The Resignation of the Prime Minister and the World Bank

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Media reports keep piling up over the reasons behind the resignation of Professor Dr. Rami Hamdallah from the premiership of the Palestinian Authority, all of them circling around a matter related to authority and jurisdiction. Among these reports, the latest I have read suggests that the President of the Palestinian Authority wrote to the well-known international banking institutions — the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — authorizing the signature of Mr. Mohammad Mustafa, the Deputy Prime Minister, in financial transactions, a step that angered Hamdallah.

If this is indeed the reason, then the matter is tragic. These two international banking institutions — the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — are, specifically, sources of suffering and humiliation for the peoples of developing nations, and are tools for controlling the economies of numerous states, stripping them of their political will and turning them into states burdened with debt, unable to break free from the political will of the United States. These two institutions have humiliated numerous states, turning their economies into mere playthings detached from each state’s national interest, and turning their peoples into indebted peoples incapable of achieving economic growth.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund never offer loans or financial facilities except under humiliating and degrading conditions, among them requiring states to lift subsidy policies on certain goods and services that benefit the poor and the needy, and to privatize (that is, hand over to private ownership) economic institutions engaged in services and production, turning them into private property for the wealthy. The two institutions operate according to policies that lead to:

Further impoverishing the poor;

…raising the wealth level of the rich;

Pushing states toward economic, financial, and monetary policies that raise their indebtedness;

Diminishing the political will of states;

Controlling the peoples of the earth through indebtedness and by tying their economies to the will of others;

Developing the economies of developing states in a way that makes them dependent on the capitalist states, weakening their capacity for economic self-reliance;

That is, impoverishing people and starving them in a way that reduces them to begging for bread, leaving them unable to rebel or to defend independence and freedom.

If the administrative shake-up that struck the self-rule authority stemmed from this cause, then it is a shameful disgrace, and the Palestinian people must open their eyes to this matter. The Palestinian Authority has dealt with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund over the years, and the Palestinian people have gained from it nothing but greater humiliation, hunger, and debt.

We, the people of Palestine, must halt our dealings with these global financial institutions, which for the most part answer to the will of the United States, and we have, in the experiences of many peoples and states, ample lessons. Egypt drowned in debt, and so did Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and Morocco, and we have found all of them in a backward economic condition, unable to address the concerns of their people.

We keep repeating the mistakes of others, and we insist on continuing in our own mistakes, and now we watch our own ruin unfold at our own hands. There is no remedy for our problems except a return to ourselves, and a constant effort to raise the level of our self-reliance. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank do not give us money for the sake of our beautiful eyes.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “استقالة رئيس الوزراء والبنك الدولي” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.