مجموعة الاتصلات » palestinian

Palestinian Tycoon Masri Seeking to Stop West Bank Collapse

ola — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 08:20:04 +0000

Palestinian Tycoon Masri Seeking to Stop West

Bank Collapse

Masri, one of the richest Palestinians, is trying to prod banks and Arab nations to help avert the Palestinian Authority’s collapse following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election victory.

Masri, chairman of Palestine Development & Investment Co., said Netanyahu’s campaign remarks against Palestinian statehood and Israel’s withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue were “black smoke” on the horizon.

“If Israel keeps doing what it is doing, it will cause the Palestinian Authority to collapse,” he said. “We are talking to everyone to see what can be done.”

Masri, 80, a confidant of the late Yasser Arafat, says he’s contacted Arab leaders and lenders in an effort to manage the financial crunch in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The government of Algeria said Tuesday it transferred $52.8 million to the Palestinian Authority, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Masri holds 5.1 percent of publicly traded Padico, the largest private investor in the West Bank and Gaza. The Jordan-based holding and his multinational Edgo Management Group SA engineering firm give him a fortune close to $300 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Masri, who lives in a domed villa overlooking the city of Nablus, has declined to discuss his wealth.

Netanyahu, elected to a fourth term on March 17, froze the transfer of levies Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians in January after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he’d seek to prosecute Israel on war crimes charges.

Partial Salaries

The money — $127 million a month — represents almost 40 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s monthly budget. Palestinians are trying to hold out against the financial pressure through a temporary 40 percent cut in salaries for some 160,000 civil service employees.

Fifty-six percent of Palestinians say Israel’s withholding of tax revenue will cause the Palestinian Authority’s collapse, according to a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. The survey of 1,262 Palestinians had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Masri has been a key intermediary in reconciliation efforts between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the militant Islamic organization that runs the Gaza Strip and is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union.

Gaza Visit

Rami Hamdallah, the PA prime minister, visited Gaza Wednesday for the first time in five months and said he was meeting with Hamas leaders on a Swiss plan to enable delivery of some $5.4 billion in international funds to repair damage from last year’s war with Israel. Donors have balked at transferring the funds because of concern Hamas will use the money to rebuild tunnels used for attacking Israel.

Netanyahu’s victory will hurt international investment in Palestinian businesses in the West Bank, Masri predicted.

“Even with just a glimpse of Palestinian statehood, a lot of people came in and they did OK,” said Masri, who helped to found the Palestine Stock Exchange. “Now that Israel is doing everything to stop a state, it will be difficult for people to come in.”

No State

Days before the election, Netanyahu roused supporters by saying he wouldn’t allow the establishment of a Palestinian state now if re-elected. Netanyahu later said he still accepts the principle of the two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, yet doesn’t think conditions are ripe because of mounting threats to Israel.

In light of Netanyahu’s initial remarks, President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the U.S. would evaluate dropping its opposition to the Palestinians’ campaign for statehood at the United Nations.

As faith in peace talks fades, Masri said Palestinians need to increase pressure on Israel through prosecution at the International Criminal Court, a war crimes tribunal. He said the international BDS movement, which promotes economic boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, should be expanded.

“I don’t want to see an armed conflict,” said Masri, a co-founder of Breaking the Impasse, a group of Palestinian and Israeli business leaders working to keep peace prospects alive. “I call for peaceful resistance.”

He said he hopes Obama will let the UN Security Council recognize the state of Palestine and withhold a previously threatened veto.

“Netanyahu fooled us, he fooled America and he fooled the whole world,” Masri said. “The Israelis must realize that the Palestinians will not give up.”

The Palestinian Economy and the Pillar of Salt in Area C

ola — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 08:16:57 +0000

A report released by the World Bank … Oct. 8, states that the development of Area C, which includes the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area and which, under the Oslo Accords, belongs to Israel, is a necessary condition to the recovery of the Palestinian economy. However, the only Palestinian [economic] presence in the region is that of the small salt plant of Uthman Halak, which is located near an abandoned Jordanian hotel, and which has been operating for nearly 50 years now on the northern shore of the Dead Sea.

The plant seems to be something out of place in the region, which is populated by Israeli settlements, and strewn with date groves — the region where the archaeological site of the Qumran Caves is located [famous for the Dead Sea Scrolls found there], as well as the Ein-Fasha resort, and the AHAVA cosmetics factory. Amid all these, Halak, even now, at the age of 78, keeps on producing his salt and selling it in 25-kilogram (55-pound) bags to the West Bank and Gaza.

The royalties are transferred to the Israeli administrator general

n recent months, the Palestinians have been exerting growing pressure on the international community with regard to Area C. Chairman of the Palestinian Authority Abu Mazen and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah request permission to build in the area and develop it, and present to the world a series of grandiose development projects — including a Palestinian resort city on the Dead Sea shore and a plan for the establishment of chemical plants. The Israeli government, for its part, refrains from referring to the issue.

The Palestinian salt plant thus peculiarly stands out in the region. Halak, a chemical engineer by profession, was granted the franchise to produce salt from the Jordanian government in 1964. Since 1967, he has been transferring the royalties to the Israeli administrator general, who inherited the Jordanian government assets in the West Bank.

Halak has managed to overcome economic, security and political obstacles. However, his salt plant remained small and outdated. The crude salt filtered out of nearby ponds is rinsed in the plant, and then put into a centrifuge that separates it from the water. After that, it is put in the oven to dry. The next stage in the process is the sorting of the salt. Powder-like salt is graded as size zero and is usually marketed for roasting sunflower seeds and peanuts; salt graded from 0.2 to 1.2 is used as regular table salt; salt graded from 1.2 to 3 is sold as coarse salt; and salt graded from 2 to 3 is classified as gourmet salt, a niche which has become most popular in recent years, both in Israel and worldwide.

Winds of change in the family business

These days, the Israeli entrepreneur Alon Lior is promoting Halak’s gourmet salt, marketed under the brand name Salt 424. Lior offers different flavors: smoked salt, black pepper salt, [coarse] salt with red seaweed and more.

At the same time, Hossam Halak, Uthman’s son, is currently building a [packaging] plant near Jericho, with the aim of marketing the salt in small packages. So far, the old Palestinian plant has marketed the salt in big bags of 25 kilograms. And while the Palestinians’ plans for the development of Area C seem to be a distant dream, at least in the Palestinian salt plant, the winds of change are felt.

Kerry’s Palestinian economic plan another dead end?

ola — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 08:14:52 +0000

Numerous statements were issued by Palestinian negotiators predicting the failure of the negotiations. There were also news reports that President Mahmoud Abbas might withdraw at any time from these negotiations, which had yet to achieve any breakthrough. Moreover, the media reported Thursday, Oct. 17, that the ongoing negotiations with the Palestinians had reached a deadlock because the two sides fundamentally disagreed over borders. At the security level, information was scarce given the nature of the security negotiation path. In this article we will discuss the third path, the economic one.

From Kerry to Blair

Following the end of World Economic Forum — during which the plan was announced — former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was appointed the Quartet’s representative and a team of international consultants was entrusted with the task of preparing the plan, subsequently dubbed the “Economic Initiative for Palestine.” The Office of the Quartet Representative took over the task of preparing documents, files, and studies for this plan, while the entire Palestinian community awaited the white smoke from the office of the Quartet in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

Since Kerry’s announcement of his plan and the entrustment of the Quartet Office to draft the detailed plans, a major contradiction has emerged between the statements on the progress of preparations. While Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki announced Sept. 8, 2013, that Kerry submitted his plan to promote investment and economic growth of the Palestinian economy to the Ministerial Delegation of the Arab Peace Initiative in Paris. The deputy prime minister and economic adviser to the PA president for economic affairs, Mohammed Mustafa, asserted that the United States handed over the written Palestinian economic plan to the Palestinian leadership. Moreover, Mustafa added that Kerry’s three-year detailed plan — spanning more than 200 pages — would target eight key sectors for growth in all Palestinian regions, including the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

According to the website of the Office of the Quartet Representative, the Economic Initiative for Palestine was drafted by a team of international experts in collaboration with the Office of the Quartet. The plan suggests several projects to boost domestic and foreign investment in Palestine to develop the Palestinian economy and provide employment opportunities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The plan covers eight key sectors: construction and housing — including financing of personal mortgages — agriculture, tourism, telecommunications and information technology, energy, water and light industries. The Office of the Quartet Representative provided some details of the plan in its September 2013 report, obtained by Al-Monitor. In summary, the plan includes:

Building 40,000 housing units that will be priced at $35,000-$50,000;
Exporting products from the Gaza Strip to Israel and the West Bank;
Constructing a cement mill for local Palestinian production;
Offering tourism packages to attract foreign and Arabs tourists to Palestine; and,
Developing the Palestinian Gaza Marine Gas field.

No Palestinian input

A team of international experts prepares the plan without any participation by the PA or civil society institutions. The plan is instead treated as a confidential and secret document which may not be leaked. In this respect, one may ask how this work methodology is consistent with the Quartet’s allegation that one of its overriding objectives is to strengthen and build the institutions of a promised Palestinian state. It seems that Blair is still acting with the same mentality as the British High Commissioner during the British Mandate for Palestine. He plans for us and on our behalf. He knows our affairs better than we. All the Palestinians can do is wait for the generosity of Blair and his team to deliver a written plan of 200 pages to the Palestinian deputy prime minister. Yet, all we wish for is that the plan be written in Arabic, which is the primary language in Palestine.

No meeting was ever held with local experts or Palestinian civil society organizations to explore the Palestinians’ opinion about the plan’s terms, objectives, funding sources and the party to whom the funds shall be disbursed. Moreover, the PA’s official institutions and Palestinian civil society organizations were completely left out, while numerous terms of this plan were leaked to some businessmen in the Palestinian territories. The latter are planning to conduct international partnerships in to take advantage of the plan’s funding. Therefore, it would be legitimate to wonder whether this plan were for the development of the Palestinian economy or to increase the wealth of the wealthy.

The marginalization practiced by Blair and his office, not only toward the PA and its institutions but also toward the European Union — one of the biggest donors to the Palestinian people — as well as towards some pivotal countries in Europe, constitutes a structural defect in this plan. How can this plan be implemented without the active participation of the parties that support the Palestinian people the most? When I asked the ambassador of a pivotal European country who visited Gaza in September 2013 about this matter, he replied angrily, “We do not know anything about it! Aren’t we entitled to know details of this plan, given that later on we will be requested to fund it?” In another meeting in Paris with a European figure who used to occupy an important position in the Middle East, the latter confirmed to Al-Monitor that neither he nor his government was aware of any details of the plan.

Why have the PA’s institutions accepted being ignored is such a humiliating way? They have accepted to be the passive recipient of a plan prepared in advance without being involved in its design, as stated by Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa. Why isn’t this task fully entrusted to the PA’s institutions, which are capable and qualified in this respect?

The plan did not determine the facilities that Kerry promised to exert pressure on the Israeli government to obtain. The plan did not explain how some of the proposed major projects would be executed in light of the continuing occupation, settlements and siege laid on Gaza.

The United States and international organizations always praise the role of civil society and supervisory institutions, so how can they allow the preparation of a plan for the development of the Palestinian economy without the active participation of Palestinian institutions, and without giving the right to supervision and follow-up to the Palestinian legislative and supervision institutions? It seems that Kerry, very enthusiastic and motivated to accomplish a qualitative achievement in the negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel — through his multiple tours of the region and the pressures he exerts on both sides — must reconsider his assignment of the Office of the Quartet to supervise the plan still bearing his name, despite an attempt by the Quartet to strike it.