ICT: The Shackled Engine of Palestine’s Development

World attention has been focusing on the Palestinian revolt against Israel’s military occupation. Meanwhile, plans were reportedly still going ahead for an Israeli release of frequencies required for long-awaited 3G and even 4G systems and services. Al-Shabaka analysts Nur Arafeh, Wassim Abdullah, and Sam Bahour provide an incisive account of Israeli obstacles to the Palestinian sector’s development that have led to hundreds of millions in direct losses and lost opportunities.

81% of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation rank the problem of corruption second only to the occupation itself. Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Tariq Dana analyzes the systems and actors involved, arguing that corruption is a structural problem with longstanding political roots that cannot be tackled through adopting codes of conduct and other technical solutions.

The success of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement launched a decade ago owes much to the constancy of its founding principles and the flexibility of its context-specific actions, as is evident in this policy brief written half-way along the road by Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Omar Barghouti and republished today.

The Oslo Accords not only left the Palestinian people much worse off politically; they also devastated the economy of those living under Israeli occupation despite the $23 billion-plus that donors have poured into the territory. What’s worse, Wildeman and Tartir found no signs of a change in donor policies in their recent study.

As Palestinians commemorate the 46th anniversary of Israel’s occupation on June 5th, the villagers of Rammun are particularly incensed – but their wrath is targeted primarily at the Palestinian Authority. They suspect it of complicity with the Israeli occupation in confiscating their ancestral lands for a trash landfill, just one outcome of the many decades of rights violations Palestinians everywhere experience. Al-Shabaka Policy Member Dina Omar tackles the issues.

Industrial zones are criticized in the Arab region and beyond. The problem is much worse in the occupied Palestinian territory because the zones help Israel “normalize” its occupation, as Al-Shabaka Programme Director Alaa Tartir sets out in this trenchant commentary. He calls on the Palestinian youth movement and civil society to use the issue in a call for a completely different approach to development under occupation.

Will the Palestinians be written out of history? There is a serious danger that this may happen, writes Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Jamil Hilal, who identifies five major misrepresentations of Palestinian history, geography and identity in the dominant discourse. He also discusses how Palestinians and their supporters must take hold of the way their story is told and reclaim their narrative.

Most Palestinians saw Hamas’ steadfastness and ability to hit back during Israel’s November attack as a victory. But will they put it to good use, asks Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Haidar Eid, by ending Palestinian security cooperation with Israel – an opportunity missed after Israel’s 2008-09 operation? He argues that no real reconciliation amongst Palestinian factions is possible in the shadow of such collaboration.

The recent World Bank growth report frankly concludes that the Palestinian economy is fragile and dependent on foreign aid: No surprises there. Far more surprising – not to say shocking – are the Bank’s irrelevant and sometimes harmful recommendations, as Al-Shabaka Program Director Alaa Tartir and Guest Author Jeremy Wildeman reveal in this compelling analysis. The Bank’s prescriptions are all the more worrying given the influence it exercises over the donor community’s approach to Palestinian development.

For Palestinians, agriculture is more than a source of income or an economic category in budgets and plans. It is tied to the people’s history, identity, and self-expression, and drives the struggle against Israel’s Separation Wall. In this brief, Lebanese activist, author, and agronomist Rami Zurayk joins Al-Shabaka Policy Advisors Samer Abdelnour and Alaa Tartir to tackle the almost spiritual significance of the land to the Palestinians and the deliberate Israeli efforts to break the link between farmers and their crops. Click below for the full brief or read the executive summary.