An artist’s rendering of Rawabi
During the divestment votes at the Presbyterian and Methodist church conferences last spring, we heard that pro-Israel forces were using the West Bank housing development, Rawabi, to claim that an “economic peace” between Israel and the Palestinian territories was somehow giving dignity to Palestinians living under occupation.
Rawabi is the project of a Palestinian businessman named Bashar al-Masri. The Palestinian civil society movement that is promoting BDS has issued a statement condemning Bashar Masri’s latest work with the Israeli government. Here is a portion of its latest statement. More at the link.
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society that includes Palestinian political parties, unions, NGOs and grassroots organisations and leads the global BDS movement, strongly condemns the participation of Palestinian businessman Bashar Masri in the Israeli High Tech Industry Association (HTIA) annual conference taking place between the 10th and 12th of September in Haifa and Jerusalem. Other speakers to the conference include Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Nir Barakat, the Israeli mayor of occupied Jerusalem. Masri will be speaking at a panel with Israeli businessman in a conference that is supported by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among other Israeli state bodies. Masri’s participation in this conference constitutes an act of normalization with Israel that helps it whitewash its ongoing occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people and that undermines the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and self determination.
The institutions and individuals at the helm of this propaganda conference that aims to promote Israel to the world as a “high-tech haven” are active participants in the oppression of Palestinians and persistent violators of international law. Israel’s high-tech industry is a major partner of the Israeli military-security complex and depends on it for its growth and success. Exports from the Israeli high-tech industry help sustain the military budget. It is therefore unsurprising that the conference enjoys the full backing of Israel’s ruling elite with the high-tech industry accounting for one-third of Israel’s GDP and constituting a key pillar to Israel’s hegemony in the region…
Masri’s support for this conference despite the public nature of these facts constitutes a shameless act of normalization of the worst type that trivializes the sacrifice of those Palestinians that on a daily basis struggle to defend their rights and dignity. These include the Palestinian prisoners currently risking their lives on hunger strike in Israeli jails and Jerusalemites who are facing a vicious and escalating Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing advanced by the apartheid Jerusalem Municipality of Nir Barakat.
To make matters worse, this year’s HTIA conference will commemorate the centennial of Israel’s Technion University, an institution that plays an active role in the dispossession of Palestinians. To cite just one example among many, Technion has led in the development of the armoured Caterpillar-manufactured D9 remote-controlled bulldozer used by the Israeli military to demolish Palestinian houses. Technion is target of an international boycott called for by Palestinian academics and international solidarity groups in Canada and the US, among other countries. It is disconcerting to see a Palestinian breaking the boycott, as Masri is deliberately doing, when hundreds of academics worldwide have adhered to it as an act of principled solidarity and have even put their careers on the line to stand up to its detractors.
Bashar Masri’s commitment to this conference is not out of line with his other dealings with Israel in subversion of the Palestinian-led global BDS campaign to isolate Israel, an effort that has enjoyed unprecedented success worldwide and constitutes one of the most effective tools Palestinians have for accountability and justice in the face of growing Israeli criminality and impunity. Contrary to Masri’s claims to be working for “building Palestine” through his business dealings, his actions have in fact been more in harmony with Israel’s declared policy of “economic peace” for the West Bank, that is, the sidelining of basic Palestinian rights, including the right to self determination of all Palestinians, in favour of economic gains for an elite minority, part of Israel’s carrot and stick approach that rewards obedience to Israeli dictates. The failure of this policy, spearheaded by Netanyahu, has manifested itself in the abject poverty, growing malnutrition, and joblessness that have prevailed among Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory, particularly in the besieged Gaza Strip and the so-called Area C of the West Bank, controlled by Israel.
Bashar al-Masri has been an active supporter and participant in the Israeli-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce (IPCC), an Israeli-established and controlled body based in Tel Aviv designed to advance the economic exploitation of Palestinians and Palestinian resources under occupation. One of the stated goals of the IPCC is to provide business intelligence and facilitate deals for Israeli businessmen in the Palestinian market. The organization is headed by Israeli Lt. Col (ret) Avi Nudelman, an Israeli military official who spent most of his career in the intelligence apparatus or as a high-level commander for the Israeli military. Masri participated in the opening gala of the IPCC and lectured before its [Israeli] members at least once about the prospects of investing in the Palestinian economy. According to Masri himself, “Israeli businessmen come to me time and time again seeking help in entering the Palestinian market and the Arab world.”
The BNC had publicly condemned this blatant economic normalization, in particular through the construction of the planned city of Rawabi, north of Ramallah, as news became known that Israeli companies were “invited” to bid for contracts.
thanks for publishing. i highly recommend the embed’s to allison and ahmed moor’s posts about Rawabi. it’s hard to comprehend how this gruesome project ever saw the light of day. good for BNC for calling out al-Masri. sad indeed.
The rumblings about the negative aspects of the project have been ongoing for over 3 years; from Ali Abunimah in January 2011 showing nothing has changed:
“… Bashar Masri, the Palestinian businessman and CEO of the company that is developing the Rawabi luxury real estate project in the occupied West Bank, appears to be actively helping Israel deepen its hold on the Palestinian economy despite his earlier claims that he is trying to help end this relationship.
On 30 December, The Electronic Intifada reported that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) in Palestine had expressed serious concerns following reports that a dozen Israeli companies have been contracted to take part in the construction of Rawabi, billed as the “first planned Palestinian city” (“Role of Israeli firms raises boycott concerns about Rawabi”).
In comments sent to The Electronic Intifada prior to the 30 December article, Masri claimed that using Israeli firms was a matter of necessity due to severe Israeli restrictions on the Palestinian economy in the occupied West Bank.
Masri is CEO of the Ramallah-based Bayti Real Estate Investment Company which is building Rawabi. He is also founder of the firm Massar International which along with Qatari Diar is financing the project.
Masri stated “It is also a well-known fact that our economy is very much dependent on Israel. Of course we do not like it but we have no choice.”
But in fact Masri appears to have made the choice to work closely with the Israeli government and businesses in order to bring even more Israeli companies into the occupied West Bank. This not only makes it harder for Palestinian firms to establish themselves against Israeli businesses which have a built-in advantage since Israel is the occupying power, but is in flagrant violation of the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions…”
link to electronicintifada.net
The BNC has its hands full with another “Masri”, the billionaire Palestinian Munib Masri that controls about 30 companies. He doesn’t appear to be closely related to Bashar Masri that has the BNC hopping over the Rawabi project. Both stories are related in that they involve normalization with Israel actions that are working against BNC’s efforts. BTW, Munib Masri is the grandfather of the American-Palestinian student, Munib Masri Jr that was shot by Israeli soldiers during the Nakba Day demonstration at the Maroun al-Ras border, Lebanon in May 2011. Looks like the younger Masri is not following in his grandfather’s footsteps.
From EI of August 2012:
BNC condemns Palestinian billionaire Munib Masri’s dealings with Israeli settler tycoon
Submitted by Jalal Abukhater on Sat, 08/11/2012
About three weeks ago, a story appeared in Haaretz titled “Who’s selling peace in the supermarket?” The story was about an Israeli journalist who, on his visit to a Rami Levy store in the illegal settlement of Gush Etzion, coincidently stumbled upon the Israeli businessman Rami Levy and the Palestinian billionaire Munib Masri announcing (informally) their intentions to form a coalition that will supposedly move peace forward based on the two-state solution by strengthening the economic relationship between the two.
A few days later, Masri, who is the the chair of the massive private Palestinian holding company PADICO disclosed to Ma’an News Agency that there are currently efforts by Palestinian businessmen and independent characters to revive the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative in coordination with Israeli right-wing figures. What Masri failed to announce is that the settler and supermarket mogul Rami Levi is the major character in this coalition.
Rami Levy is the target of a global boycott campaign as he is a pivotal element in supporting the illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank. Even the Palestinian Authority has called for a boycott of settlements and has promised to punish Palestinian West Bank citizens who go shop at Rami Levy stores in West Bank settlements.
Today, the Boycott National Committee (BNC), the steering committee of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, issued a strong statement in Arabic condemning the Masri-Levy relationship, stating it contradicted Palestinian rights and interests, and should be ended at once. The BNC strongly attacked the relationship between some Palestinian and Israeli business people, stating:
“… The warm relations between a segment of Palestinian capitalists and Israeli capitalists, details of which have recently emerged, is one of the worst forms of normalization which provides the [Israeli] occupation a fig leaf to cover up its continued occupation, ethnic cleansing, racism, siege of Gaza, land confiscation and settlement construction, and denial of the right of return for Palestinian refugees…”
link to electronicintifada.net