Palestine Problem Hopeless, But Not Serious -Spengler
"The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable," declared United States President Barack Obama in his June 4 Cairo address.
Really? Compared to what?
The Palestinians are one of many groups displaced by the population exchanges that followed World War II, and the only ones whose great-grandchildren still have the legal status of refugees. Why are they still there? The simplest explanation is that they like it there, because they are much better off than people of similar capacities in other Arab countries.
The gross domestic product (GDP) show the West Bank and Gaza at US$1,700, just below Egypt's $1,900. [H]owever, GDP does not include foreign aid, which adds roughly 30% to spendable funds in the Palestinian territories.
Adjusting for the Begin-Sadat Center population count and adding in foreign aid, GDP per capita in the West Bank and Gaza comes to $3,380, much higher than in Egypt and significantly higher than in Syria or Jordan. Why should any Palestinian refugee resettle in a neighboring Arab country?
Other data confirm that Palestinians enjoy a higher living standard than their Arab neighbors. A fail-safe gauge is life expectancy. The West Bank and Gaza show better numbers [74.3 years] than most of the Muslim world.
Literacy in the Palestinian Authority domain is 92.4%, equal to that of Singapore. That is far better than the 71.4% in Egypt, or 80.8% in Syria.
Palestinian Arabs are highly literate, richer and healthier than people in most other Arab countries, thanks to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the blackmail payments of Western as well as Arab governments. As refugees, they live longer and better than their counterparts in adjacent Arab countries. It is not surprising that they do not want to be absorbed into other Arab countries and cease to be refugees.
[One] alternative is for the Palestinians to continue to live off subsidies. But why should Western taxpayers subsidize an Arab in Ramallah, when Arabs in Egypt are needier?
The answer is that they represent a security concern for Western countries, who believe that they are paying to limit violence. [But] that only makes sense if the threat of violence remains present in the background and flares up frequently enough to be credible.
To contain the potential violence of an armed population, donors to the Palestinian authority hire a very large proportion of young men as policemen or paramilitaries...one police officer for every 42-70 citizens , an unprecedented concentration of police presence.
Add to this bloated police force the numerous other state security organizations as well as private militias, and it is clear that security is the biggest business in the Palestinian territories and the largest employer of young men. The number of armed Palestinian fighters is estimated at around 80,000. About one out of four Palestinian men between the ages of 20 and 40 makes a living carrying a gun.
The Palestinians cannot form a normal state. They cannot emigrate to Arab countries without accepting a catastrophic decline in living standards, and very few can emigrate to Western countries.
The optimal solution for the Palestinians is to demand a state and blackmail Western and Arab donors with the threat of violence, but never actually get one.
That is why the Palestinian issue is "hopeless, but not serious", in the words of my old mentor Norman A Bailey, a former national security official.
As long as all concerned understand that the comedy is not supposed to have an ending, the Palestinians can persist quite tolerably in their "intolerable" predicament.
(Asia Times)
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"The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable," declared United States President Barack Obama in his June 4 Cairo address.
Really? Compared to what?
The Palestinians are one of many groups displaced by the population exchanges that followed World War II, and the only ones whose great-grandchildren still have the legal status of refugees. Why are they still there? The simplest explanation is that they like it there, because they are much better off than people of similar capacities in other Arab countries.
The gross domestic product (GDP) show the West Bank and Gaza at US$1,700, just below Egypt's $1,900. [H]owever, GDP does not include foreign aid, which adds roughly 30% to spendable funds in the Palestinian territories.
Adjusting for the Begin-Sadat Center population count and adding in foreign aid, GDP per capita in the West Bank and Gaza comes to $3,380, much higher than in Egypt and significantly higher than in Syria or Jordan. Why should any Palestinian refugee resettle in a neighboring Arab country?
Other data confirm that Palestinians enjoy a higher living standard than their Arab neighbors. A fail-safe gauge is life expectancy. The West Bank and Gaza show better numbers [74.3 years] than most of the Muslim world.
Literacy in the Palestinian Authority domain is 92.4%, equal to that of Singapore. That is far better than the 71.4% in Egypt, or 80.8% in Syria.
Palestinian Arabs are highly literate, richer and healthier than people in most other Arab countries, thanks to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the blackmail payments of Western as well as Arab governments. As refugees, they live longer and better than their counterparts in adjacent Arab countries. It is not surprising that they do not want to be absorbed into other Arab countries and cease to be refugees.
[One] alternative is for the Palestinians to continue to live off subsidies. But why should Western taxpayers subsidize an Arab in Ramallah, when Arabs in Egypt are needier?
The answer is that they represent a security concern for Western countries, who believe that they are paying to limit violence. [But] that only makes sense if the threat of violence remains present in the background and flares up frequently enough to be credible.
To contain the potential violence of an armed population, donors to the Palestinian authority hire a very large proportion of young men as policemen or paramilitaries...one police officer for every 42-70 citizens , an unprecedented concentration of police presence.
Add to this bloated police force the numerous other state security organizations as well as private militias, and it is clear that security is the biggest business in the Palestinian territories and the largest employer of young men. The number of armed Palestinian fighters is estimated at around 80,000. About one out of four Palestinian men between the ages of 20 and 40 makes a living carrying a gun.
The Palestinians cannot form a normal state. They cannot emigrate to Arab countries without accepting a catastrophic decline in living standards, and very few can emigrate to Western countries.
The optimal solution for the Palestinians is to demand a state and blackmail Western and Arab donors with the threat of violence, but never actually get one.
That is why the Palestinian issue is "hopeless, but not serious", in the words of my old mentor Norman A Bailey, a former national security official.
As long as all concerned understand that the comedy is not supposed to have an ending, the Palestinians can persist quite tolerably in their "intolerable" predicament.
(Asia Times)
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