Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Quartet Envoy Tony Blair sitting in the audience during the opening ceremony of the first Palestinian Investment Conference on Wednesday, 21 May (photo PIC Media Center, 2008).
The first-ever Palestine Investment Conference opened Wednesday
afternoon, 21 May, in Bethlehem, amongst great international support and
fanfare. With an estimated 1000 participants, including Palestinian Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad, Quartet
Envoy Tony Blair, Managing Director of the World Bank Juan-Jose
Dabdoub and the United Arab
Emirates’ Minister of Economy Sultan
Bin Saeed al-Mansouri, the conference promises to be an extravagant and photogenic
event. The idea for the Palestine Investment Conference originated with Tony
Blair and has been strongly backed by the Quartet. However, the occupied
Palestinian territories do not suffer from a lack of international investment—they
suffer from the lack of a political environment in which investments for sustainable
development can be made. This, of course, is due to the Israeli occupation, an
occupation the conference works hard to ignore.
“We are
throwing a party and the whole world is invited” is the opening sentence of
Prime Minister Fayyad’s greeting
on the conference website, which is in English only. Neither the conference
brochure nor
the various sections of the website (including “Investment Climate”) mention
the ongoing Israeli occupation, the number one reason for the de-development
and increasing impoverishment of the Palestinian territories. In the opening
session on “Revitalizing Gaza,” the agenda explicitly notes that “the panel
discussion will focus on economic and not political issues.” As if politics and
economics can ever be separated, and as if this conference itself is not a
political statement by the international community as to its political-economic
intentions for the region: more privatization.
The
Palestinians do not even have a state, yet services and resources are being
privatized and offered to the highest bidder, all by a government that was not
democratically elected. This includes increasing the penetration of
international companies such as Coca-Cola, Cisco and Intel, all corporate
sponsors of the conference, into the Palestinian economy. Through these
mechanisms, and without consent from the Palestinian people themselves, the Quartet
is pushing the current Palestinian Authority (PA) government to hand over to
international private interests, the power to determine the economic and
political dimensions of any future in Palestine.
This goes
on despite the fact that the vast majority of natural resources in the occupied
Palestinian territories, including land, air and water, are, at present,
controlled by Israel, and consequently out of reach from any designs by the
Palestinians or the international community to exploit them. Hence, any
investments that may come of this conference will not lead to any form of sustainable
development for the Palestinians. And it is clear that the Quartet and conference
organizers recognized this, revealed by the fact that they changed the original
name of the conference from the Palestine Investment and Development Conference
and dropping the word development.
In the
context of this massive level of support for the conference by Quartet and
international, the PA has acted in the previous months to strongly discourage
expression of the extensive Palestinian grassroots opposition and cynicism
toward this conference. Local groups in the Bethlehem
area were explicitly told to not organize protests “or there would be
problems,” another example of the model of democracy exported by the United States
to the Middle East. The United
States, through its Agency for International
Development, is a “partner” to the conference.
Lest anyone
forget who really controls things here, signs in English and Arabic have been placed
at Israeli checkpoints between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, welcoming participants
to the conference while at the same time bearing insignias of the State of
Israel, the Israeli police and the Israeli military. Needless to say, all entry
permits for conference participants were approved (or denied) by Israel.
Accordingly,
the city of Bethlehem
is awash with Palestinian police and soldiers. Nothing, and certainly not the
reality of the Israeli occupation and its devastating economic, political,
social and individual impacts on Palestinian society, can be allowed to ruin
the party.
Lest anyone forget who really controls things here, signs in English and Arabic have been placed at Israeli checkpoints between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, welcoming participants to the conference while at the same time bearing insignias of the State of Israel, the Israeli police and the Israeli military (photo by the AIC, 2008).
Setting up metal detectors in the lobby of the conference building (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
Journalists' equipment being sniffed by a dog outside the conference building (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
Palestinian Preventitive Security is out in force on the streets of Bethlehem during the conference (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
Palestinian Preventitive Security insignia (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
Palestinian Preventitive Security soldiers stationed outside the conference building (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
Palestinian soldiers stationed outside the conference building in Bethlehem during the conference (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
Guests arriving at the conference (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad arrives at the Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem on 21 May (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
Some of the many cameras set up by local and international journalists in the conference (photo by Cosimo Caridi, the AIC, 2008).
From Left: CEO of PIC Palestine, Dr. Hassan Abu Libdeh; Palestinian Authority Minister of National Economy, H.E. Mohammed Kamal Hassouneh; and Hussein al-Sheik, Head of
Palestinian Civilian Affairs, at the official press conference (photo by the PIC Media Center, 2008).
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).
H.H. Mohammed Ben Hamdan al-Nhian, Head of the UAE Delegation to the conference (photo by PIC Media Center, 2008).
Quartet’s Representative to the Middle East, Tony Blair, speaking at the Palestine Investment Conference in Bethlehem on 21 May (photo by the PIC Media Center, 2008).
|
