The idea that Israel can manipulate the direction of Palestinian public opinion and Palestinian attitudes toward peace through the use of economic carrots and sticks is as old as the occupation itself. Back in 1967, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, supported by Shimon Peres, initiated the open door policy aimed at integrating the Palestinian and Israeli economies by encouraging Palestinians to work in Israel. Dayan reasoned that close economic dependency would prevent Palestinians from contesting Israeli occupation by force.
During Likud rule in Israel in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, when the PLO continued to oppose a peace process with Israel and Israel did nothing to encourage it, the prevailing assumption held that economic benefits for the West Bank and Gaza were the best insurance against active Palestinian opposition to Israel s rule.
Yet again, after the signing of the Oslo declaration of principles in September 1993, Israeli and Palestinian economists set about negotiating a joint economic framework. It was based on the assumption – this time with the active agreement of the Palestinian leadership – that close economic integration between Israel and the Palestinian Authority would benefit the nascent Israeli-Palestinian peace process by providing maximum economic benefit to the PA.
In all these instances, the assumed link between prosperity and progress toward peace and stability was proven wrong. Prosperity, the carrot , was there – but not peace. The first and second intifadas broke out at times of relative economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian national political factor, opposition to Israeli settlement expansion and the resolve of extremist Palestinian organizations to prevent unacceptable compromises with Israel were stronger than a full stomach .
We are presently witnessing yet another attempt to manipulate the Palestinian economy in order to achieve a desired political outcome – this time with sticks as well as carrots. Once again, the moderate PLO leadership subscribes to the strategy, as does the United States and to a large extent the European Union. The idea is to make Palestinians in Gaza miserable by denying them all but the most basic food and medicine needed to stay alive while simultaneously delivering on prosperity and a peace process in the West Bank, to the point where the Gazans turn on their Hamas rulers and somehow dismiss or remove them.
By cooperating in an economic boycott of a portion of his own people, albeit with the best of intentions, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is by any standard walking on thin ice. He will have to emerge from his biweekly meetings with PM Ehud Olmert with a truly outstanding declaration of principles and noticeable progress toward restoring security and prosperity in the West Bank in order even to put the boycott of Gaza to the test and determine whether this concept of an economic stick works with Palestinians.
But that kind of political achievement is very doubtful. And everything we have learned about the Palestinian attitude toward manipulation by economic incentives and disincentives tells us that the boycott of Gaza will fail.
At the level of public opinion, Palestinians in Gaza are more likely to blame the PLO for their misery than Hamas, which from all reports has already far exceeded the PLO s poor performance in terms of delivering on law and order in Gaza. If called to the polls, Gazans votes will more likely be based on the argument that the PLO never gave Hamas a fair chance to govern than on anger at Hamas. Besides, recent Palestinian public opinion surveys appear to indicate that Palestinians will in any case reject the compromises Abbas negotiates with Israel. And if none of the above happens, Hamas will fall back on violence – suicide bombings in Israel, assassinations in the West Bank – to thwart Abbas designs, while the latter will once again prove impotent to restore security no matter how well the West Bank economy is doing.
Better to abandon this strategy, which in any case is hard to fine tune , before the first CNN and Al Jazeera coverage of starving children emerges from Gaza. That outcome is as inevitable as Israeli bullets and rockets, fired with the best of intentions at interdicting terrorists, sooner or later killing Gazan children. Better to revert to a policy that invokes closure of Gaza s borders solely on the basis of Israel s legitimate security concerns. If those concerns are not satisfied, we may be facing a major military escalation against Hamas. If they are, we should trade with Gaza, help market its cherry tomatoes and flowers in Europe and allow it to import non-lethal goods.
None of these alternatives is likely to persuade Hamas to pursue a real path of coexistence with us. But neither, by the same token, will they make any difference to the success or failure of the West Bank peace process.
Yossi Alpheris the Israeli coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and a former special adviser to PM Ehud Barak. This commentary is published by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with bitterlemons-international.org.
