"Developing" Israeli Apartheid: The World Bank,
International Aid and The Ghettoization of Palestine
Analysis, The Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall
Campaign, May 18th, 2005
Every day in Palestine, entire villages actively protest
against the Apartheid Wall and the Occupation that has stolen their land,
demolished their houses and imprisoned them in ghettos of poverty and
oppression. They demand that the Wall and the Apartheid infrastructure of
Jewish-only bypass roads, military zones and settlements are torn down. Not "modified"
or made more “tolerable," but dismantled entirely, a demand that is supported in
international law, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a
number of UN resolutions. However, the complicity of the international community
in the crimes of the Occupation is impossible to hide.
Against a reality where children participating in demonstrations are shot dead
simply for defending their own right to exist, it seems absurd to talk about
‘development’ without first addressing the racist, colonial Occupation that
perpetrates such destruction. Yet the prevailing discourse of economic
“development” for Palestine chooses not to challenge this reality, but actively
embrace it. Far from confronting the Occupation’s existence, it seeks to sustain
it and the total Israeli control over Palestinian life.
The guiding document in this respect is the World Bank’s latest report on
Palestine: Stagnation or Revival? Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian Economic
Prospects. It outlines the mutual interest of global capital and the Zionist
occupation, vigorously promoting a vision of “economic development” that
legitimizes, relies on and provides financial support for the long-term
Apartheid system on which the Zionist project of expulsion is based.
The very framing of World Bank policy is rooted in its explicit support for the
parameters set out by Israel’s “disengagement plan” – a warped term that in
reality means increased Israeli engagement in its control over Palestine through
the finalization of the Apartheid Wall and connected measures of land grab and
ghettoization. The Bank describes the "disengagement" as providing Palestinians
with a “significant amount of land” and an ideal environment for development. In
fact, Gaza will be totally imprisoned, surrounded by a second eight metre high
iron wall, with all borders, coastline and airspace controlled by the occupying
power. In the West Bank, just four tiny settlements are being disbanded, while
simultaneously 46% of the West Bank is annexed through the Apartheid Wall and
infrastructure, which is facilitating the expansion of settlements such as
Ma’ale Adumim and the Gush Etzion bloc.
Against the ICJ’s instructions to the international community “not to render aid
or assistance in maintaining the situation created by (the Wall's) construction,”
the Bank formulates its entire plan around “borders” of the Palestinian
prison-state as defined by the illegal Apartheid Wall. It accepts that
settlements, military zones and any “areas in which Israel has a vested interest”
will remain under Israeli domination. The Wall annexes the Palestinian capital
of Jerusalem to Israel, and so the Bank follows suit and removes Jerusalem from
its plans.
While Palestinians are imprisoned, facing continued denial of their rights and
aspirations, the Bank portrays a golden economic opportunity of a cheap,
controlled labour force. The Bank’s blueprint for a new export-based economy,
subservient to the strategic needs of Israel and global capital - with Israeli/foreign
investment creaming off the profits - merges with the Occupation’s destruction
of Palestinian farmland and local markets. Indeed, the Bank's reports hardly
refer to agriculture at all, traditionally the core sector of the Palestinian
economy. Instead, imposing Israeli-run industrial zones, military checkpoints
and Jewish-only road systems onto the West Bank are policies that reflect the
Bank’s overall strategy for a Do-It-Yourself Apartheid Guide for the 21st
century.
As with any other “Third World” population that the World Bank subjugates into
the global economy, the role assigned to the Palestinian people is simple: to
cheaply produce goods for export to wealthier countries, strengthening economic
dependency on global capitalist systems. The Bank insists that Palestinians must
not only be willing to accept brutal military occupation, dispossession and
expulsion, but must also sustain their oppressor's economy through primary goods
and industrial output. Furthermore, walled-in Palestinians are marked as a
captive audience, forced into a system of dependency upon the Occupation for
even the most basic needs. Israel has drained Palestine of her natural resources,
stealing around 80% of Palestinian natural water outputs on an annual basis. Now,
in Gaza, the Bank states Palestinians who have been robbed of their water for
decades should enter into trade agreements with Israel whereby they can buy back
– “at Israeli commercial rates” – the same water stolen by the Occupation.
The convergence between Zionist actions and World Bank economics is clear, with
international investment transforming the destruction and dispossession caused
by the Israeli colonization policies into the Bank’s new showcase project: a
series of massive Israeli industrial estates built on annexed Palestinian land.
The so-called Tulkarem Peace Park, for example, is to be built on farmland
stolen from the village of Irtah; land that sustained 50 families for
generations and formed an integral part of community and family life. Now their
only source of employment will be as an exploited worker on an Israeli
industrial estate surrounded by walls, checkpoints and prison gates.
The World Bank ignores the inherent illegality of such estates and instead
celebrates that they will employ cheap labour "with a minimum of red tape," i.e.
the absence of trade unions, health regulations and other worker's rights.
Israel’s most toxic and environmentally destructive forms of industry will be
transferred to the West Bank, where Palestinians work for around a quarter of
the wages in Israel (though even this is still too high in the opinion of the
Bank's reports). They may try and dress these sweatshops up as liberation and
independence, but they represent nothing more than a devastating system of
racial capital not seen since the days of Apartheid South Africa.
Such plans demand that goods and limited numbers of Palestinians are "allowed"
to move within their own land, between the isolated ghettos carved out by the
Wall and the Apartheid network of Israeli-only roads. High-tech military gates
and checkpoints are proposed, through which Palestinians can be herded and
controlled. What the Bank terms "alternative transportation systems," including
walled roads and tunnels that can be opened and closed at the whim of Israel,
will provide a transfer system for the imprisoned Palestinian population,
enabling movement between ghettos without access to the land around them.
In order to circumvent international law and whitewash their crimes, the World
Bank and Israel have created another euphemism behind which to hide their own
interests: “for the benefit of Palestinians.” The Bank justifies its collusion
with the Zionist project by claiming that financing the same Occupation
checkpoints which have imprisoned Palestinians and meted out daily humiliation
and violence for years, in fact serve the needs of Palestinians. The US has
already provided Israel with $50 million to construct these prison gates; the
French government has followed suit offering $120 million to Israel, “for the
benefit of the Palestinian families in Gaza,” so that the Occupation can
modernize checkpoints. Included among the "modern" systems utilized by the
Occupation are naked spy machines which take photographs penetrating through
clothes. As well as being demeaning and degrading, many experts believe the
radiation involved will cause serious long-term health problems. That
governments are claiming to help Palestinians by giving money to the regime at
the very root of Palestinian suffering is not only preposterous but shows their
denial of any Palestinian right to self-determination.
Such support is making the World Bank an increasingly powerful player in
Palestine. Outgoing President James Wolfensohn has been named as international
coordinator of the “disengagement process” and has already stated that his work
will be based upon World Bank policy; a policy which does not consider the
Apartheid Wall, Israeli occupation and colonization, or Israel's innumerous
breaches of international law to be of concern. Nor is it just the World Bank.
The acceptance of Israeli crimes is influencing NGOs at all levels, in projects
that seek merely to adapt to the Wall and the Occupation rather than work for
its removal, which must be the first and foremost priority. Any genuine form of
development can only come when the Wall and settlements are dismantled, the
Occupation ended and a truly independent and sovereign Palestinian state is
established. One wonders what kind of dream world the World Bank and the
Zionists are living in if they believe that Palestinians will simply sit back
and accept this annihilation of their past, present and future.
In the reality that is slowly being shaped on the ground, the role assigned to
the Palestinian Authority is that of prison guard, preventing the Palestinian
people from defending their lands and rights in the interest of creating "an
attractive environment for investors." Acting in the name of the Palestinian
people means that it is necessary for the Palestinian Authority and civil
society to stand up against these projects - not by “modifying” or “only
partially backing” them but by completely refusing and opposing them.
Palestinians are not looking for economic models of subservience, or ways in
which to make the Wall and the Occupation more “bearable.” Palestinians want
genuine liberation. That this is ignored by the World Bank is not accidental. It
reflects the Bank’s conscious choice to support the needs and vision of the
Occupation. That vision is the expulsion and ghettoization of the Palestinian
people and in this crime the World Bank is a more than willing accomplice.
The partnership between Israel and the World Bank highlights the extent to which
international support sustains the Occupation. Without the $5 billion of annual
US aid, the World Bank investment and the contributions of countless governments,
corporations and organizations, the Zionist project is simply not sustainable.
Individuals and civil society the world over have the responsibility of building
a movement to pressure and isolate Apartheid Israel while supporting the
Palestinian struggle for justice and liberation.
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