One of Bibi Netanyahu's themes is economic peace for the Palestinians, not political sovereignty. He means, we will include them more in the robust Israeli economy and bring up their standard of living, and they will then accept their political status as not-full-citizens of a Palestinian state. Last year, Bernard Avishai explored this idea in his book The Hebrew Republic. He interviewed several prosperous Palestinians about their hopes for greater economic comity between Israel and Palestine.
And they all wanted it. The two peoples could help one another enormously economically. Then Avishai asked whether such progress was possible without political changes. Two answers:
Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster: "The wall has been devastating to some people living in its vicinity, but for the class you are talking about, people who will have to make intelligent decisions about competition, about the family fortune, people upon whom Palestinian growth will depend, the wall has been a tremendous psychological blow. During the last ten years, many of these people came in here, put in time, effort, certainly money. Then all of a sudden, the interim arrangements collapsed. Many left… We need to end the closure regime. This is more important than even the wall. it makes it impossible for Palestinians to move around in the West Bank–it took me an hour to get to you today, a ten-minute trip… [O]ur business class would come back if they could be persuaded that this process is on its way to resolution. We'd get somebody's hundred-thousand investment if there were loan guarantees, another hundred thousand if there were an end to closure. Then again, we won't get the million until he believes we are on the way to resolution. Nobody believes that it is, and the wall is their proof."
Great reporting. And it makes me want to cry out to my president: Mr Obama, tell them to tear down that wall!
