to become the second
largest importer of Israeli products. A
Palestinian researcher once described the Israeli occupation as being the
second most profitable project in the Middle East after oil. That might be a
bit exaggerated, but not by much. Most
of the Palestinian workers in Israel used to come from rural areas. In
particular, they tended to be farmers who lost their land--their only source
of income--due to confiscation, or who became unable to make a living off of
their land due to the unfair competition created by Israeli agricultural
products. Ironically, many of these workers found themselves employed as
inexpensive labor on their own land that had been confiscated and had become
Jewish settlements. The phenomenon of Palestinian labor in Israel entailed
denying workers certain rights, which rendered them both cheap and
convenient. They were cheap because
Israelis deprived them of the various social benefits to which any worker in
Israel is entitled. Moreover, many worked without official permits, allowing
their employers to exploit their irregular status in order to give them low
salaries. They were convenient because
Israel could benefit from a large number of non-Israeli workers without
having to cope with the usual social or ethnic problems experienced by
countries that depend upon immigrant labor. Although the number of
Palestinians working in Israel was huge--even reaching 200,000 at a certain
point in time--most of these workers did not have to stay overnight and thus
did not become an ethnic community inside Israeli society. Rather, they
would come in the morning and at night return to their own communities in
the Palestinian territories. This
phenomenon carried another disadvantage for the Palestinian economy. It
created an artificially high level of wages that put Palestinian employers
in a difficult situation of competition over Palestinian workers.
Palestinian employers had to compete with Israeli employers, who could
afford high wages given Palestinian standards (albeit very low wages by
Israeli standards). This reduced incentives for investment in Palestine, and
consequently hindered economic growth.
When confrontations began between Palestinians and Israelis in September
2000, Israel suddenly began to prevent Palestinians from working in Israel.
This policy coincided with many other measures of economic collective
punishment that discouraged investment and caused many businesses to
collapse. The result has been a huge increase in unemployment, ranging from
one third to one half of the Palestinian labor force during the first four
years of confrontations. With the Israeli unilateral disengagement plan,
Israel is planning to bring the number of Palestinians from Gaza working in
Israel to zero. That might have been a positive step, were Israel not
accompanying such policy with a continuous closure over Gaza and restriction
of persons and goods from Gaza to the West Bank, from Gaza to the rest of
the world, and vice versa. Such ongoing closure will only lead to further
deterioration of the economic and social situation.
The interests of the Palestinian economy, and Palestinian
welfare more broadly, could require a gradual reduction of the number of
Palestinians working in Israel, but only if paralleled by the opening of
Palestinian borders with the outside world as necessary to attract
investments of the kind that can increase production and exports. Any
country with as small a market as that of the Palestinian territories would
suffocate economically, unless it was able to export either its extra labor
force or the products of its workers. Improvement in work opportunities and
the reduction of unemployment, and consequently economic recovery, are not
only of economic and social interest for Palestinians, but also a necessary
prerequisite for security and political stability. This is especially the
case given the significant statistical correlation between an increase in
poverty on the one hand and an increase of radicalization and extremism, on
the other.- Published 20/6/2005 (c) bitterlemons.org
Ghassan Khatib is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of
internet publications. He is the Palestinian Authority minister of planning
and has been a political analyst and media contact for many years.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet
forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its
specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about
the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers
and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the
region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at
ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org
and
yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
hagalil.com 24-06-2005 |