Newspapers around the world Tuesday published a wire service article stating that the Palestinian Authority economy is expected to plunge by 15 percent this year and that economic growth will shrink by 4 percent because of the war in Gaza
The headline of the Associated Press article should have read, “Statistics, Statistic and Damned Lies.”
It is indeed accurate that the World Bank’s senior official in Judea, Gaza and Samaria indeed predicted that the Palestinian Authority’s’ economic growth is dropping sharply, but the whole truth, buried in the bottom of the article, is that the economy in Judea and Samaria actually is growing, albeit at a diminishing rate, just like in Israel.
One popular English-language Israeli news site bought the story, hook, line and sinker, and another also published the news of the “dismal forecast,” noting in a gross understatement that Gaza as the biggest impacted area.
You have to skip down to the 18th paragraph in the 19-paragraph story to discover, “According to the bank’s projections, the West Bank economy is likely to stagnate this year, with about 0.5 percent growth, while the Gaza economy is expected to shrink by 15 percent.”
But what about the statement that the “overall Palestinian economy will shrink by 4 percent this year”? How can that be if the economy in Judea and Samaria will grow.
Quick arithmetic comes up with the obvious answer that the statistics for Gaza, whose rulers brought the recent war on themselves, drag down the total figure that includes Judea and Samaria.
It should also be taken into account that the World Bank is the same grandiose institution that in 2005 promoted the expulsion of Jews from Gaza, euphemistically called the “Disengagement,” and was instrumental in the colossal stupidity of turning over Jewish greenhouses to Gaza farmers so that they could build their own economy in peace and freedom.
Within days, hothouses were torn down and became training grounds for Fatah and Hamas terrorists. Ever since the intifada in the late 1980s and the ensuing Oslo War in 2000, Gaza’s economy went from boom to bust.
But let’s stick with the World Bank and its dismal forecast.
By some unholy coincidence, the World Bank’s Palestinian Authority-based official, Steen Lau Jorgensen, released his report a week before a meeting of donor nations to the Palestinian Authority when the U.N. general Assembly convenes.
Just a coincidence, of course.
And what is the World Bank’s solution to the sagging economy? Get rid of Hamas, which no person with an iota of honesty can deny is totally corrupt and has exploited Gaza Arabs, raped them financially and robbed them of humanitarian aid?
No way.
The solution, according to the World Bank, is the “unity government” in which Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Hamas’s rival Fatah movement, is supposed to work with Gaza technocrats who are under the thumb of Hamas.
And of course Israel it to blame for the sagging economy in Gaza by restricting construction materials into Gaza, the same materials that Hamas used to build tunnels for terror.
Staging a promo for the donors’ conference, Jorgensen said, “It’s not clear that you would have substantial amounts … of new money coming in if there is no unified governance framework,” and Israel’s restrictions on the transfer of materials that can be used for terror mean it would take “18 years” to rebuild destroyed Gaza homes.
Remember the Hamas claims during the war, dutifully and reported without question by the London Guardian, as noted Tuesday by the Elder of Ziyon blog site, that the Israel Air Force supposedly bombed and destroyed Gaza’s power plant?