Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, giving a talk during the opening ceremony for the Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem on 21 May (photo by PIC Media Center, 2008).
The National BDS Steering Committee has released the following statement on the
eve of the Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem:
Economic
and social development in Palestine is crucial, and it is imperative that we
should take should steps to improve the current economic and political
situation. However, despite the ongoing national and international conferences
designed to bring together the national efforts and resources; and despite the
support of international solidarity, we believe that the economic conference
that will be held in Bethlehem over the next few days, with the attendance of
official and non-official Israeli representatives, has a serious political
implications that cannot be ignored.
This
conference comes at a time when the Israeli occupying power is celebrating an
‘independence’ built on our wounds and Nakba. Also, since the Palestinian
people are calling for BDS to be leveled against Israel, we had hoped that the
PIC would be a Palestinian conference far away from any joint political and
economic cooperation with the Occupation. Our hopes in this regard proved to be
misplaced.
This
conference has been heavily promoted by the organizers as an opportunity to
further Palestinian national development goals, and the basis for a Palestinian
economic revival. However, nowhere have the organizers recognized the single
most important factor in achieving this goal: ending the occupation, and
ensuring independence and political autonomy. Anything else will result in the creation of social and
economic conditions that will destroy any hope of Palestinian independence.
The
projects that are being promoted at the Bethlehem conference do not support any
Palestinian political demand. The conference itself has become a political
conference, not simply an economic one. It will play host to official American,
Zionist, Arab and PA delegations. The threats of this conference are the
following:
* The projects promoted in the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan
(PRDP) which forms the backdrop to the conference are all old projects which
have previously been promoted by the occupying power. One example is the
Japanese project for the Jordan Valley: the research for the feasibility study
started in 1999. The industrial zone in Jalame was announced in 1998. The ‘New
Cities’ project was floated in 2004 by the Portland Trust, one of the faces of
the British Zionist lobby. The tourism joint project being discussed was first
raised by an organization called Tourism4Peace in 2004 – a group who promote
Jerusalem as the ‘capital of Israel’, a designation that has no validity under
international law.
*
The Palestinian Authority has allowed foreign institutions and
companies to sponsor the conference including Intel, an American company that
has around $8bn investments in Israel, and one of whose factories was built on
Iraq al-Manchiya, a Palestinian village north east of Gaza that was destroyed
and its people were expelled in 1948. Another backer is Booz-Allen-Hamilton,
who have a strong relationship with the American intelligence, and specialize
in the field of so-called homeland security, producing intelligence and
data-collection equipment. The presence of such backers raises serious
questions about the agenda for the
conference.
*
The proposed projects take as their starting point Israeli
participation in decision-making, and Israeli control over their legal status.
In the proposed Jalame industrial zone, the labour laws that will be
implemented on the site will be set on terms dictated by the occupying power,
despite the fact that the site of the project is in zone B under Oslo, under
the Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. The tourism project to be located south
east of Jericho city is termed ‘border area’ project, despite the fact that it
will be situated heart of the Jordan Valley, deep into the West Bank. The terms
of the project consolidate the Israeli position of refusal to discuss ending
the occupation of the Jordan Valley; now the occupation is to exist with the
Palestinian blessing.
*
The projects are designed to meet the economic demands of the Israeli
administration, not those of the Palestinian people. The Japanese agricultural
project in the Jordan Valley will be export oriented: it will do nothing to
ensure Palestinian food security. The project for recycling sewage water will
use Israeli technology, providing an alternative to the Palestinian demand made
since the beginning of Oslo to receive its fair legal international share from
the Jordan River and underground sources.
*
All reports and studies that have been produced concur that the Palestinian humanitarian and
economic crisis is caused by the occupation. Yet despite this, the conference
is promoted as an event that will discuss only economic, not political issues.
The conference puts forward the proposal that the economic development of the
West Bank will somehow be achieved without any mention of the cause of
crisis: the Apartheid Wall, the
invasions, the regime of closure and checkpoints and isolation of Palestinian
communities, and the measures imposed on Jerusalem to promote Judaization the
city.
The
projects proposed in the PRDP have been developed under the supervision of the
World Bank and British Department for International Development (DFID), on
terms set by them. The extent to which they have determined agenda has in
effect made them a ‘shadow government’, setting out the development and
economic priorities of the Palestinian Authority.
These are not the development projects we want or
need. What we require is a national Palestinian conference with Arab and
international support for strengthening Palestinian steadfastness and as a step
toward ending the dependency on the occupation and its economy.
Signed,
National BDS Committee
The National Committee to
Commemorate the Nakba
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