Luxury Alongside Poverty in the Palestinian Authority

A new  photographic essay from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs  profiles life in the Palestinian authority. Photos of luxury as well as  poverty are juxtapositioned with facts about the new reality on the ground- facts that many Westerns are not aware of.

Since the establishment of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza in the mid-1990s, the U.S. government has committed approximately $5 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians, who are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid.

Overall, Palestinians receive approximately $2 billion in aid each year.

Palestinian economic analysts estimate that the PA has received a total of $25 billion in financial aid during the past two decades

The CIA World Factbook reported the poverty rate in the West Bank as 18% in 2011,20 in contrast to Israel’s poverty rate in 2012 of 21%.

In 2015, life expectancy in the West Bank was 76 years.  This was notably higher than the life expectancy in Arab states of 71 years (in 2012), and the average life expectancy around the world of 70 years.

In 2015, the infant mortality rate in the West Bank and Gaza was 13 per 1,000 live births,24 compared with 27 per 1,000 live births in the Arab states in 2013 and 36.58 per 1,000 live births in the world in 2014.

According to the 2012 Happy Planet Index – a survey conducted by the New Economics Forum to measure happiness around the world – the Palestinian Authority was the third happiest Arab country and the 30th happiest in the world, making the PA happier than many developed countries like the U.S., UK, Sweden, Australia and Canada.

From the essay-  unexpected photos from the West bank

The Nablus Mall

The Tuqan Building in Nablus

Sky Land Park in Ramallah

The Caesar Hotel, Ramallah

                                                 Jawwal cell phone company in el-Bireh

Read it all here

JCPA: The Gaza War 2014

From the JCPA report  The Gaza War 2014: The War Israel Did Not Want and the Disaster It Averted , executive summary

The Gaza War 2014: The War Israel Did Not Want and the Disaster It Averted is a researched and documented narrative that relates the truth as it happened. Israel was the target of thousands of rockets and mortar attacks against its civilian population, with some Israeli areas targeted that had three times the population density of Gaza. Israel clearly acted out of self-defense.

Though the images of the moment may have reflected massive damage in Gaza, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, announced on November 6, 2014, that Israel had gone to “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and prevent civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.” A team of senior U.S. officers was sent to learn from Israel’s tactics. An analysis of UN satellite photos taken during the war shows that 72 percent of all damaged areas in Gaza were “within two miles of the Israeli border.”

 While this was a war Israel did not want, it was a war that inadvertently preempted a terrorist massacre inside Israel’s heartland, principally through a network of sophisticated tunnels built deep under the border, and intended to stream hundreds, if not thousands, of dedicated terrorists, many on suicide missions, in the quiet of night, to destinations where they could kill as many innocent people as possible and leave Israel mauled as never before. This was potentially Hamas’ terrorist version of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria launched a joint surprise attack on Israeli forces in Sinai and the Golan Heights.

Israel suffered 74 dead in the war. Had the Iron Dome system not intercepted 735 rockets fired from Gaza, the Israeli casualty count would have been incalculably higher. Had Hamas accepted the Egyptian ceasefire proposal of July 15, as did Israel, Palestinian wartime fatalities would have numbered less than 200, as opposed to more than 2,100 who died by the time Hamas agreed to a final ceasefire on August 27. Thus, Hamas was fully responsible for more than 1,800 Palestinian deaths.

 Moreover, while UN and Palestinian sources claimed that 72 to 84 percent of Palestinians in Gaza killed during the war were civilians, there are strong reasons to argue that the percentage of civilian casualties was less than 50 percent, a low one-to-one combatant-to-civilian ratio that is unprecedented in modern-day warfare. In addition, we don’t know how many Palestinians in Gaza died as human shields or of natural causes during the 50 days of war, or how many were casualties of the 875 Palestinian rockets known to have landed inside Gaza.

Yet many in the international community uncritically accepted the narrative about the war advanced by Hamas and its allies. A discerning look at the facts of what happened, however, would lead to the conclusion that it is Hamas, not Israel, which should be in the dock for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Read the full report here

Kairos USA document bears "False Witness"

The Jewish community has reacted strongly to the shockingly atavistic Kairos USA Document, released as part of the anti-Israel lobby's pressure campaign against US Churches.

From the Jewish Council for Public Affairs

"The Jewish Council for Public Affairs expressed its shock at the extreme rhetoric of a recently released document, "Call to Action: U.S. Response to the Kairos Palestine Document," produced by a group of American Christians.

“The Kairos USA document, signed by American pro-Palestinian Christian activists in response to the 2009 Kairos Palestine document, is deeply disturbing. If embraced, it would set back the clock on peacemaking even further,” said JCPA President Rabbi Steve Gutow. “It is appalling to think that religious leaders would sign a document that places 100% of the blame for the tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict on one party – faulting Israel even for the terror used against it. This document offers no support for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. It compares those who challenge Israel to those who fought the Nazis. It is a pathetic manifesto for the delegitimization of Israel.”

“Kairos USA misdiagnoses the conflict as one of Israeli ‘state violence’ with no recognition of the threats to Israel,” continued Gutow. “There are over 8,000 words in the document purportedly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; not one of them is ‘terror’ and not one of them is ‘Hamas.’ That makes this document nothing less than a false witness. The Christians who composed and who sign this document are accepting carte blanche the ‘Kairos Palestine’ document which said ‘if there were no occupation, there would be no resistance.’ Had any of these authors or signatories read the Hamas charter—which promotes a jihad to wipe Israel off the map - they may not have been so naïve.

“The Kairos USA document sets up a straw conflict between Israelis and Palestinian Christians,” said JCPA Chair Larry Gold. “Israel takes defensive measures in response to genuine threats, not to harm individuals. Israel’s defensive measures exist to save lives. Contrary to the author’s claims, there would be no need for security measures were there no violence against Israel. It is outrageous that this reality is excluded from the Kairos narrative. We also reject the document’s false dichotomy between fighting anti-Semitism and working for justice for Israelis and Palestinians; we reject the specious claim that Americans have tried to ‘foment panic’ about rising levels of anti-Semitism. Kairos-USA attempts to silence the voice of Jews who are concerned about terrorist attacks against Israel – this is not a message of peace and reconciliation, but of partisan politics. We think true peacemakers are committed to hearing the voices and ending the suffering of those on all sides.”