Overshadowed by the announcement that Saudi Arabia will purchase a record-setting $60 billion in U.S. arms was news that the Saudis have given about $30 million (practically nothing compared to the defense outlay) so far this year to the Palestinian Authority.
We know why the first statistic is noteworthy: It’s the largest weapons sale in U.S. history. But the latter number is significant. By this time last year, the Saudis had given about $241 million to the PA. (The United Arab Emirates drastically reduced its aid as well.) That is, now that negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel are underway, Arab nations are pulling their support for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians.
On Sept. 14 The New Republic asked, in a blaring headline, “How Will We Know If Netanyahu Is Serious About Peace?” But the better question would be, is anyone besides the Israeli prime minister doing anything for peace, or for the Palestinians?
Initially criticized nearly unanimously by the left, Binyamin Netanyahu’s “economic peace” was premised on encouraging economic growth in the West Bank without waiting for a peace agreement that, if it ever arrived, would hand over power to an Arab autocracy. And it has, thus far, been a success.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the West Bank economy grew by 9 percent in the first half of this year, as Israel eased roadblocks and Netanyahu himself even lobbied foreign leaders to invest in the West Bank. Those efforts paid off, as Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced investments by Intel Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and TouchStar into the West Bank and Palestinian areas in eastern Jerusalem.
To add to that progress, as Hussein Ibish and Michael Weiss wrote, the West Bank–especially Ramallah–is experiencing a housing market boom. Ibish and Weiss point out that the strategy that is working is not one centered on creating a strong central government. Rather, the “state-building program has qualities of perestroika–efforts to separate party from government and to replace a patronage-based government designed to satisfy political constituencies with a technocratic meritocracy.”
So Bibi Netanyahu’s plan is empowering individual Palestinians and spurring their success in the private sector. Why would Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, cut their aid at such a crucial time?
Because the conflict diverts the attention of Arab citizens away from the constant failures of their own governments. In such countries–and in stark contrast to Israel–there is no free speech. That means the “Palestinian question” is the one complaint these men and women are permitted to air publicly. Without this outlet, the angst of the Arab Street would be aimed at its leadership.
The only other use the Palestinians and their refugees have to Arab leaders is as a tool to destroy Israel. In the words of a resolution passed by Syria in 1957: “Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees’ right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason.”
At the beginning of the Oslo process in the early 1990s, a wealthy Nablus-born and American-educated man named Munib al-Masri flew over the West Bank with Yasser Arafat in a helicopter. “If you have good intentions and you say you want to reach a solution, we could do it,” al-Masri says he told Arafat, adding, “if you have money and water, it could be comparable to Israel, this piece of land.”
Thus, at the slightest hint of progress, the Arab states pull back. They want distraction and destruction. It’s time to stop blaming Netanyahu, the one outsider who has actually helped average Palestinians find a better way of life, creating peace for Israel in the process.