The “Report on UNCTAD Assistance to the Palestinian People: Developments in the Economy of the
Occupied Palestinian Territory” came out in September.
It tries to spin the statistics to blame Israel for all Palestinian ills, but the numbers show something very interesting.
When the West Bank and Gaza were under complete Israeli control, there was essentially no unemployment for Palestinian Arabs – 2.8%. Only after Oslo did unemployment go up, and it soared after the PLO decided to start a terror war.
UNCTAD complains about how Palestinians have been dependent on Israeli jobs for so long, but doesn’t mention that they’ve had since 1994 – 23 years – to build an independent economy. And they didn’t bother.
The other interesting statistic: “The [Palestinian] economy grew by an average 7.4 per cent in 1969–1992 and 4.4 per cent in 1994–2016.”
7.4% annually from 1969-1992? Those are numbers that any country in the world would kill for!
And it was all because of Israeli “occupation.”
UNCTAD spins and spins and blames all of today’s Palestinian economic woes on “occupation” for page after page. But it isn’t occupation that has caused the Palestinian economy to go down the toilet – it was the decisions of Palestinian leadership to create a bloated bureaucracy that employs many, the support terror attacks which chased away Israeli employers, to shoot rockets at Israel prompting wars.
(h/t Irene)
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