Palestinians Protest Against Kushner's Economic Plan for Peace
The U.S. proposal includes the creation of a global investment fund.
(Bloomberg) -- Palestinians demonstrated in the West Bank on Monday against a Trump administration plan to raise tens of billions of dollars to boost their economy, calling it a “snow job” meant to persuade them to give up their goal of statehood.
About 2,000 people converged on central Ramallah carrying a coffin meant to symbolize the death of this week’s U.S.-backed conference on Middle East peace in Bahrain, while protesters in Hebron clashed with Israeli troops. Palestinian officials and business organizations are boycotting the conference and have tried to persuade other nations not to attend, saying an economic plan should only come as part of a larger political agreement.
“We need economy, we need the money, really we need the assistance -- but before everything there must be a political solution” to the Palestinian dispute with Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday. “First you have to recognize the state, then you can give money.”
The 40-page economic proposal unveiled over the weekend envisions a global investment fund that the U.S. hopes will lift Palestinian and neighboring Arab economies. Nearly $30 billion of the $50 billion would be spent in the Palestinian territories, with other funds going to neighboring countries that host large numbers of Palestinian refugees including Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.
‘Go Home’
“This is a nice snow job,” said Sam Bahour, a Ramallah-based Palestinian-American business consultant and chair of the board of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy. “Go home,” he advised President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is leading the project. “You’re wasting time and taxpayers’ dollars trying to whitewash 52 years of military occupation.”
Mounir el-Jagoub, information officer for Abbas’s Fatah party, said the White House plan was based on using Arab money “to kill the political aspirations of the Palestinian people.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would consider the U.S. peace plan “fairly and with openness,” and criticized the Palestinians for rejecting it out of hand.
“I cannot understand how the Palestinians, before they even heard the plan, reject it outright,” Netanyahu said Sunday. “That’s not the way to proceed.”
Taxes Withheld
The Palestinian economy is suffering in part because the Trump administration halted hundreds of millions of dollars of funding. Israel recently began withholding about $11 million per month in taxes, roughly 5% of the amount it collects on behalf of the Palestinians, to offset stipends that the Palestinian Authority pays to those killed by Israel, killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis, or held in Israeli jails on security-related charges. The Palestinian leadership then rejected the remaining 95% of the money in protest, leaving it in dire financial straits.
Azzam Shawwa, head of the Palestine Monetary Authority, said economic growth slowed to 0.8% last year from 3.3% in 2017, and he expects this year “to be a big mess" after the funding was halted. The Arab League agreed at a meeting on Sunday to provide the Palestinian Authority with $100 million per month to help relieve the strain after the Palestinian budget deficit reached $700 million.
Since Trump took office, he has walked back the longstanding U.S. commitment to Palestinian statehood, recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, closed the Palestine Liberation Organization’s diplomatic mission in Washington as well as halted the aid.
Kushner will lead the U.S. delegation and officials from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain will attend. After Palestinians decided to boycott the event, Israeli officials weren’t invited.
Some Israelis expressed doubt about the summit. “I don’t see any chance that the conference will bring a solution,” former head of military intelligence Aharon Ze’evi Farkash told Kan News.
Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina was similarly dismissive of the Trump team’s peace effort.
“First it was a deal, then it became a plan, now it’s a workshop,” he said. “By tomorrow, it will be just a meeting.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Fadwa Hodali in Ramallah at fhodali@bloomberg.net;Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net;Michael S. Arnold in Tel Aviv at marnold48@bloomberg.net;Ivan Levingston in Tel Aviv at ilevingston@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net
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