Palestinians Try to Wean Themselves Off West Bank Settlements

As seen at TheMediaLine.org

The Israeli settlements: Communities of Israeli civilians, almost entirely Jewish, set up in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war.

For Palestinians, the hundreds of settlements that line the West Bank landscape are a painful eyesore, symbols of a repressive occupation that has raged on unabated for over forty years.

But the irony is that many of those settlements are built, maintained and serviced by Palestinians.

While this phenomenon is hardly new, a coalition of Palestinian organizations are lobbying the Palestinian Authority to do something about it, culminating in a meeting Sunday with Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad.

Fayyad said the Palestinian Authority would begin a process of finding alternative employment for Palestinians working in Israeli settlements and eventually ban such employment altogether.

“Salaam Fayyad was clear in saying that he will deal with this seriously,” Jamal Juma, the director of the Stop the Wall campaign who attended the meeting with Fayyad. “I hope they will prioritize this but if they don’t, they will be held responsible.”

“There is no way to justify a Palestinian working in settlements while Palestinians are resisting the occupation, the Israeli land grab, the wall and all the humiliation that’s going on,” he told The Media Line. “So we started to think how we could confront this.”

Israel estimates that around 25,000 Palestinians are legally employed in Israeli communities, about half of them in West Bank settlements, but Juma says the real figure is much higher.

“Officially Israel gives permissions to between 10,000 and 15,000 Palestinians to work in settlements but it’s more like 30,000 workers when you include Palestinians working both legally and illegally,” he said. “The settlements are completely dependent on cheap Palestinian labor for their infrastructure so I think we can really hurt the settlements if all Palestinians stop working there.”

“I feel really embarrassed whenever I see a Palestinian working on the wall or in the settlements,” Juma said. “At the same time it’s immoral to tell someone ‘no don’t work in the settlements and just leave your kids to die’, so as part of the process of prohibiting this type of labor, we asked the Palestinian Authority to try to find job alternatives for these people.”

Suha Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations’ Network’s steering committee, argued that an outright prohibition on Palestinians working in settlements was premature.

“In the past it was not ‘recommended’ for Palestinians to work in the settlements on the construction of the wall,” she told The Media Line. “Yesterday everyone at the meeting agreed it should be completely forbidden and this was the recommendation given to [Prime Minister] Salaam Fayyad.”

“There are differences in political points of view in relation to a one state solution or a two state solution, but all the Palestinians reject the settlements and the wall,” she said. “So to have Palestinians working to build these institutions is embarrassing.”

“But in my opinion you can’t just forbid it,” she said. “It has to be conditional on options within the Palestinian economy and you have to find alternative jobs for these people. We’re not talking about a large number of workers here so I think it would be easy for the Palestinian Authority to find alternatives for them.”

An Israeli security source close to the issue of Palestinian work permits said that as the security situation improved it was in Israel’s interests to have Palestinians employed by Israeli businesses.

“Any entrance of capital into the Palestinian territories will help,” the security source told The Media Line on the condition of anonymity. “It harnesses the economic potential of Palestinians as the security situation improves you have this mutually reinforcing cycle of security and employment.”

“While the financial contribution is great, what is more important is building a normal economy,” the security source added. “What happens here is Palestinians get nice jobs in which they work full days and are locked into a system of gainful employment. This is exactly what we want, because the alternative is to have Palestinians sitting at home unemployed and eventually becoming security threats.”

Dr Oussama Kanaan, the International Monetary Fund’s Chief of Mission for the West Bank and Gaza, said that while restrictions on Palestinian labor would be extremely damaging to the Palestinian economy, international law must be followed.

“As occupied territories without any outlet to external markets, the Palestinian economy is extremely dependent on Israel for trade,” he told The Media Line. “So given the situation, until the West Bank and Gaza have their own access to external markets any restrictions on Palestinians working in Israel would be extremely damaging.”

“As an international institution our view is that things have to be in accordance with international law,” he said. “So it’s perfectly fine for Palestinians to work in Israel and should be encouraged as it’s important for economic growth to have openness and external trade.”

“But as for settlements, we cannot support this,” Dr Kanaan said. “The settlements issue is not really an economic one but rather has to do with international law, and under international law the construction of settlements and any expansion of them is illegal.”

The Palestinian Authority seeks to build a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. An estimated 300,000 Israeli citizens live in Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank settlements and another 180,000 to 200,000 live in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority sees the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank as a principle barrier to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians have tried boycotting Jewish settlements in a number of ways for decades. The latest effort, backed by the Palestinian Authority, has involved the confiscation of products such as cosmetics and juice produced in West Bank settlements and sold in the Palestinian territories.

While Palestinians working on West Bank settlements are socially stigmatized, an outright ban on Palestinian employment on settlements has never materialized.