From 1967 to the present, Israel has sought to "de-develop" Palestine.
https://x.com/_ZachFoster/status/2008942799220048331
From 1967 to the present, Israel has sought to "de-develop" Palestine.
That is, to make Palestinians in the occupied West Bank & Gaza dependent on Israel for work, wages and income, to prevent Palestinians from developing an economic base.
For decades, Israel banned Palestinian businesses that sought to compete w/Israeli businesses via its permit regime.
Israel required Palestinians to obtain permits to conduct business involving land or property, install a water device, cultivate citrus trees, perform electrical work, connect a generator, obtain a telephone, register a trademark or obtain a certificate of “good conduct,” required for many professions.
The point of the permit regime was to suffocate Palestinian economic development.
A few examples: Israel denied a permit for a cement factory in Hebron; they forbade melon production and banned the import of grapes & dates from the Occupied Palestinian Territories to Israel; they restricted cucumber & tomatoes cultivation; they blocked the establishment of a dairy industry in Ramallah.
The result: less land was under cultivation in 1987 than 1947 in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Since 1967, Israel has also controlled all imports into Palestine & customs revenue from those imports. This led to a loss of revenue to the Palestinian economy from 1970 -1987 amounting to $6–11 billion (13% of the Palestinians’ GDP).
Israel also denied Palestinians access to “picks & shovels” to build an economy: Israel took control of Palestine's banks, strangling the development of Palestinian borrowing, lending & credit activities need to establish capital intensive business.
The result: manufacturing’s share of the Palestinian GDP fell from 9% in 1968 to 7% in 1987.
The policy continues to the present day, as seen below, in which Israeli bulldozers are destroying an iron factory in Anata, in the West Bank.
A few weeks ago, Israeli forces also reduced a Palestinian steel factory to rubble in the town of Beit Oula, northwest of Hebron. According to the factory owner, its losses amount to about 8 million shekels (~ 2.45 million USD). see: x.com/EyeonPalestine
Sources for this tweet: Sara M. Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development; Neve Gordon, Israel's Occupation; Shir Hever, The Political Economy of Israel's Occupation: Repression Beyond Exploitation
posted by Satish Sharma at
02:35
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