People - Interview
have yet to see the actual launch of major projects. A bellwether is the second Palestinian cell phone network, Wataniya. The Israelis have agreed to sign over the necessary bandwidth frequency but Wataniya says it is less than the 4.8 MHz it needs to provide adequate service. Wataniya is threatening to demand the return of its license fee, [equal to about $354 million], and should the project not go through it would be a severe blow to the PA’s fiscal position and serious blow to confidence. Wataniya estimates it could draw some $650 million into the West Bank and create 2,500 jobs during its first two years of operation. Tony Blair has pushed for this project to happen as well as a lot of other interested parties.
need access to external markets. There has not been in our opinion significant relaxation of movement for Palestinians goods outside the West Bank and certainly there is very little throughput between the West Bank and Gaza. The Israelis have imposed a “back to back” system between the two regions, similar to the Karni crossing at Gaza, where cargo is unloaded before departure, inspected by the Israelis, and then reloaded before it can be okayed for transshipment. The Israelis say they are working to make this process function more efficiently, but it is not like it was in the past, when any truck with yellow plates could simply move in and move out.
Other projects are stalled or delayed, largely because of political factors. A housing project in Riwabi has experienced delays and there is an industrial park in the north that appears to be delayed. When it comes to big projects, we don’t see anything major happening.
No one knows how many tunnels exist. You can’t survey the tunnel guys. We hear there are 900 to 1,000 of them, but that’s from press reports.
Q: Israel has also dismantled roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank, correct? The Israelis are no longer manning a lot of checkpoints and barriers to mobility. These easing steps have been welcome and helpful, though they could man them again if the environment changes. As of now it’s much easier to move around the West Bank. But that pales [as a factor in the recovery] when you compare it to this huge fiscal stimulus package.
Q: Are throughput rates rising or falling? You’d have to ask the Israelis and Palestinians. We’ve done some monitoring but we don’t have enough data to establish trends. We have seen a considerable rise in imports though, which would make sense given the increased demand.
Q: What more work needs to be done?
Q: Is most of that imported cargo from Israel?
For the economy to grow on a sustained basis, the Palestinians
Over 80 percent. Q: What is the economic
Issue 1530
situation like in Gaza? We have an office but to gather statistics you need a system. The Palestinian Authority has difficulty operating in Gaza. There are figures for what the Israelis allow to come in via Karni – mostly primary goods like cooking oil and foodstuffs, but everything else comes through the tunnels [that link Gaza to Egypt] and no one knows how many tunnels exist. You can’t survey the tunnel guys. We hear there are 900 to 1,000 of them, but that’s from press reports. Q: What would happen if those tunnels were shut down, as some in Israel and the US have been calling for? Would there be a humanitarian crisis? It would represent a serious blow to the Palestinian economy. The tunnels are extremely important. Q: So there has been no progress in Gaza but encouraging signs in the West Bank. How can the West Bank Palestinians build on their progress? There can be no sustained growth unless Palestinian products have access to external markets and internal resources, such as land, water, and things like adequate frequency for cell phone grids. Remember, 60 percent of Palestinian lands remain restricted to Palestinian development. Some of these restrictions were negotiated under the Oslo Accords but a lot has happened since then in the form of barriers to mobility and settlement activity.
Interview conducted by Stephen Glain 39