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Most news from the Palestinian territories usually touches all the austere notes expected – violence, political clash between Gaza and the West Bank, a tight Israeli military cordon that some would call cautious, others suffocate. And yet, this ominous story hides an unexpected good news and perhaps a source of hope: the relative economic stability of the West Bank, which is virtually inaccessible to many Gazans, thanks to Israel's strict laws on 39; immigration. While the Gaza economy shrank by 0.3% in 2017, the West Bank economy grew by 4.3%.
This is encouraging given that the World Bank predicted that the global economy would grow by only 3.1 percent in 2018. According to the World Bank's annual outlook published in January, the rest of the world Middle East and North Africa region has "significantly declined", falling to only 1.8% in 2017 after 5% the previous year.
The Bank, on the other hand, accumulates growth, adding to an increase of 3.5% the previous year, according to a report of the International Labor Conference (ILC) this summer. The conditions in the landlocked territory that includes East Jerusalem and Ramallah were better than in its non-contiguous neighbor of Gaza, creating a history of two economies in the Palestinian territories.
The Gaza economy, meanwhile, "stopped" last year, the ILC claims that Palestinian unemployment has reached the highest levels in the world, with more than 40,000 people in the Gaza Strip. a quarter of unemployment, and nearly half of young people are unemployed. The situation in Gaza is disastrous, according to a statement issued in July by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: half of Gaza lives in poverty, the lights only turn on for six hours a day and barely a tenth of the time. population has access to What Israel allows us is not development but economic activity.
Sam Bahour, Managing Partner, Applied Information Management
Meanwhile, almost all residents of the West Bank had clean water and stable electricity, and only 13.9% were considered impoverished. The growth was largely due to the success of the trade, catering and hospitality sectors, with strength also in the construction companies. "I'm calling the West Bank the five-star restriction," says Sam Bahour, who connects Palestinian businesses to US firms through his Applied Information Management firm, acknowledging the continued control of the military Israel on the territories.
including the limited travel restrictions that hinder the free movement of goods. But Palestinian companies have responded by seeking customers around the world, like the United States. "We have money in banks and innovative people who want to invest," says Bahour, but he fears that some domestic projects are considered too risky, hence the move "to open export markets ", as he puts it. ] The gains made so far have helped create a plan for what a hub with a financial future might look like: in many ways, an economy based on supporting growth with strained neighbors. Israeli companies are increasingly in need of more workers, creating a potential opening for better cooperation. Some 131,000 Palestinians are now working in Israel, mainly in construction, supporting 650,000 people in the West Bank. The Palestinian population is young, which means that as long as jobs are created, there will be a workforce ready to fill them. Political action, if conducted, could lead to further gains. The World Bank reported that if "Area C", which accounts for 61 percent of the West Bank and remains under Israeli security control, was open, it could grow the West Bank's economy by one-third in eight. years.
Of course, the system has flaws: permits can be expensive, and the job is dangerous and exhausting with long journeys due to crossing the border. This leaves some, like Bahour, pessimistic: "What Israel allows us is not development but economic activity. Nothing that is focused on infrastructure, nothing that would serve to the creation of a worthy state economy. "
But the factual interdependence of labor markets calls for effective coordination and cooperation, writes Guy Ryder, chief executive officer of the United States. International Labor Organization The organization and the unions have "paved the way for collective agreements with employers, which also recognize the need and benefits of the Palestinian labor force. way to governance. "So maybe the West Bank will not only be the source of economic gains in the Middle East, but also diplomatic.
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