Palestinian sweet future

During the last week several articles have appeared in international newspapers talking about the rebirth of Palestinian economy. Although rebirth is way too optimistic (there should had been something first to be able to rebirth), it has some sense. Most of the articles focused on Nablus city. It isn’t casual.

The small new hopes for Palestine have the shape of a new theatre, a festival and a World Guinness Record. The last one is for the world longest knafa, a traditional local dessert honored this way by 170 local bakers, who have made 74 m of sweetness.

However, like the knafa, Palestinian economic rebirth may be too sweet to allow us to see the whole pack. The West Bank needs still more freedom from Israel if they want to grow up. Plus it is just half of the Palestinian reality. The other one, in Gaza, suffers the Israeli blockade and the debris cleaning from the last Gaza war will last for at least one year.

It is true that in the West Bank things are, slowly, getting better. Five years ago I remember being myself in Nablus with serious shortages of entertaining offers, water and freedom of movement. Weekends were spent in Jasmine’s hotel’s terrace watching the Israeli jeeps below during curfews making arrests.

Today, however, pressure has been lowered. Still the problems persist, but a new cinema has opened, festivals arrive to the city, freedom of movement for the Palestinians have eased and the north checkpoint of the city has disappeared. And against those who claim that it could have ended in a disaster, the security has improved.

Most of the merit is for the Palestinian police officer. Created with European Union equipment and training (in Jordan), now they are a truly police force and not the paramilitaries that I met the first time. The efficiency of these officers to maintain the order surprised even the Israelis, when in the last winter they were able to keep the order on the streets even though the operation in Gaza.

But all that is just an illusion that sooner or later can break. Without taking into consideration Gaza, Israel should leave from the settlements in the West Bank if they want to avoid incidents. Sure, they are not as often as before (from more than 200 in 2004 to just 2 in 2008) but still sometimes, it happens.

However, Binyamin Netanyahu’s government seems decided to continue the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. They accepted to demolish 30 illegal (just those considered illegal by the Israel courts) settlements, but still goes on with plans to expand East Jerusalem colonies, even against the USA and the EU will.

The truth is that the situation doesn’t improve substantially in the West Bank and it gets worse in Gaza. The IMF warned about it on its last report on the region. And even inside Israel’s military recognizes and denounces abuses against the Palestinians.

At the other side of the wall, it doesn’t help that Fatah is more and more like a despotic Arab regime, more worried about keeping the chair than anything else. Last example came with the suspension of Al Jazeera broadcastings after airing an opinion contraire to Abbas.

Neither of them are democratic; neither of them are good for the Palestinians. Neither Hamas does it better implementing his new religious police forces -Iranian or Saudi Arabian style- in Gaza. And the ones who lose in between all this are the Palestinian people. Used by everyone for their own interests, once again.


Nablus from the Jasmine hotel, 2004.
Photo: me


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