Developing Israeli Apartheid: The World Bank, International Aid and The Ghettoization of Palestine

By Sto The Wall 18 may 2005Every day in Palestine, entire villages actively protest against the Apartheid Wall and the Occupation that has stolen their land, demolished their houses and imprisoned them in ghettos of poverty and oppression. They demand that the Wall and the Apartheid infrastructure of Jewish-only bypass roads, military zones and settlements are torn down. Not modified or made more ?tolerable, but dismantled entirely, a demand that is supported in international law, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a number of UN resolutions. However, the complicity of the international community in the crimes of the Occupation is impossible to hide. Against a reality where children participating in demonstrations are shot dead simply for defending their own right to exist, it seems absurd to talk about ?development' without first addressing the racist, colonial Occupation that perpetrates such destruction. Yet the prevailing discourse of economic ?development? for Palestine chooses not to challenge this reality, but actively embrace it. Far from confronting the Occupation's existence, it seeks to sustain it and the total Israeli control over Palestinian life. The guiding document in this respect is the World Bank's latest report on Palestine: Stagnation or Revival? Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian Economic Prospects. It outlines the mutual interest of global capital and the Zionist occupation, vigorously promoting a vision of ?economic development? that legitimizes, relies on and provides financial support for the long-term Apartheid system on which the Zionist project of expulsion is based. The very framing of World Bank policy is rooted in its explicit support for the parameters set out by Israel's ?disengagement plan? ? a warped term that in reality means increased Israeli engagement in its control over Palestine through the finalization of the Apartheid Wall and connected measures of land grab and ghettoization. The Bank describes the disengagement as providing Palestinians with a ?significant amount of land? and an ideal environment for development. In fact, Gaza will be totally imprisoned, surrounded by a second eight metre high iron wall, with all borders, coastline and airspace controlled by the occupying power. In the West Bank, just four tiny settlements are being disbanded, while simultaneously 46% of the West Bank is annexed through the Apartheid Wall and infrastructure, which is facilitating the expansion of settlements such as Ma'ale Adumim and the Gush Etzion bloc. Against the ICJ's instructions to the international community ?not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by (the Wall's) construction,? the Bank formulates its entire plan around ?borders? of the Palestinian prison-state as defined by the illegal Apartheid Wall. It accepts that settlements, military zones and any ?areas in which Israel has a vested interest? will remain under Israeli domination. The Wall annexes the Palestinian capital of Jerusalem to Israel, and so the Bank follows suit and removes Jerusalem from its plans. While Palestinians are imprisoned, facing continued denial of their rights and aspirations, the Bank portrays a golden economic opportunity of a cheap, controlled labour force. The Bank's blueprint for a new export-based economy, subservient to the strategic needs of Israel and global capital - with Israeli/foreign investment creaming off the profits - merges with the Occupation's destruction of Palestinian farmland and local markets. Indeed, the Bank's reports hardly refer to agriculture at all, traditionally the core sector of the Palestinian economy. Instead, imposing Israeli-run industrial zones, military checkpoints and Jewish-only road systems onto the West Bank are policies that reflect the Bank's overall strategy for a Do-It-Yourself Apartheid Guide for the 21st century. As with any other ?Third World? population that the World Bank subjugates into the global economy, the role assigned to the Palestinian people is simple: to cheaply produce goods for export to wealthier countries, strengthening economic dependency on global capitalist systems. The Bank insists that Palestinians must not only be willing to accept brutal military occupation, dispossession and expulsion, but must also sustain their oppressor's economy through primary goods and industrial output. Furthermore, walled-in Palestinians are marked as a captive audience, forced into a system of dependency upon the Occupation for even the most basic needs. Israel has drained Palestine of her natural resources, stealing around 80% of Palestinian natural water outputs on an annual basis. Now, in Gaza, the Bank states Palestinians who have been robbed of their water for decades should enter into trade agreements with Israel whereby they can buy back ? ?at Israeli commercial rates? ? the same water stolen by the Occupation.The convergence between Zionist actions and World Bank economics is clear, with international investment transforming the destruction and dispossession caused by the Israeli colonization policies into the Bank's new showcase project: a series of massive Israeli industrial estates built on annexed Palestinian land. The so-called Tulkarem Peace Park, for example, is to be built on farmland stolen from the village of Irtah; land that sustained 50 families for generations and formed an integral part of community and family life. Now their only source of employment will be as an exploited worker on an Israeli industrial estate surrounded by walls, checkpoints and prison gates.
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