David Bernstein blows apart the lie that Israeli occupation of the territories has "impoverished" the palestinian Arabs:

Browing around the blogosphere recently, I've noticed that critics of Israel consistently repeat various versions of the following talking point (promoting by false propaganda emanating from sources such as this one): "what do you expect from the Palestinians? Israeli occupation impoverished them, and desperate, hungry people can only be expected to take desperate measures."

The idea that "occupation," per se, impoverished the Palestinians is simply wrong. . .

--"Private consumption per capita [and per capita includes population growth, which was among the highest in the world in the territories] rose during 1969-1986 at an overall rate of 5% per annum."

-- Outside of regugee camps in Gaza (which Israel wanted to replace with permanent housing, but was prevented so as not to help solve the "refugee crisis" that provided the PLO's reason for existence), "in 1986, 95% of the Households in Gaza had running water and 100% had electricity (compared with 3 percent for water and 14% for electricity in 1974)."

--The percentage individual "with at least 9 years of education has risen from 22% in 1970 to 46% in 1986 in the West Bank, and from 32% to 54% in the Gaza Strip during the same period." Not noted in the paper I'm citing, all of the universities in the West Bank and Gaza were opened during the Israeli administration of the territories. There were none before that.

--As this source (hostile to Israel) acknowledges, as of 1993, per capita income in the Palestinian territories was higher than in Egypt (MUCH!) or Jordan, the countries that previously occupied Gaza and the West Bank, respectively. The logical conclusion from this is that if Israel had not won these territories in the Six Day War, the Arab population would have been much poorer.

Posted by: Ragnar at 08:37 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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