Dayton as an Economic Planner

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

General Keith Dayton is not merely a security coordinator between the Palestinian Authority and Israel; he is also a major economic planner and guide, working to bring about an economic development revolution in the West Bank. He did not appear at the Bethlehem businessmen’s meeting because that meeting was public, held before the cameras and the satellite channels, but he did appear at a home in the city of Nablus, where he was invited to dinner along with many other guests — businessmen and figures from the city. A fair number of those present are known to be Freemasons, and thus constitute a fundamental and powerful pillar of support for Israel.

The general seized the opportunity of a gathering far from the media to lecture everyone present on the necessity of developing the West Bank economically, and offered his own directions on what ought to be done. The general focused on the idea that development and improving people’s economic conditions would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state. When people’s conditions improve and they feel secure about their children and their homes, they will come to feel the importance of peace and will accept the two-state solution. And improving conditions leads to a retreat of the “terrorists,” and to their weakening, which reduces their ability to sabotage the Palestinian national project. Terrorism and terrorists, he suggested, can be defeated through economic development. So why the tension and the wars, if the goal is simply for people to live and find the means of comfort and recreation? He gave directions on fields for development and investment, and asked the businessmen not to be stingy in the cause of establishing their independent state.

He directed them toward the necessity of preserving calm, in order to protect people from being killed or arrested. He is, without doubt, capable of waging arguments that turn shame into honor, and defeat into victory.

Dayton, and those Palestinians, Europeans, and Americans who follow his lead, are lying to the people of Palestine. American and Israeli policy in the territory occupied in ‘67 has, since Oslo, rested on two elements: striking at Palestinian production, and raising the level of Palestinian dependence on begging, with the goal of choking the Palestinian people so that it cannot rebel against the very plate it eats from. My proof of this is that they have greatly increased the numbers of government employees, especially within the security services, and encouraged imports from abroad in order to strike at Palestinian produce. There are now about 200,000 employees drawing salaries from the donor states, whose livelihoods have been tied to that salary, some of whom would be ready to fight to keep this process of begging going. And there are the unemployed in various fields, people who used to be productive in the past. The shoemaking workshops in Hebron, for instance, have shut down, as have the tailoring workshops in Tulkarem and the textile factories in Beit Jala, not to mention the farmers who abandoned their land because of financial losses. The Americans and the Israelis have put more Palestinian producers out of work than they have ever employed. They have destroyed the people of Palestine by raising the level of its dependence on others. Not to mention the jobs at most of the non-governmental organizations, which depend on foreign financial support, and the grants doled out here and there for this purpose or that.

The Americans and the Israelis have stripped many Palestinians of the instinct of self-reliance, and in doing so have exhausted them morally, financially, and ethically, turning a number of them into mere tools in the service of their masters. Whoever truly wishes good upon the Palestinian people should teach them how to fish, not how to eat fish. Begging is a deliberate, systematic act of destruction aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause.

Dayton is carrying out actions hostile to the Palestinian people and to the Palestinian cause, and the Palestinian people is required to raise its voice on this matter. Honey may seem to drip from Dayton’s tongue, but his venom is stronger than the venom of vipers. All Palestinians are required to stop dealing with him and with his ideas, which in the end serve no one but Israel.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “دايتون مخططا اقتصاديا” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.