----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 4:41 PM Subject: UN: Palestinina Economy in RUINS!!!!! [STOPNATO.ORG.UK] STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK Palestinian Economy in Ruins, U.N. Says By WILLIAM A. ORME Jr. For the New York Times ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- JERUSALEM, Dec. 5 — Two months of violence have devastated the economy of the West Bank and Gaza, according to a new report issued by the United Nations. Israeli restrictions on Palestinian goods and workers — which Israel says it has imposed both as a security measure and as diplomatic pressure — have cost the Palestinians more than $500 million in lost wages and sales since violence erupted in the region in late September, erasing 10 percent of the year's projected gross domestic product, the report says. Unemployment has tripled, leaving more than a million Palestinians — a third of the population — with no regular household incomes, the United Nations says. "Three years of progress have been wiped out in two months of conflict," said Terje Rod Larsen, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East, who presented the report in Gaza on Monday to foreign diplomats and aid donors. Mr. Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat who helped broker the 1993 Oslo peace agreement, urged Israel to lift its two-month-long clampdown on the movement of Palestinian goods and workers to Israel and between Gaza and the West Bank. "Palestinian living conditions are falling fast, and safety nets are wearing thin," he said. The violence has also taken a serious economic toll on Israel. Israeli economists have lopped a full percentage point off their growth estimates for the country for the year, a billion-dollar correction. Tourism has vanished. Farmers and contractors who depend on Palestinian workers are demanding bail-out aid. Even the vibrant high-tech sector is feeling the pinch, with venture capitalists scaling back spending. "The economic forecast for the next few months is dismal," said Nehemia Strassler, an Israeli economic columnist. "We have an external blow from the intifada, causing a reduction in economic activity, a loss of production, a decrease in investments, a drop in private consumption and an increase in unemployment." Even so, forecasts show the $100 billion Israeli economy growing by more than 4 percent, propelling per capita income past $18,000 — the highest in the Mediterranean after France and Italy. And the Clinton administration is seeking to supplement Israel's annual $2.9 billion aid package with an additional $450 million this year. For the Palestinian economy, just one-twentieth the size of Israel's high-tech juggernaut, the impact has been far more devastating. Normal economic activity has been slashed in half. The estimated $388 million drop in local economic output, plus $117 million in the lost wages of 110,000 workers who had jobs in Israel, are two and a half times greater than the total foreign aid received by Palestinians from all sources — $183 million — in the first half of the year, the United Nations noted. "This is catastrophic," said Salam Fayyad, the representative of the International Monetary Fund in the Palestinian territories. "It is undoubtedly the worst shock the Palestinian economy has suffered since Oslo." The European Union has released emergency aid to help pay Palestinian Authority employees, and Persian Gulf businessmen have donated more than $20 million for a special Palestinian unemployment fund. Over the long term, Arab governments have pledged $693 million in new economic aid to the Palestinians, with most of it coming from Saudi Arabia ($250 million), Kuwait ($150 million) and the United Arab Emirates ($150 million). And the United States continues to provide more than $75 million annually to the Palestinians under a long-term aid commitment, though most of the programs it underwrites have been paralyzed for the last two months. None of that assistance, however, will keep the Palestinian poverty rate from climbing drastically this quarter, with nearly half of the population living on $2 a day or less, according to the United Nations. ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb
