As Palestinian farmers' crops have withered, Israeli settlers on Palestinian land have been able to sunbathe around their newly installed swimming pools. Palestinian markets have been flooded by Israeli products. There are no customs controls, and no form of protection is afforded to Palestinian products. 92 per cent of imports into the West Bank come from Israel, and 22 per cent of Israeli exports are destined for Gaza. As a result, the majority of Palestinian farmers, who constitute about 65 per cent of the population, have found themselves without land, without water and without safeguards against the influx of Israeli agricultural products.
Palestinian industry is stagnant.
Already the victim of British colonial policy and Jordanian rule, the latter concentrating all Palestinian industry on the East Bank when the West Bank was under Jordanian control, the Palestinian economy has now been subjugated to the Israeli, not only in terms of the dependency of the periphery upon the centre, but also as part of Israel's policy to de-develop the Palestinian economy. Left, the former mayor of Jerusalem, Ruhi Al-Khatib, and his wife, in exile in Jordan. Right, Bassam Al-Shaka'a, former mayor of Nablus and the victim of an assassination attempt that cost him both legs. As was the case both before, and in the wake of the 1948 war, Palestinian farmers have had no alternative but to put themselves on the Israeli labour market under very singular conditions in which political, rather than economic factors, have prevailed. Palestinian labourers have been forced to work at rates varying from 40 to 60 per cent of the pay of Jewish workers doing the same jobs.