Last week I attended a conference sponsored by the Arthur B. Schultz Foundation Social Micro-enterprise Initiative (SMI). This organization (Their web site is here) provides loans to small and medium sized businesses in Kenya, Vietnam, Ghana, Nicaragua and Palestine. These businesses are too big for micro-credit and too small to access the private credit markets. The loans are paid forward through charitable donations rather that paid back to SMI.
Zeina, the young Palestinian woman who was responsible for selecting and monitoring the participating businesses on the West Bank, described the difficulties that these business men and women have in building their businesses. For these companies an export market is the neighboring town and, because of Israeli checkpoints, they have more difficulty accessing these markets than most companies have exporting to China.
During the discussion, I commented that, despite the difficulties, these projects were important for improving the lives of ordinary Palestinians as the idea of viable independent Palestinian state should be “consigned to the dust bin of history”. I have long ago concluded that given the “facts on the ground” created by Israeli roads and settlements a contiguous, viable Palestinian state is impossible. (See the map of the West Bank)
That evening at dinner, I asked Zeina if she agreed with me. She said “A Palestinian state went down the drain a long time ago.” She also said that most Palestinians agree and that the only reason that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t acknowledge this fact is that they want to hang on to power with all of the accompanying perks.
The good news is that, this week, we moved closer to the inevitable reality of a bi-national state in Israel/Palestine. During VP Joe Biden’s visit to the region, the Israeli government greeted him with announcements of the construction of 1600 housing units in Arab East Jerusalem and over 400 units on the West Bank. Eventually the rapid growth of Jewish settlements and infrastructure will force even the US and other western governments to conclude that a Palestinian state is impossible.
As former Israeli government official Uri Dromi points out in this NY Times op-ed piece, all the Palestinians need to do is to wait patiently until they are in the majority and the international community forces Israel to dismantle its apartheid regime. With a majority in the Knesset, they will be able to allow return of Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and Israel will cease to be a Jewish state.
If construction continues at the rate that it has in the last year, it may actually happen in my lifetime. Short term pain for long term gain.
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