According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, as much as $2.4 billion in United States currency has drained out of the economy of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip thanks to closures, mass unemployment, and the flattening and destruction of most infrastructure by Israeli tanks and helicopters.

The report said that the damage is so extensive that it could prove impossible to fix, regardless of when - or whether - peace is restored. The profound changes that have taken place in the functioning of the economy are unlikely to be easily reversed even if stability is attained. Almost half the population is living on an income below the UN\’s own poverty threshold of $2 a day.

Trying to solve some of this issues, last Thursday the Palestinian occupied city of Bethlehem was the epicenter of a business conference with more than 1,200 foreign potential investors from all over the world who are ready to take risks and put their money in developing projects that will help to build an economy which is paralyzed due the Zionist occupation of Palestinian land.

Palestinian Authority leaders welcomed their guests by stressing that investing in the Palestinian Territories would be an investment in the promotion of peace and stability, not just for Palestine, but also for the entire region. They expect that the Palestinian economy will revive with the creation of a free, competitive and diversified market. Some of the potential projects include the building of affordable housing projects in the main occupied cities, and a commercial and residential center with an estimated cost of 200 million dollars. The main goal is to open new markets and sources of income by the creation of new job opportunities that should ease the daily life of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian Prime Minister said in a press conference that investors signed $1.4 billion contracts for 11 large investments. He added that this would create 35,000 jobs, while the Palestinian Minister of Communication said that it would create 50,000 jobs. When a journalist questioned the Prime Minister what would be the government policy to help the popular classes to enable them to face the price crisis of fuel and food while the donors promise the PA $7.7 billion, he replied that Palestinians are poor. They are unable to subsidize them but what the government is able to do is to control prices!!

Despite of all the optimistic scenarios that investors and leaders may have for the future, there are facts that should be noticed as well. The Palestinian areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip remain dominated by Israeli economic policies no matter what agreement both Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority are trying to agree upon. In addition to this, the economy of those disconnected areas depends for their development on international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, which played a central role in designing not just the PA economy also the political context that shapes the daily lives of Palestinians.

In addition, starting any kind of economic activity in the Palestinian areas requires the approval of Tel Aviv, and it must be noticed that any investment that may take place in the Palestinian territories that could be approved by the occupying power, should not be in contradiction and compete with Israeli interests. Even if Israel would let some investments take place, who is going to protect the new projects if Israel decides to destroy them as they have done several times before, especially in 2002? At that time, Arab regimes paid for the reconstruction of Palestinian areas destroyed by the Occupation forces.

By doing things in this way, Israel is maintaining the principal objective of its economic policies for the Occupied Territories, that is, to undermine any kind of growth in the productive capacity of the future Palestinian state and keep it completely dependent upon international aid, which depends as well on the decision making of the Palestinian leaders, sometimes in clear contradiction with what the Palestinian people freely decided.

For instance, the Palestinian economy began to experience a descending level of the main indicators since the second Intifada started, when most of the international aid and western donor countries set conditions for their financial help toward the Palestinian people due the political situation. After Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and the subsequent boycott by Western governments on the PA, the Palestinian economy just worsened.

The current siege on Gaza, with a population of more than 1,400,000 people, has a catastrophic effect not just on the daily lives of Palestinians, but it is also represents a collapse of all the economic activities in that area, where 96% of industrial operations have stopped, exportations are banned, with a direct impact in the creation of new job opportunities for the Palestinians. This makes 40% of the Palestinian population under occupation completely dependent on international aid. In the best case situation, where all the contracts will materialize, who can guarantee that the destroyed Palestinian infrastructure will be able to sustain the new major projects?

For Israel, this is not a bad scenario, on the contrary, because most of the donor countries and organizations are forced to buy their aid goods on the Israeli market since it is the Israeli Government that decides which aid goods can be delivered to the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, the PA is left without any kind of control over the decision of which developing projects could take place on the areas under his jurisdiction, the West Bank. By doing so, what the donor countries and the Israeli policies of Occupation are actually doing is financing the internal conflicts inside the Palestinian population, especially since both areas, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are completely disconnected to on another.

Under this current scenario, any kind of private investment will be not possible in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and the viability of the Palestinian economy will continue depending upon international aid and will just widen the current platform of Zionist occupation of Palestine.

I remember a few years ago walking through the wonderful narrow streets of the occupied Old city of Jerusalem, seeing a small shop managed by an old Palestinian man who was selling souvenirs to the tourists. I entered the shop, not because I wanted to buy something, I am not a tourist in my own land (despite the Zionist entity who is occupying my land allowing me to enter there just as a tourist) but because I was captured by the smell of fresh coffee that beckoned me from inside the shop. As I know my people, I knew that as soon as I set foot inside the shop I would be welcomed with this hot and stimulating beverage. I was right, after just a minute I was enjoying my drink and having a nice talk with the man. I made the rounds of his shop, looking at the hundreds small plates, pictures, colorful fabrics of all kinds of imaginative and very original T-shirts hanging on one of the walls. T-shirts with pictures of Jerusalem, with Holy Land slogans, with IDF motives (always wondering who might buy one of those!) and I saw one that scared me the most because of its realism. It was a simple T-shirt with the slogan: “America Don’t worry, Israel is behind you!”

When I left the shop I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t get it, I was thinking that the right way to say it is “Israel Don’t worry, America is behind you!” but not the opposite. Anyway, after a few minutes of confusing thoughts about who comes first, the egg or the chicken, I forget the whole thing and continued my walk in the Old city of Jerusalem.

This happened 3 years ago.

Today, watching the news and thinking of what is going on in the Arab Homeland this slogan came to my mind out of the blue and I started to realize the real meaning of it.

The recent events in Lebanon and in recent months in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of Gaza Strip proves that certain international and regional powers are continuing efforts to implement their “master plan” of chaos for the region as the first step in a greater plan to make their domination permanent.

This is not a conspiracy theory as many are saying, is just the result of decades of efforts from the imperialistic powers to gain the control of certain strategic areas in the Arab Homeland and to control Arab oil and monopolize their market. For that reason these incidents are not limited just to Lebanon. Sometimes we get so overwhelmed with the huge amount of propaganda that we are not able to see the whole picture, the clear chain of events with similar patterns from the Gaza Strip to Baghdad to Somalia to Darfur to Beirut. Some elements can be different in each case, but they have one thing in common, the master colonialist project of United States and the high security risks that these events cause to its main settlement in the region, Israel. These places are strategically interconnected and the success of the US plan in the region depends being able to control them.

Today, US-led imperialism is threatening national sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. All recent interventions of imperialistic powers in different regions have resulted in divisions of countries and separation of peoples by ongoing wars. Kosovo and Iraq are just examples of the implementation of “divide and rule” policy of imperialism. And the new states that are the outcome of these policies are not more than controlled states which serve as bases for imperialistic activities.

The Arab region is not an exception and as long as the Arab ruling classes are either unable to protest or are participating in these externally designed and oriented plans, the only alternative is popular resistance. Resistance movements of any kind are just a threat for this goal.

The pro-imperialistic Arab regimes understand that their position is extremely fragile since they don’t have the support of the masses, and they compromised their own people’s sovereignty and development for the sake of their own survival. Adel Samara, in his book “Epidemic of Globalization” describes this situation very well: “As long as each regime is guarding a set of foreign interests inside the Arab Homeland, that regime has no alternative but to oppress the popular classes whose interests are in contradiction with the ruling comprador and its western capitalist allies. These interests vary from the plunder of raw material and oil to an open market where the regime becomes the agent that saturates it with foreign products and permits the spread of multinational corporations with their branches in many Arab countries chasing cheap and oppressed labor“. [1]

To protect these interests and to guarantee their share, the trickle-down reward, Arab regimes suppressed all forms of liberties and the current situation in Lebanon is just an example of that. Siniora’s government didn’t have another option than to back down the parliament decision of last week to make the communication system of Hezbollah illegal due the pressure from the supporters of the resistance, but immediately the Arab League foreign ministers have expressed support for Siniora, despite the fact that they are aware of the root cause of Lebanon’s crisis.

Israel is not standing on the sidelines in what is going on here, in fact it is very afraid that any resistance movement against its own expansionist and imperialist plans can take the control over a portion of what it considers its own domains. Israel is the central Key in this puzzle due its strategic location. For that reason, Israel is also doing its part of the deal calling the International Community to take a look of the situation in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip and do whatever it can to stop this frightening crisis to the security of its own state. Indeed, insists that the International Community consider only the security interests of Israel alone as they attempt once again to convince us that religion and sectarian fights are the main reason for the disputes in the area. In doing so they cover the political motivations and especially the economic interests involved in the whole process.

How funny is that? Calling upon the International Community to take an action from a state who is ‘celebrating’ 60 years of occupation of others’ land, 60 years of dispossession of other people, 60 years of terror against civilians and 60 years of neglecting every single thing the international community has asked for.

If the US and all the western pro-imperialistic governments for that matters lose control over this area, the whole plan can came to an end, since they are not in a position to attack another country and take the control of all the natural resources without an some kind of convincing explanation for doing so, or at least not without a propagandistic campaign prior to the invasion to make it look like a “rescue plan” from the jaws of evil. What made the US hesitate launching new occupation is Iraqi resistance, which has truly worn down the US army. This is another reason why the target of all formal regimes in the west is resistance.

Escalation of tensions and conflicts in Lebanon and Palestine is in the American regime’s best interests because they know that no matter what happens Israel is there for doing what they have so far been doing better than anyone else: oppressing others, occupying, attacking and killing in “security’s name”, everything that is needed to make the master plan succeed. Anyway, they have more than 60 years’ experience doing just that.

Many Arabs like myself during those walks in the Old city of Jerusalem 3 years ago, developed a false thinking that the Jews control the US. This is a miserable way of thinking. Israel is the product of the interests and needs of the capitalist core two centuries before the Zionist organization of Theodor Herzl was even founded. Israel is doing a job in the Arab Homeland; its role is a functional. The last proof of that is the fact that, while Israel tried to end its aggression against Lebanon 2006 given the unsuccessful campaign, the US ordered Israel to continue until its final defeat!

And yes, America Don´t worry, Israel is behind you!

[1] Samara, Adel, Epidemic of Globalization: Ventures in World Order, Arab Nation and Zionism, pp 30, Palestine Research and Publishing Foundation

The pro-imperialist western Lebanese government aims at pitting the National Army against the people and the resistance. Their goal is to hide behind the army because they lack popular support. It should be noted that the army establishment is still led by nationalists.

Prior to the Israeli invasion against Lebanon in 2006, there was a series of internal and external pressure to dismantle the legitimate movement of resistance in Lebanon, which is Hezbollah. This pressure increased after this group defeated the Israeli army and restored the hopes of other resistance movements in various parts of the Arab Homeland. This victory demonstrated without a doubt that resistance against globalism on the one hand, and guerrilla war on the other is still possible.

A few days ago, after the longest session in the history of the Lebanese parliament, the pro-western coalition voted to make the communication net of Hezbollah illegal, a communication system that was very effective against the Israeli army during the war last summer. This “Declaration of War” against the resistance is just another example of how the local puppets of the US and Israel are fighting against their own people, because through this action, the government is actually dismantling the main tool the resistance has to fight against the colonialist project in the region.

This is not a minor issue, it is the first time since the Taif Accords in 1989 that put an end to the civil war in the country and consecrated the legitimacy of the armed resistance of Hezbollah against Israel, that the government condemns a communication network which is part of the security apparatus of the movement and considers it an “illegal threat against the State”.

What the Lebanese Government is doing today is nothing less than the dirty work of Israel, just a few days after the US government declared once again that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, keeping it on the “Blacklist”.

The aim here can only be to give to the US the control of the Airport and all the communication systems within the country, with the result of undermining the legitimate resistance of the people against their main target, Israel. They do this by provoking internal fights, which are easy to add to the confusion of religious disputes, just in the way they already have been doing in Iraq and in Palestine. The main reason behind the firing of the leader of the airport is that he declared that al-Hariri secretly met Bandar, the Saudi Amir, in the Airport several days before the government decided to fire him. Bandar was the only Arab who was told by Bush when the invasion against Iraq would start.

The biggest threat for a colonialist project in the region, including both the Arab ruler regimes and the western supporters, are the people and their power of resistance. To undermine this power and to create a constant climate of internal tension is the goal of anyone who is against a unified Arab nationalistic movement in the Arab Homeland.

How we can explain other than in this way the several accusations of Iranian intromission in Lebanon, even asking for the expulsion of its Ambassador and to paralyze all the flights to and from Iran due the support of the Iranian government to Hezbollah, but not a single word has been uttered against the external intromission of the US in Iraq, not a word against the allowance of a third of Qatari land surrendered in order to house a US base, not a word against external forces, armed to the teeth under the false pretext of “safeguarding democracy”, ignoring the respect of Lebanese territoriality and considering as “terrorists” a large number of its population?

France, the “motherland” keeps an important military presence in the area, focused mainly upon imposing the achievement of the recuperation of the colonialist project and once again doing the dirty work of an entity that has been oppressing an entire people for more than 60 years.

A ministerial meeting will take place in Cairo, convened by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for what reason other than to condemn once again the right of people to resist the oppressor, as Hezbollah is doing successfully in Lebanon? Certainly these ministers will discuss ways to stop the “negative” influence that the supporters of resistance have inside the country.

Finally, it should be noted that Palestine is in the core of the conflict in Lebanon. The termination of resistance has never been devoted to ‘building’ and safeguarding Lebanon, but to protecting Israel and making it a ‘normal’ state in the Arab Homeland. But the first decision of the agents, if they succeed, will be the re-settlement of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon to...anywhere else but Palestine.