Is Kerry's plan for the Palestinian economy a nuclear document?!
The Davos conference on the Dead Sea in May 2013 crowned the official return to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, where Secretary of State John Kerry presented a proposed $4 billion plan for developing the Palestinian economy — a figure tempting to all.
- Author
- Omar Shaban Ismail
- Date
- 2013-11-06
The Davos conference held on the banks of the Dead Sea in May 2013 crowned the official launch of the return to the negotiations running until now between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In that conference the American Secretary of State Mr John Kerry presented a proposed plan for developing the Palestinian economy at a value of 4 billion dollars. The figure was tempting to all, especially the wealthy and the businessmen, who pushed strongly for the Palestinian Authority's return to the negotiations without any of its conditions being achieved — the most important of them stopping the Israeli settlement that has never ceased gnawing at the lands of the promised Palestinian state. Since then the negotiation process began on three tracks in parallel: the security track, the political track, and the economic track. After the passage of four months from the start of the negotiations, the statements — not only the Palestinian but even the Israeli among them — indicate that the political track has achieved no progress. Multiple statements have been issued by the Palestinian negotiators foretelling the failure of the negotiations. Likewise the news mentioned that President Mahmoud Abbas may withdraw from these negotiations at any time because of their failure to achieve any breakthrough. Likewise the Hebrew newspaper “Maariv” mentioned, in its issue published today, Thursday 17 October, that the negotiations have indeed entered a dead end following the essential disagreements between the two sides on the issue of the borders. Regarding the security track, there is not much information because of the track's nature. In this paper we discuss the third track, the economic:-
From Kerry to Tony Blair:
As soon as the Davos conference in which the plan was announced ended, the office of Mr Tony Blair, the Quartet's envoy, and a team of international consultants were delegated the task of preparing the plan, which was later named “the Economic Initiative for Palestine”. Since then the Quartet's office has been occupied with preparing the documents, files, and studies for this plan, and the whole of Palestinian society waits for the white smoke to come out of the Quartet's citadel in the occupied city of Jerusalem.
Between the Palestinian Authority and the Quartet.. the plan was lost:
Since Mr Kerry's announcement of his plan, thankfully, and the tasking of the Quartet's office with preparing the detailed plans, we have witnessed a severe conflict in the statements about the course of its preparation: while the Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki stated on the eighth of September that the American Secretary of State Mr John Kerry had presented his plan for developing the Palestinian economy to the Arab ministerial delegation in Paris, Mr Mohammed Mustafa, deputy prime minister and the president's economic adviser, affirmed that the American side handed the plan for developing the Palestinian economy in writing to the Palestinian leadership — Mr Mustafa added that Kerry's plan was received by him in writing, composed of 200 pages, detailed, extending over three years, and targeting 8 sectors in all the areas without exception, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem (Maan agency, 28 September 2013). Whereas the envoy of the Quartet's office, Mr Tony Blair, stated to the “Financial Times” in its issue published on Wednesday 16 October: the preparation of the economic plan to support Palestine, which provides for investing 4 billion dollars, will be completed within the coming weeks.
A summary of “the Economic Initiative for Palestine”
According to what the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam published in its issue of 30 September 2013, and according to the website of the Quartet's office, the plan of “the Economic Initiative for Palestine” was prepared by a team of international experts in cooperation with the office of the Quartet committee's envoy. The plan proposes founding many projects to stimulate local and external investment in Palestine with the goal of developing the Palestinian economy and providing job opportunities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and it includes eight sectors: construction and housing (including finance and personal mortgage), agriculture, tourism, communications and information technology, energy, water, and light industries. The newspaper gives some details of the plan as follows:
– Building 40 thousand apartments, the price of each between 35 – 50 thousand dollars
– Exporting the Gaza Strip's products to Israel and the West Bank
– Creating a Palestinian cement factory
– Tourism packages to attract foreign and Arab tourists to Palestine
– Developing the Gaza marine gas field
A comment on the plan and the methodology of its preparation:
A team of international experts prepares the plan without the least participation by the Authority or the civil-society institutions — indeed the plan is dealt with as a secret document that is forbidden to be spoken of or leaked to anyone. The question: how can this manner of work suit what the Quartet claims — that one of the goals of its formation is: strengthening and building the institutions of the promised Palestinian state. It seems Mr Tony Blair still lives with the mentality of the British High Commissioner in the era of the Mandate: he plans for us on our behalf.. for he knows our affairs better than we do!! All the Palestinians have to do is wait for the generosity of Mr Blair and his team to hand a written plan of 200 pages to the Palestinian deputy prime minister!! We hope the plan is written in the Arabic language, since it is the fundamental language in Palestine
No meeting was ever organised with local experts or Palestinian civil-society organisations with the goal of exploring Palestinian society's opinion on its items, its goals, its funding sources, and the manner of expenditure. While the Authority's official institutions and the Palestinian civil-society organisations were disregarded, many of this plan's items are being leaked to some businessmen in the Palestinian territories who plan international partnerships with the goal of benefiting from the funding connected to the plan. Therefore the question may seem legitimate: is it a plan for developing the Palestinian economy, or a plan for increasing the wealth of the wealthy.
The marginalisation Mr Blair and his office practise — not only toward the Palestinian Authority and its institutions, but toward the European Union, which is among the largest donors to the Palestinian people, and toward some pivotal states in Europe — forms a structural defect in this plan. How can this plan be implemented without an effective participation of the parties most supportive of the Palestinian people? When I asked the ambassador of a pivotal European state who visited Gaza last September, he answered angrily: we know nothing about it — is it not our right to know what the plan is that we will later be asked to fund?? In another meeting in Paris with a European figure who had occupied an important post in the Middle East, he affirmed that neither he nor his government knew any details of this plan.
Here many observations must be raised:
How do the institutions of the Palestinian Authority accept being disregarded to this humiliating degree — accepting to be a recipient of the pre-prepared plan, as Mr Mohammed Mustafa, deputy prime minister, stated, without participating in its design? And why is the whole task not given to the Authority's institutions, which are capable of and qualified for such a task?
The plan did not set out what facilitations Mr John Kerry promised to press the Israeli government to obtain. The plan did not clarify how some of the proposed grand projects can be implemented in light of the continuation of the occupation, the settlement, and the blockade of Gaza.
It seems the plan aims at inflating the wealth of the wealthy and strengthening the influence of the monopolists who hold the Palestinian economy captive through their monopolistic contracts without oversight — and most of Palestinian society, which suffers unemployment, high prices, the checkpoints, and the blockade, must wait for the crumbs left over from the monopolists and the owners of billions.
The United States of America and the international institutions, which always sing of the role of civil society and the oversight institutions — how can they allow a plan for developing the Palestinian economy to be prepared without an effective participation of its institutions, and likewise without giving the right of oversight and follow-up to the Palestinian legislative and oversight institutions? It seems that Mr John Kerry — enthusiastic and very encouraged to achieve a qualitative accomplishment in the negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel through his multiple tours of the region and the pressures he exerts on the two sides — must reconsider his tasking of the Quartet's office with supervising the plan, which still carries his name despite the Quartet's attempt to strike his name from it.