MESS Report / New cars, a sign of West Bank good life

[oberliner]

New car lots and showrooms, offering vehicles of every kind but mainly Korean, have sprung up at the entrances to Nablus, from the Hawara checkpoint in the south and from the west. Similar showrooms have appeared at Jenin's southern and northern entrances.

The dealerships, showing brand-new cars, reflect the economic growth in the West Bank. While in the '90s, West Bank cities served as a hideout for cars stolen from Israel, today their streets are lined with just-bought models.

<snip>

Al-Hafi says things are definitely better than they used to be. "The dealerships have been renovated and are offering new merchandise. We sell cars from all over the world. They must be up to Israeli standards, of course, and come via Jordan or the Ashdod port."

But cars are only part of the economic development story. A shopping mall has opened on the ground floor of a new Nablus office building. The city center is thriving, the open-air markets, clothing stores and cafes are bustling. In Jenin, not far from the former settlements of Ganim and Kadim, the Dahyat al-Jinan neighborhood is being built. It will have brand-new power and water infrastructure, parks and services, all carefully planned. A new neighborhood, Rehan, is being built in Ramallah. Al-Hafi says his family has bought three apartments in the new neighborhood, which will have private homes as well.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/mess-report-new-cars-a-sign-of-west-bank-good-life-1.302237

[Ken Burch]

1. Oh puhleeze.

They had stories like this all the coming from the South African bantustans back in the day.

[aquart]

2. The West Bank is not Gaza.

Had a friend staying there last year with a local family while taking Arabic at Birzeit. A university town is pretty much the same anywhere in the world.

http://www.birzeit.edu/

[Ken Burch]

4. That would be the Birzeit University that the Israeli colonial authorities keep shutting down,

thus repeatedly denying Palestinians any chance of a university education for years at a time.

And it's not like the West Bank is suddenly Disneyland.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[oberliner]

7. Here is a counterpoint to this article

West Bank Prosperity Is a Myth

Prominent Zionists have spent recent months crowing loudly about the so-called economic miracle currently underway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They proclaim with breathless wonder that Palestinian beer exists, and it's tasty. We're told that the 'good Palestinians' in the West Bank, in contrast to their restive Islamic counterparts in Gaza, are fully embracing the normalization of the Israeli occupation. The idea is that their bubble economy will be permitted to expand modestly through capitulation. Eventually, their state will materialize in that bubble. In any case, a recent Save the Children UK report debunks the prosperity claim. But even if it hadn't, Zionists ought to understand that a Lexus is no substitute for individual freedom and dignity.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/west-bank-prosperity-is-a_b_644147.html

[Ken Burch]

13. Thanks for posting the counterpoint.

n/t.

[bemildred]

15. "They proclaim with breathless wonder that Palestinian beer exists, and it's tasty."

LOL.
:thumbsup:

[oberliner]

17. Not sure that is a fair characterization of what the NY Times article was saying

Here is the article he references:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/opinion/18iht-edcohen.html?_r=1

It actually seems more to be a story of the struggle that one particular microbrewery in Taybeh has endured over the years and how things have improved lately.

[bemildred]

20. I was not intending to characterize anything.

The quote stands by itself, in my view.

[oberliner]

21. Not yours - the author's (Ahmed Moor)

I think his characterization of the article he linked to with that one-liner you cited is pretty unfair and inaccurate.

[bemildred]

23. I agree that he doesn't like the article he links to. nt

[shira]

16. And here are counterpoints to Ahmed Moor's article

http://thebrothersofjudea.blogspot.com/2010/07/ahmed-moor-on-west-bank-part-1.html

http://thebrothersofjudea.blogspot.com/2010/07/ahmed-moor-on-west-bank-part-2.html

But what I really wanted to talk about was that his is exactly what the article is all about, and in fact what Mr. Moor is all about. On the one hand he will cry endlessly about how horribly the Palestinians suffer, but then in this article he makes it clear that he wants them to suffer before they give up anything he thinks they deserve. He is more than willing to throw his fellow Palestinians under the bus forever before letting them compromise even one inch for the sake of peace. The above comment sums it up but I like this one too:

"In light of all this, it bears underlining my main point: The Palestinians will one day be prosperous, but not until they're free. Freedom, not wealth, is the more sublime human imperative."

Have you got that, Zionists? The Palestinians should remain impoverished forever rather than compromise anything to Israel! We have already seen just how extreme Mr. Moor is in his other works, and we know that he believes the "right" of return is inalienable. Right now he is talking about freedom, but it seems likely that he would also want the Palestinians not to be prosperous until they are granted "their rights," i.e. the right to flood into Israel and destroy it.

It just goes to show what we have already known: That he is more Palestinian than the Palestinians by a long shot. It doesn't bother him in the least if Palestinians suffer, if it means keeping up the struggle against Israel, which places him above and beyond even your average HP talkbacker. One would think that caring about the welfare of the Palestinian people is what makes one pro-Palestinian but apparently that isn't the case. One needs to be willing to screw the Palestinians over for some arbitrary and abstract concept and/or pride, then one can call oneself "pro-Palestinian."

Moor's idea of "freedom" is Palestinians under the control of Hamas or Fatah, without basic civil rights. Or another oppressive occupation, but under people from Palestinians' own gene pool. That's MUCH more preferable. Only then can Palestinians prosper, like all the other millions of Arabs in the middle east.

:eyes:

Such is "pro-Palestinian hasbara".

[oberliner]

18. Ahmed Moor really despises Abbas and Fayyad

He has stated on his (now defunct) blog that "Abbas and Fayyad collaborated with the Israelis to massacre their own people" and he has called for them to be brought up on war crimes charges at the Hague.

He has a lot of vitrol for the Palestinian Authority generally and has referred to the aforementioned PA leaders as "scum" on his blog.

His blog is still up here (with no postings since a 2009 announcement of its "retirement"):

http://ahmedmoor.blogspot.com/

[shira]

19. Yeah, Hamas is much more preferable to Fatah. Better to have an extreme Islamist theocracy

...in power that sees the whole conflict as a religious war than a secular government.

And that makes Moor and his fellow Palestinian hasbarists part of the pro-peace camp.

So much for peace and human rights.

:eyes:

[oberliner]

22. If elections were held today, Fateh would receive 45% of the participants’ votes, Hamas 26%

Positive evaluation of the performance of the Fayyad government increases from 42% last March to 48% in this poll. Moreover, satisfaction with Abbas’s performance increases slightly during the same period from 47% to 49%.

This from a PCPSR survey from June of this year.

[azurnoir]

3. Poverty in the West Bank

Children living in the poorest parts of the West Bank face significantly worse conditions than their counterparts in Gaza, a study conducted by an international youth charity has found.

The report by Save the Children UK, due to be released on Wednesday, says that families forced from their homes in the West Bank are suffering the effects of grinding poverty, often lacking food, medicine and humanitarian assistance.

The European Commission funded study found that in "Area C"- the 60 per cent of the West Bank under direct Israeli control - the poorest sections of society are suffering disproportionately because basic infrastructure is not being repaired due to Israel's refusal to approve the work.

Homes, schools, drainage systems and roads are in urgent need of repair, but instead of work being allowed, families are being forced to live in tents and do not have access to clean water.

Restrictions on the use of land for agriculture have left thousands of Palestinian children without enough food and many are becoming ill as a result, the study found.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201062916845576597.html

[Tripmann]

5. Ethnic cleansing by a thousand cuts, nothing more, nothing less.

[oberliner]

8. That study was cited in an article by Ahmed Moor on The Huffington Post

It provides an interesting counterpoint to the OP:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmed-moor/west-bank-prosperity-is-a_b_644147.html

[bemildred]

9. What is a "MESS Report"?

One suspects that "MESS" is an acronym of some sort, but the literal meaning: "report on a mess" fits so well in many cases.

A cursory resort to Google didn't turn anything up for me.

[oberliner]

10. About the MESS Report

Welcome to the MESS (Middle East Security Survey) Report.

For more than a decade the two of us have been covering the Mideast conflict, primarily from a security-diplomatic perspective. We've witnessed wars, terror attacks and now and then peace initiatives, which, we are sorry to say, have not amounted to much.

If there is one thing that we have learnt, it is that the narrative is not simple. There is no one binding viewpoint, rather different competing perspectives, which sometimes - ironically - complement one another.

Our collaborative work - in the form of books as well as our Haaretz coverage - have allowed us to present a broader slice of reality for our readers. Now, we will try to do the same thing in this blog - and provide a bigger, credible picture from one of the most complex areas in the world. Now and then, too, we will try to present you with our own personal observations about the situation.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/mess-report/about-the-mess-report-1.263653

[bemildred]

11. Ah, thank you. nt

[Chulanowa]

12. In other words, a blog by two Israeli guys

Which basically has the worth of the blog of a webcomic artist I enjoy.

[oberliner]

14. Avi Issacharoff has been the Palestinian and Arab Affairs Correspondent for Haaretz since 2005

Amos Harel been the military correspondent and defense analyst for Haaretz for the last 12 years.