Israel's economy leaving Palestinians far behind

*I'm not a total fan of Israel's overall behaviour, but nothing better than separating these two cultures. I like the fact that the true colors (ie hamas) of Palestine is being revealed, and they'll have to start moving forward or going down the hole of hell.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060522/wl_csm/orobust

TEL AVIV - Headhunter Minna Felig once told corporate lawyers that Israeli firms hired one or two months out of the year. That was three years ago. Now, she is swamped with job openings all year long.

"Every law firm I work with is incredibly understaffed," she says. "I can't keep up with it. The workload has increased twofold."

This is just one sign of Israel's robust economic expansion. At a time when the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza are teetering on the brink of a collapse, Israeli growth - 6.6 percent GDP rise in the first quarter of 2006 - has returned to the torrid pace set before the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising.

It's also a recognition of a growing separation between the Israeli and Palestinian economies - and Israel's receding fear of attacks.

Tourists are filling up hotels. Private spending jumped 10.3 percent in the first three months of the year and the real estate market is heating up. Earlier this month, US investment guru Warren Buffet announced a $4 billion buyout of an Israeli metal tool cutting manufacturer, the biggest foreign investment in Israel.


A wave of suicide bombings that once scared off businessmen has been brought under control, and foreign investors are recognizing the long-term resilience of Israel's economy to the waves of conflict with the Palestinians. The trend seems to lend credence to a mantra of a former finance minister that Israel's high-tech, export-based economy is more sensitive to the US Nasdaq stock market than violence in the West Bank city of Nablus.

"The recession was not only because of the intifada [uprising]," says Uriel Lynn, president of the Israeli Chamber of Commerce. "The economy of Israel can grow and continue to grow in spite of the intifada, and in spite of security problems.''

Per-capita income - a measure of the standard of living - is 17 times higher in Israel than among its neighbors from the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. That gap is forecast to widen as an economic boycott of the Hamas-led
Palestinian Authority pushes up poverty levels and as foreign investment fuels Israeli prosperity.

Israeli sanctions, coupled with a halt in financial aid from the US and Europe, have left the Hamas-led government broke and unable to pay the salaries of 165,000 employees for the past two months.

Israel's cabinet decided Sunday it would release $11 million of the $55 million customs taxes it is withholding from the Palestinian Authority but only to purchase medicines and medical equipment to ease the humanitarian strain.

Experts say that the widening economic disparity could undermine the long-term prospect for peaceful relations between Israelis and Palestinians.

"It spells disaster. There's kind of a blind eye in Israel to the Palestinian economy,'' says Gershon Baskin, co-chair of the Israel-Palestinian Center for Research and Information in Jerusalem. "Israel has a sense that it doesn't matter what happens on the Palestinian side, Israel can do what it wants and continue to grow.''

To be sure, the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000 and a campaign of suicide bombings plunged Israel's economy into a recession. Gross domestic product shrunk for two years and unemployment approached 11 percent, as tourists disappeared and Israelis stayed away from shopping malls. A spiraling budget deficit forced a painful government austerity program that cut social welfare benefits.

But as the violence has stabilized, the jobless rate has dropped below 9 percent, the economy is chugging through its third year of robust growth, and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has surged to record highs. Economic growth is expected to at least meet the 2005 mark of 4.7 percent.

Two weeks ago, Israel got a morale boost when Mr. Buffet announced that he would buy 80 percent of Iscar Ltd. "[Buffet] is a trendsetter for other investors in the world who are going to be asking themselves, do we have enough Israel in our portfolio?'' says Gil Bufman, chief economist at Israel's Bank Leumi Ltd.

In the decades after Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six Day War, an economic symbiosis began to emerge as Israel exported consumer goods to the Palestinians and Arab construction and agricultural laborers flooded into Israel. The peace accords of the 1990s included a separate economic treaty - the Paris Protocol - establishing a customs union between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But over the last decade, Israel has reduced its dependence on the Palestinian economy as technology exports surged and day laborers from Gaza and the West Bank were replaced by guest workers from primarily China, Thailand, and Romania.

Now the possibility of full economic disengagement looms. The completion of Israel's security barrier around the West Bank will allow it to end the customs union, says Mr. Baskin. Meanwhile, the two Israeli banks that clear transactions with Palestinian banks have announced they would no longer process Palestinian checks for fear of violating terrorism finance laws.

That is already having devastating consequences for Palestinian businesses as well as thousands of small- to medium-size Israeli businesses which have built up hundred of millions of dollars in sales with the West Bank and Gaza.

"We are getting a lot of calls,'' says Avraham Dishon, spokesman for Israel's association of independently owned businesses. "They are saying, 'What are we going to do? How are we going to get our money? We are stuck with checks.' ''

And yet the impasse between Israel and the Palestinian Authority isn't slowing outside investment, says Jackie Mukmel, the chief executive of Man Properties Ltd. The real estate brokerage has increased its staff by one-third in the last year to keep up with the investors looking for commercial properties in Israel.

"It's reminiscent of the late '90s when there was a wave of foreign investment to buy properties here,'' he says. "Investors are no longer taking into account the threats and declarations of the Palestinians.''

 

I'm shocked that blowing crap up and electing terrorists as leaders isn't a model for economic success.

 

I know, who would have thought that!?

That's why I don't adore the concept of democracy, because if there wasn't any limits to the idiocy of the people,...they'd vote anything in.

 

Too bad this bull paragraph is decreasing the validity of this article.

The recession started after the .com bubble burst. Israel was hit the hardest by it since a lot of it's economy is based on hi-tech. You can only compare it to the silicon valley area economy in terms of hi-tech percentage of the economy.

 

LOL

I share your astonishment.

 

Too bad that Israels GDP will fall 100% one day..

 

Interesting, how do you figure that will happen?

 

He's probably thinking of something like this.

 

Well, while no one will dare to doubt that this nutcase is capable of "pressing the button". Israel has two things going for it.

1) Jerusalem is dead in it's center - I don't think he will want to hurt that.
2) The Arrow anti-ballistic missiles defense system - Which currently is only deployed in Israel.

I guess that's one way to finally find out Israel nuclear capabilities. Too bad for Iran. Too bad for Jordan - The Iranian missile is going to explode over their heads.

 

1) I don't know what he thinks, you don't know it either. He's a crazy man, that's for sure.
2) It was initially designed to handle Scuds, not Shahabs. Shahab travels in Mach 10 while Arrow2 only runs in Mach 9. Arrow2 has also has failed in recent tests to intercept with Shahab designed missiles. They might work now, but it's no guarantee.

Anyway, I think that the Israelis prefer nervgas missiles rather than nuclears.

 

1) True, but he's a crazy Muslim, and that has to count for something, or not.

2) The Arrow had a few failed experiments but the last few that simulated full combat + multi warheads, were successful (If I remember correctly, that's when Bush decided to plan deployment of them in North America and Europe). I'm sure that in real-time, the Israelis will have the brains to shoot a few Arrows on an incoming target so there is less chance of missing. But still, as you said there is no guarantee either way. My preferred scenario, if it ever comes to that, would be an armed nuke explodes in it's silo on launch... ummm...

I think the Israelis have enough nerves in their system... no need for more.

 

1) Crazy muslim doesn't mean that you have to respect your own religion. All muslims that want a destruction of Israel doesn't follow the pro-Israeli words of the koran.
2) As I know, the in last succesfull tests, the missiles were just tested against a Sparrow. It doesn't tell you anything about the abillity to intercept with a Shahab. I think that there's still a chance that they would work in combat against Iran. But the odds is on the Iranian side as of today. Also, Israel has only 200 Arrows, it's possible for Iran to outpower that.

 

1) pro-Israeli words of the Koran? Show me a Muslim who knows where/which these words are.

2) The Arrow tests were conducted against western technology improved scuds, I don't know of their level compared to the Shihabs. Since it's generally believed that if Iran is/will be capable of producing nukes at a very slow rate, so the arrows can outnumber the incoming Shihabs at least 10 to 1. On the other hand all sort of sources claim Israel have over 200 nukes mounted on missiles, planes and subs ... But than again he's crazy, or at least want us to think he is.

 

You both have wrong answers. No matter what you say, Israel does not want an independ Palastinian state. They was all Palastenian dead. They are not humans in the eys of Israel.

 

maldives, with all due respect, your words only express ignorance. Try to dig deeper into a matter before you form an opinion.

 

Maldives - You got the whole thing so wrong.

It's sad that people that are not in the situation are so judgemental.
I wonder how you guys would feel if your busses, kids and market places where bombed frequently by wacky folks that think this act (suicide bombing) will actually bring them to heaven?!

No one (on either side) wants the other side dead. All humens want to stay alive and hate killing - that's what humanity means...

There are crazy and extreme people on both sides but don't let them fool you into thinking that everyone are that way.

I'm so sad to read what you think. I hope you can see that most of the people on both sides just want their normal lives back and nothing more.

 

1) Here's a moslem source

 

80% of Palestine became Jordan in 1922.
The 20% that was left over was meant to be separated into 2 states between the zionists and the palestinians.

If peace would exist then, the second palestine would be a fairly big country compared to what it is today. But that didn't happen because the arabs attacked Israel and the second Palestine was incorporated in the real Palestine also called Jordan. The war has more or less been endless since 1948. Despite this, Israel has helped Palestine to become an independent country. Settlers were moved from Gaza Strip 2005. Unfortunally, the Israelis are digging their own grave. Hamas have came to power and calls for the destruction of Israel. Better if they waited a bit before forming a Palestinian government. Palestine isn't mature for independence yet, history has prooved.

 

That's exactly why I asked for believers (people) and not literature. Religious literature can be interpreted in many ways. The uneducated masses follow their local religious leaders, not a Harvard theology scholar.

 

Look at the middle east map. Most of the borders are exact straight lines - That’s because the Brits, who took over the area after defeating the ottoman empire, divided it with nothing but their own pencils. The truth is that none of these Arab nations ever existed before that and most consisted of semi-nomad tribes. The hashemite dynasty (rulers of Jordan) actually came from Saudi Arabia after loosing an heritage battle over the kingdom and were put as rulers of the new state Jordan by the brits.

So if any of you brits wonder how you got caught up in this mess in Iraq - It's all your fault to begin with .