Agricultural Development and Liberating the Palestinian Will

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

This study addresses two factors of great importance in restoring the fixed national rights of the Palestinian people, or in liberating Palestine, or, at the very least, in establishing an independent, sovereign Palestinian state: freeing the Palestinian loaf of bread from the grip of others, and the role of agricultural development in reaching that goal. “The loaf of bread” here refers to self-reliance in securing one’s livelihood, while “agriculture” refers to all those activities of plant and animal husbandry that lead to independence in providing people with basic foodstuffs.

Self-reliance is a basic and essential value in the independence of a person, a group, or a state, and in asserting free will across the various spheres of life. A person, a group, or a state is master of its own decisions when it is self-reliant in securing its livelihood in every respect, and possesses a free will in determining its social, political, economic, and cultural policies, and so on. Those who rely on others, however, find themselves under the pressure of the party they depend on, and must accommodate that party’s will even when it contradicts their own desires and aspirations. This pressure is proportional to the intensity of the dependence: whoever must beg from others has no escape from surrendering his will to them, or must accept whatever they dictate or demand of him; and whoever needs others for a particular commodity, even on a purely commercial level, finds himself in a weak position before the export policy of those others.

It is true that one must take others’ wills and orientations into account even while being independent and possessed of a free will, but one’s calculations must be all the more intensive in proportion to the extent of one’s dependence on others. This is precisely the situation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, who depend to a large degree on foreign aid to secure funds, and on monies that Israel collects in the form of taxes and customs duties and then remits to the Authority.

Plan of the Study

The study begins by describing the Palestinian situation in the West Bank in terms of dependence on others to secure the daily bread, relying in this on statistics.

The Place of Agriculture in the Planning and Policy of the Palestinian Authority

What Can Be Done for Palestinian Agricultural Development

The Strategic Importance of Agriculture

At its session held on November 17, 2011, the Economic Committee of the French Senate affirmed the strategic importance of French agriculture. The committee noted that French agriculture brings France about 9 billion dollars in trade surplus, and that it employs around 15% of the French workforce, and it affirmed the strategic importance of agriculture in confronting the world’s food insecurity. The head of the French farmers’ union said that the agricultural sector is important because it provides jobs at a time when the world is seeing a decline in employment.

The British organization Living Countryside, which is concerned with agricultural affairs, states that Britain’s agricultural output declined in 2006, to the point that its self-sufficiency ratio reached only 58% of food requirements. It judged this a dangerous situation for two reasons: first, that Britain cannot be certain there will be a global food surplus that facilitates its imports, since natural or unnatural global conditions could arise that shrink supply; and second, that Britain cannot guarantee it will receive food shipments from abroad even if there is a surplus in supply, owing to various circumstances beyond Britain’s control.

American President Thomas Jefferson said in 1801, just a few years after America’s independence, that encouraging agriculture and commerce constitutes the basic principle to which the government must hold, one that ought to shape the form of American administration. In one of his letters, he said that the tillers of the earth are the most valuable citizens, and the most vigorous, independent, and virtuous; they are bound to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds, and so long as they can find employment in this line, they should never be led away to become sailors, artisans, or anything else. The United States found during the Cold War that supporting local agricultural production helped it in its goal of containing communism and the Soviet Union, since it enabled America to provide food aid to Third World countries. And since aid influences the policies of governments and states, America worked to support the American farmer in order to increase agricultural production, which in turn qualified it to extend food assistance.

The European Union focuses heavily on agriculture even though agricultural production constitutes only about 3.3% of the combined GDP of the European states. The agricultural sector is a source of livelihood for about 20% of the population of EU countries, and provides around 15 million jobs, equivalent to 8.3% of the total workforce. It is clear in Union policy that agricultural self-sufficiency for the European Union is vital not only to the welfare of the population, but, beyond that, to guaranteeing the political independence of the Union’s member states — which is why the social and political importance of agriculture far exceeds its share of gross domestic product.

Food Security

Food security is achieved when a people has food available in sufficient quantities, or when food is within reach.

Anthony Kamba, in an article on the state of South Sudan, says that food security is the greatest challenge facing the new state. It achieved political independence, but it has not achieved food independence, and it is not food-secure, since it depends on neighboring states and receives aid from European countries and America; it must develop a policy that secures its own food security for itself.

The President of Gambia pointed forcefully to the importance of agriculture in state-building when he said that sustainable development cannot be achieved in a state without achieving food self-sufficiency, and that agriculture is a decisive factor in the process of state-building. A Nigerian writer supported this, saying that a state is described as socially and politically stable when it possesses a stable agricultural base capable of providing food security for its citizens, adding that food security is one of the primary requirements for establishing a state and ensuring its continuity.

[…] adequate agricultural production, nor food security, and it was forced to hand over its oil to the United Nations in exchange for obtaining food, within a program approved by the Security Council in 1995 under Resolution 986, known as “Oil for Food.” Iraq thereby lost its sovereignty over its own oil, because it had never worked, from the outset, to develop agriculture across all its sectors, relying instead on food imports. Iran, by contrast, worked over the years according to an agricultural strategy built on the principle of food security, and managed to achieve major accomplishments, particularly in animal and poultry production. Iran understood that the siege upon it would tighten, and so decided it would not leave itself without food, or dependent on imports to meet its food needs. [This paragraph, describing Iraq’s situation, is preceded in the source document by a heading and opening sentence lost to file corruption.]

Standards for Agricultural Development

The West Bank lives under special conditions because it is under occupation, and this requires special standards for agricultural development. It is difficult for the conventional standards that might be followed in an independent state living under ordinary conditions of stability to apply to the West Bank; the conditions of occupation must inevitably be reflected in the standards, tools, and methods that can be followed in order to circumvent the policies of the occupation, and to establish a situation commensurate with people’s aspirations to be rid of the occupation. In this regard, it is worth noting a few pivotal matters that the Palestinian planner must take into account:

First: Liberation from the occupation as a fundamental goal, toward which all efforts and activities converge out of the desire to achieve it. The supreme value that a society or a nation aims to achieve determines the various lesser values, and directs the various activities in the various fields toward achieving that value. If we were to say that profit is the supreme value governing a society, we would find that social, political, and economic relations arrange themselves according to that prevailing supreme value; and if we were to say that the pleasure of God is the supreme value, we would find that the arrangement of relations takes a different course than the one dictated by the value of profit. The same holds for the value of liberation, which presumes that people’s educational, economic, cultural, and political efforts are directed toward deliverance from the occupation, so that it becomes possible to establish a normal life, as is the case for peoples who live under occupation.

The goal of liberation also presupposes an awareness, on the part of individuals and groups, of the roles entrusted to them, so that their efforts integrate with those of others. That is, the teacher directs his educational efforts toward instilling the values of liberation, and so does the teachers’ union, and the government or the leadership responsible for educational policy, and the farmer follows the same path, as do the worker, the doctor, the lawyer, and so on. The meaning is that the goal of liberation presupposes an unusual value-organization that leads to the fulfillment of people’s aspirations.

Second: It is axiomatic in the West Bank situation that the occupation’s mission is a destructive one, intended to lower people’s level of commitment to the goal of ridding themselves of the occupation, and to weaken their capacity to rely on themselves and to resist the occupation. The occupation has persistently pursued policies that curb agricultural development and people’s self-reliance, so that their daily bread remains in its hand, leaving them unable to resist it or to provide the support needed by those who wish to resist. It has worked to confiscate land, uproot trees, burn crops, and control water resources, among other things, in order to prevent people from developing agricultural capacities toward achieving self-sufficiency; it has also worked to hem in industry and scientific research, and more besides. The occupation has aims that contradict the idea of liberation, and it therefore does whatever it deems appropriate to demolish that idea, and to make the West Bank’s economy an appendage of the Israeli economy.

Third: The occupation, together with the goal of liberation, imposes on people an unusual way of life, since the situation is marked by tension and friction between the people and the occupying power, and may be characterized by popular or armed resistance in which people make varied sacrifices. The goal of liberation presupposes mobilizing capacities and energies toward that liberation, such that a liberation-oriented mentality prevails over a consumerist mentality. A consumerist mentality, and the behaviors that follow from it, are incompatible with the requirements of a liberation-oriented life, which is marked by thrift and perhaps austerity, and which demands striving toward comfort, relaxation, and a focus on consumer goods — something out of step with the values of sacrifice and self-giving. This does not mean that people must starve for the sake of liberation, but it does mean being content with a level of consumption that does not expose the Palestinian will to harm, plunder, or domination by others.

Fourth: [The source document’s fourth point was not recovered from the original file; only the heading survived extraction.]

References

Minutes of the economic committee, French Senate, Nov. 17, 2011

The French Senate reiterates the Strategic Importance of Agriculture, Momagri, Jan. 16, 2012. http://www.momagri.org/UK/a-look-at-the-news/The-French-Senate-reiterates-the-highly-strategic-importance-of-agriculture_1031.html

Living Country-side, The Importance of Agriculture in UK, 2012. http://www.ukagriculture.com/the_importance_of_agriculture.cfm

Thomas Jefferson, 1st inaugural, 1801

Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1785, papers 8:426

Oxford Companion to US Military History, Agriculture and War. http://www.answers.com/topic/agriculture-and-war

Europedia, EU Agricultural Policy, 2011. http://europedia.moussis.eu/books/Book_2/6/21/index.tkl?all=1&pos=297

Anthony Kampa, South Sudan Political Independence soon but Food Dependence still here, May 25, 2011.

Nation Building and Agriculture, March 6, 2009. http://observer.gm/africa/gambia/article/nation-building-and-agriculture

Dehghan, Ahmad, “Agriculture and Food Security in Iran,” Agricultural Planning and Research Institute, 2009.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “التطوير الزراعي وتحرير الإرادة الفلسطينية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.