'World Bank exposes the blatantly obvious Sonja Karkar,
The Electronic Intifada,
14 May 2007
It should have happened sooner, but at least it has happened now. Israel has been exposed by the august World Bank for its oppressive control of the West Bank. Three weeks before global protests begin against 40 years of Israel's occupation, the report reveals what every government knows, but not one has been prepared to stop. Effectively, the report challenges the notion of a viable two-state solution under Israel's current restrictions and illegal land appropriations. According to the report, the West Bank has been fragmented into 10 isolated non-contiguous ghettoes which is an impossible configuration for any viable state, and this is made even more bizarre by the presence of some 250,000 illegal Jewish settlers (excluding those in East Jerusalem) who exercise control over 50 percent of the West Bank. And the Wall, says the report, exceeds at times Israel's security needs and seems rather to contribute to, along with restrictive zoning and land use rules and practices, Jewish settlement expansion.The Bank's report is timely and welcome, but curiously it does not mention the effects of the sanctions that the West and Israel imposed on the Palestinians at the beginning of last year. At the time, the World Bank had stated that the Palestinian economy would shrink by 27 percent in 2006 -- "a one year contraction that compares to the Great Depression in the US". In other words, the Palestinian economy was in danger of collapse even then and the warnings were not acted upon. Instead, the world cavalierly continued with its sanctions because it did not approve of the newly elected Hamas government -- democratically elected in fair and transparent elections overseen by former US president Jimmy Carter. Now, the World Bank is ratcheting up its dire warnings about the prohibitive restrictions that have decimated the Palestinian economy: as long as the political situation remains unresolved and the economy continues to depend on foreign assistance simply for survival, there is very little prospect of a sustainable economic recovery. Certainly not the sort of sustained growth rates that can provide decent living standards for an expanding population. Any reversal of the situation, says the report, would have to entail dismantling Israel's grid of physical and administrative barriers.'
Lees verder: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6889.shtml
En nu kijken welke commerciele massamedia in Nederland serieus verslag gaan doen van dit onderwerp. En welke Nederlandse politici aan dit rapport van de Wereldbank consequenties verbinden. De terreur van vijf jaar Duitse bezetting herdenken wij nog steeds. Hoe moeten Palestijnen zich voelen onder de dagelijkse terreur van een al bijna 40 jaar durende Israelische bezetting?
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