Sam Bahour on economic realities of occupation

The prominent Palestinian-American business executive Sam Bahour has an op-ed in today’s WSJ that gives the lie to all the hasbara that Netanyahu, Oren, Friedman, etc have been putting out regarding the alleged “amazing green shoots” of the West bank’s economy.
Bahour knows whereof he writes:

    I was the manager who oversaw the establishment of the first modern mall in the West Bank—the Plaza Shopping Center in El Bireh. I can attest that the success of a West Bank mall rests on a thin layer of elite consumer privilege poised precariously over a chasm of widespread disempowerment. Until West Bank Palestinians gain free and open access to the world economy, beyond the markets of the occupying power, major enterprises in Palestinian towns will suffer.
    Objective analyses by the World Bank suggest that Israel’s repressive practices will not permit the Palestinian economy to develop meaningfully…

He has more data and examples there.
His conclusion is particularly sobering if you keep in mind that he is someone who has worked hard for 15 years to try to make the “economic peace” approach work:

    Peace talk is cheap; actions by Israel that would make real peace—even economic peace—a reality are still the exception rather than the rule. I do not disparage any progress that has been made but, viewed in context, it is no more than window dressing.
    Meanwhile, the continued brutal subjugation of Gaza and coerced Judaization of Arab East Jerusalem call into serious question Israel’s true intentions. Absent a political framework to secure Palestinian freedom and independence, “economic peace” initiatives only facilitate the crime of occupation.

Btw, it looks as though there’s a concerted campaign by the hasbaristas to stack the comments board linked to Bahour’s piece. (At one point, one of them even writes: “this apologist has gotten short shrift here. nicely done folks.”)
So maybe instead of, or in addition to, posting comments here, JWN readers should go over and post some comments there.

18 thoughts on “Sam Bahour on economic realities of occupation”

  2. If you refuse to opine on the real news and delete posts, let us have a floating thread where the poster can fix that aberration. We all have different obsessions.
    Today it is clearly the hero’s welcome to the Lybian Abdel Panami Al Prostati, who with the complicity of the corrupt Britons is free. I would not be surprised if the cancer thing is also a Brito-Arab fabrication and this fellow lives another 30 years.
    I am sure many of his accomplices were at the airport in his welcome.
    There you have an advantage of death penalty for mass murder terrorists, they get no prostate cancer.

  3. Titus, it is increasingly difficult to understand whether you are being deceitful or you are simply ignorant. The facts are that the evidence in this case was wholly circumstantial, tainted and questionable. Two men were tried for the same offence, one was not guilty, the second, just released, was appealing his conviction. It was to prevent this Appeal, which was almost certain to succeed, from being heard that the prisoner was released.
    It is almost certain that he had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing and Europeans still haven’t managed to develop the stomach for lynching that you have obviously inherited along with the sadistic racism lying at the core of your politics.
    Don’t despair though, Titus, the americanisation of Europe proceeds apace.

  4. Titus, I am the host and owner of this blog. There are thousands of newsworthy topics, every day, that I do not choose to blog about.
    If there are topics you would like to discuss online, the blogosphere is completely open to you, to start your own blog!
    But you cannot reasonably expect to come here and hijack our discussions for your own particular foibles and betes noires.

  5. Talking about more the lies to all the hasbara specially in US and Israel….

    The American Jewish Committee on Tuesday protested Yale’s decision in a letter addressed to John Donatich, director of the Yale University Press, saying the decision curbed academic freedom.

    “If given the opportunity to make the decision, we probably would not have recommended that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten print the original 12 cartoons,” the AJC wrote. “Your decision to censor those images and any other images of the Prophet, however, reflects a new and dangerous standard. No matter how offensive any publication may be, intimidation must never be viewed as an acceptable means of responding to published ideas.”

    The letter added, “Should academic works be held up to a test of perceived intimidation, under which scholars would be prevented from publishing their work if a violent group may respond irrationally to it? In our view, your decision may simply have the effect of encouraging those who seek to stifle ideas by force.”

    “The American Jewish Committee” most influential Israel/Jewish lobby in US their reaction when some things reported about Israeli all those values of “curbed academic freedom” freedom of speech, Freedom of expression, is it a cornerstone of democracy and Freedom of expression and press freedom that Israeli long standing claims as the ONLY democracy in ME.
    Dose this behaviour also, have the effect of encouraging Israeli organ harvesting to continue?

    The writer, Donald Bostrom, based the story on accounts from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and his own experience of seeing a dead Palestinian man returned to his family with surgical stitches running the length of his torso. The article quoted an Israeli military spokesman who denied the charges and said that Palestinians killed by Israeli forces are routinely subjected to autopsies.
    Headlined “Our sons are plundered for their organs,” the story made news in Israel, where officials described it as racist and accused it of using “vile anti-Semitic themes.”

    More here about Yale book

  6. Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildtrejects Israeli call for official condemnation!!
    Carl Bildt is better known throughout the world than most of his fellow EU foreign ministers – and many of the prime ministers, too. That is not only because he has held some senior jobs (prime minister of Sweden, and Balkan envoy for both the United Nations and the EU), but also because he is actively engaged in, and knowledgeable about, a wide range of international issues.

  9. Nothing touched my nerves but I am annoyed (as are others here) by your irrelevant tangents and the gibberish commentary. Where and for how long have you been studying english salah? and how does this swedish article on israeli “organ harvesting” bear on what helena has written, in any way?
    to be blunt your weak command of english disqualifies you to understand much in the english language (including israeli) press. we aren’t here to correct your ridiculous misreadings, especially when they drag us into the realm of organ harvesting, 9/11 denial, UFOs and other nonsense. sadly Helena seems uninterested in enforcing her own rules.

  10. weak command of english disqualifies you to understand much in the english language (including israeli) press.
    very laughable comments by Hasbara …
    English have noting to do with Israelis behaviours and crimes, Israeli’s crimes speaks by itself loudly telling not just who is with “weak command of English” even those who don’t know english who watched the images of GAZA crimes…..
    Have very f* nice day Angela

  11. Salah, simply if Israeli crimes speak for themselves, we don’t need your muddled commentary to explicate them on almost every thread, especially as it represents a major distraction from the topic at hand.
    As Helena said above to Titus, you cannot reasonably expect to come here and hijack our discussions for your own particular foibles and betes noires. right, helena?

  12. Angela and J, please go and read the guidelines for commenters here. At the very least they call for courtesy towards all others in the discussion.
    Mocking someone else’s command of what might well be their fourth or fifth language is a sign of great discourtesy.
    Yes, it’s true that on occasion Salah goes off on a bit of a tangent, and Salah himself could tell you he’s had comments deleted from here on a number of occasions. But he has also made many very useful contributions and is a valued, longtime member of the JWN discussion community. It really seems the height of arrogance for newcomers like yourselves– especially people who are such blatant violators of the guidelines– to urge actions against a valued JWN old-timer.

  14. i naturally i completely agree w/helena!
    i greatly enjoy Salah’s contributions, including the one on this thread. keep posting Salah.

  15. No one is mocking Salah’s weak command of English; it’s a sterile fact and not especially funny. His remarks (those he actually authors himself rather than cites at exorbitant length) are for the most part gibberish to this native english speaker.
    There’s nothing wrong with not speaking english well. There is something wrong with disrputing conversations you can;t possibly understand with all kinds of irrelevant links and articles. I certainly don;t go picking fights with native arabic speakers on arab language web boards armed with primitive arabic.
    youve been berating me from my first post for being off topic: so what’s preventing you from enforcing your posting rules in a more even handed way? Right now it seems like you only bother to enforce them against people critical of you!
    I see nothing violating the rules in my own or in J. Carson’s post. If you want to close the board to people who disagree with you, tell us directly rather than claiming dissenting posts are all off topic. The double standard here is simply appalling. say the word if you only want to be surrounded by brown-nosers Helena. Thats pretty sad, but hey its your tea party.

  16. Looks some hide their mindset on such fails claims like above.
    what “a sterile fact” here, a new reader we don’t know where and for how long have joined this “tea party” who made many comments some comment using BAD English words, complaint about bad English but up most her mindset supporting International law broker for so long, defending that state’s crimes against humans for no reasons just defending their home land occupied by Scattered group of people of 2000yers old dream.
    With a new age of technology it’s no longer the Israeli crimes can wiped off from the memories of people’s mind around the world.
    For any one surfing the web will find a lot of gibberish, you don’t like just ignore it or getout of the “tea party”.
    But instructing/arguing here the owner right to clean the “tea party” table from unwanted gust… this is totally nonsense

  17. Why is Egypt collaborating on the siege of Gaza? Cant goods and services flow directly thru the Rafah crossing, which is not controlled by Israel?

  18. Hi, Clement. Sadly the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing is NT under sovereign Egyptian control. Egypt’s freedom of action there is severely constrained by two factors:
    1. The terms of the peace treaty it has with Israel, which place severe constraints on its ability to cooperate in any way with Hamas, whose politicians won the 2006 PA legislative elections and therefore have a strong right to run the administration in Gaza. (But Israel still judges Hamas to be a “terrorist” and “hostile” entity. That’s what limits Egypt’s ability to deal with it, under the terms of the 1979 peace treaty.
    2. The terms of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access concluded between Israel and the (pre-Hamas victory) PA, under which Mahmoud Abbas’s PA agreed that (a) the Rafah crossing could be used ONLY for people but not for goods, and (b) Israel would have a remotely located ability to scrutinize all requests for personal crossing through Rafah and to veto those it opposed. (Also, by virtue of still being the “occupying power” in Gaza under international law, israel completely controls the Strip’s population registries, including e.g. who can enter, leave, or reside in the Strip.)
    It is also because Israel is still the occupying power in the Strip that it can enforce #1 above very easily. If it weren’t the occupying power, then imposing the strict blocade on Gaza, including by winning Egyptian collaboration in this, would constitute an act of war under international law.

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