9. The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
Sources:
Left Turn Issue #18
Title: “Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank”
Author: Jamal Juma’
Al-Jazeerah, March 9, 2005
Title: “US Free Trade Agreements Split Arab Opinion”
Author: Linda Heard
Community Evaluator: April Hurley, MD
Student Researchers: Bailey Malone and Lisa Dobias
Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that
called for tearing down the Wall and compensating affected communities,
construction of the Wall has accelerated. The route of the barrier runs
deep into Palestinian territory, aiding the annexation of Israeli settlements
and the breaking of Palestinian territorial continuity. The World Bank’s
vision of “economic development,” however, evades any discussion
of the Wall’s illegality.
The World Bank has meanwhile outlined the framework for a Palestinian
Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) policy in their most recent report
on Palestine published in December of 2004, “Stagnation or Revival:
Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian Economic Prospects.”
Central to World Bank proposals are the construction of massive industrial
zones to be financed by the World Bank and other donors and controlled
by the Israeli Occupation. Built on Palestinian land around the Wall,
these industrial zones are envisaged as forming the basis of export-orientated
economic development. Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall and dispossessed
of land can be put to work for low wages.
The post-Wall MEFTA vision includes complete control over Palestinian
movement. The report proposes high-tech military gates and checkpoints
along the Wall, through which Palestinians and exports can be conveniently
transported and controlled. A supplemental “transfer system”
of walled roads and tunnels will allow Palestinian workers to be funneled
to their jobs, while being simultaneously denied access to their land.
Sweatshops will be one of very few possibilities of earning a living
for Palestinians confined to disparate ghettos throughout the West Bank.
The World Bank states:
“In an improved operating environment, Palestinian entrepreneurs
and foreign investors will look for well-serviced industrial land and
supporting infrastructure. They will also seek a regulatory regime with
a minimum of ‘red tape’ and with clear procedures for conducting
business. Industrial Estates (IEs), particularly those on the border
between Palestinian and Israeli territory, can fulfill this need and
thereby play an important role in supporting export based growth.”
Jamal Juma’ notes that the “red tape” which the World
Bank refers to can be presumed to mean trade unions, a minimum wage,
good working conditions, environmental protection, and other workers’
rights that will be more flexible than the ones in the “developed”
world. The World Bank explicitly states that current wages of Palestinians
are too high for the region and “compromise the international competitiveness”
even though wages are only a quarter of the average in Israel. Juma’
warns that on top of a military occupation and forced expulsion, Palestinians
are to be subjects of an economic colonialism.
These industrial zones will clearly benefit Israel abroad where goods
“Made in Palestine” have more favorable trade conditions in
international markets. IPS reporter Emad Mekay, in February 2005, revealed
the World Bank’s plan to partially fund Palestinian MEFTA infrastructure
with loans to Palestine. Israel is not eligible for World Bank lending
because of its high per capita income, but Palestine is. Mekay quotes
Terry Walz of the Washington-based Council for the National Interest,
a group that monitors U.S. and international policy towards Israel and
the Palestinians: “I must admit that making the Palestinians pay
for the modernization of these checkpoints is an embarrassment, since
they had nothing to do with the erection of the separation wall to begin
with and in fact have protested it. I think the whole issue is extremely
murky.”1
Mekay goes on to note that this is the first time the World Bank appears
ready to get actively involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian
land. Former World Bank president James Wolfensohn rejected this possibility
last year. Neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz was, however, confirmed as
president of the World Bank on June 1, 2005.
In breach of the ICJ ruling, the U.S. has already contributed $50 million
to construct gates along the Wall to “help serve the needs of Palestinians.”
Linda Heard reports for Al-Jazeerah that the U.S. is currently pushing
for bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with various Arab states,
including members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), as part of
a vision for a larger Middle East Free Trade Agreement. President Bush
hopes the MEFTA will encompass some twenty regional countries, including
Israel, and be fully consolidated by 2013.
Many in the region are suspicious of the divisive trend of bilateral
agreements with the U.S. and worry that the GCC will end up with small,
fragmented satellite economies without any leverage against world giants.
Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, stated, “It
is alarming to see some members of the GCC enter into separate agreements
with international powers . . . They diminish the collective bargaining
power and weaken not only the solidarity of the GCC as a whole, but
also each of its members.”
Note
1. Emad Mekay, “World Bank and U.S.: Palestinians Should Pay for
Israeli Checkpoints,” IPS, February 25, 2005.
UPDATE BY JAMAL JUMA’
“Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of the World Bank”
was written last summer as part of Stop the Wall’s campaign efforts
to widen attention of those horrified by the construction of the 700
km long wall around Palestinian cities and villages. It aimed to expose
the vicious mechanism of control, exploitation, and dispossession devised
by the Occupation, but moreover the activities of the international
community in safeguarding the Wall and making Palestinian ghettos sustainable.
It opens a chapter in a story that no one wants to hear: the globalization
of apartheid in the Occupation of Palestine. Zionism has its own racist
interest in ghettoizing 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza and securing the judaization of Jerusalem. It ensures a Jewish
demographic majority and ethnic supremacy over as much of Palestine
as possible, working against all UN resolutions and the recent ICJ ruling
on the Wall.
Within this project it finds allies in the international community
keen to exploit cheap Palestinian labor locked behind Walls and gates.
The degree to which Zionism and the international community—headed
by the World Bank—work together with the aim of controlling every
aspect of Palestinian life has become increasingly evident since the
Left Turn article.
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) role is reduced to the administrators
of the Bantustans. The Palestinian people resoundingly said no to Bantustans
at the ballot boxes last January.
While the Bank’s initial responsibility was to devise economic
policies for the sustainability of a Palestinian Bantu-State, the institution
is now facilitating efforts to ensure that Palestinians cannot interfere
in the plans of the Occupation and the international community. The
World Bank is gearing up to take over the payrolls of various Palestinian
institutions, should the PA not comply with Zionist and global interests.
While global IFIs meticulously plan the financial and material survival
and political control of the ghettos, Ehud Olmert offers the slogan
of “Final Borders” to describe the project. In legitimizing
the Wall, annexing Jerusalem, increasing the number of settlers, and
denying the mere existence of the refugees, Olmert finds a willing accomplice
in the Bank and its policy makers in Washington, who look to cash in
on the Bantu-State.
The Palestinian people will never accept the plan, so it is hoped that
they will be starved into it. But we will not kneel down. After dozens
of massacres, killings, arrests, and almost sixty years of life in the
Diaspora, surrender is too high a price to pay. We are not asking for
outside institutions to provide us with bread, but to comply with their
duties under international law and support our struggle for justice
and liberation.
None of the horrific realities of life in Palestine are apparent in
the headlines and doublespeak of mass media and international diplomacy,
where our ghettoization is called “state-building.” International
complicity with Israeli apartheid is dressed up as “humanitarian
aid.” Palestinians are supposed to be grateful for gates in the
Wall so they can be funneled between ghettos.
Just like Olmert’s schemes with the White House, the media shuns
and neglects the rights and voices of Palestinians. Neither the daily
killing of our people, nor the destruction of our homes, the dispossession
of our farmers, or the sufferings of 6 million refugees make headlines.
The consumers of mainstream media outlets are left to discuss the diatribe
of “peace” and “borders,” disputed between the protagonists
of our oppression, while the racism, ethnic cleansing, and ghettoization
continue.
More information on the issue is to be found at our website: http://www.stopthewall.org