Palestine’s Agriculture and Agro-Industries: The Basis for a Resurgent Economy?

A series of recent studies from the UN, the World Bank, the UK, France and the European Union, as well as other international organisations, has highlighted the huge potential of agriculture and fishing in the West Bank and Gaza and the extremely important contribution a revived sector could provide to both Palestine’s GDP and the urgent need to create new jobs, especially for the young and in the rural areas.

Palestine’s Jordan Valley is one of the world’s richest, and most diverse, agricultural areas. Picture: JICA

At present, all the reports emphasize that the escalation of Israeli settlements, particularly in the fertile Jordan Valley; Israeli military control of ‘Area C;’ and the rapidly dwindling amount of water available to Palestinian farmers has led to a sharp decline in both cultivation and output. Fishing and fish processing in Gaza is also stagnating, they add, due to the harsh Israeli restrictions, both onshore and offshore.

$ 55 Million for Palestine’s Private Sector

While the international media has been highlighting the acute financial crisis facing the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Palestine’s donors have been quietly, behind the scenes, shifting their focus to promoting the private sector. While their new priorities do not exclude immediate cash transfers to the ailing interim government in the occupied territorites to prevent its collapse, their latest funding programmes, which include $55 million from the World Bank and its affiliates over the next two years, emphasise the vital role that private companies and employers could play in helping to reduce Palestine’s dependence on foreign aid, and in creating jobs.

The Minister of Economy, Jawad Naji, is working with the World Bank to promote Palestinian companies and Palestine’s international competitiveness. Photograph: Palestine News Network.

PalTrade Launches Drive to Diversify Trade & Exports

The Palestine Trade Center (PalTrade), together with the Ministry of Economy in Ramallah, has announced a series of measures to promote Palestinian exports to the Arab countries, Europe and other international markets, including special programmes aimed at small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the West Bank and Gaza. They are being launched as more and more countries, following the lead of the UK, the European Union and South Africa, are refusing to accept imports labelled ‘Made in Israel,’ which, in fact, come from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories rather than from Israel itself.

The measures announced by PalTrade — a national, non-profit organisation based in Al Bireh in the West Bank — include a new trade diversification programme funded by the EU which is also being supported by the Palestinian Shippers Council. In addition to encouraging alternative trade corridors to, and through, Jordan and the nearby Arab countries, the €3 million programme sets up a ‘National Export Strategy’ to improve Palestine’s international competitiveness as well as special measures to develop Palestine’s trade in services.

Medjool dates and Palestinian fruits and vegetables from the Jordan Valley are prized throughout the Arab world. Picture courtesy of PalTrade.

Jordan and the Arab Gulf states are being targetted by PalTrade and the new Jericho Agro-Industrial Park. Picture courtesy of PalTrade.

“A comprehensive package will be implemented to support the private sector in reaching new markets and developing marketing strategies,” the EU’s chief representative, John Gatt-Rutter, said at the official launch in Ramallah’s Movenpick Hotel on 27 February.
However, he also noted that its success depended on Israel complying with its international obligations to remove the existing barriers to the free movement of people, goods and services in the territories. “For this project to fully deliver its results…Israel has a major responsibility for ensuring access and movement and facilitating Palestinian trade,” he told his audience, which included Prime Minister Salah Fayyad, PalTrade’s CEO, Hanan Taha, and Maha Abu Shoshah, Chairman of the Shippers Council.

Last September, the European Parliament in Strassbourg approved a new trade agreement with the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem which allows EU members states to import agricultural products, including fish, directly, i.e. without going through Israel. “This is one of the most generous trade agreements in the agricultural sector signed by the EU,” the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dacian Ciolos, said at the time. “I want to be clear,” he added, that the European Commission is working to ensure that the EU does not buy any products from Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Jericho Agro-Industrial Park: Bringing State-of-the-Art Industry to the World’s Oldest City

Jericho is reputedly the world’s most ancient, continuously inhabited city, its fortified walls dating back 10,000 years. Today it is a haven of self-rule in central Palestine and a mecca for residents in the West Bank seeking a respite from their political and economic woes, as well as for some 700,000 tourists a year who visit the area’s famed biblical and Islamic sites.

But on a 10-minute drive out-of-town, the vibrant streets, palm trees and market stalls filled with the lush produce of the Jordan Valley give way to the desert. It’s hard to believe that in the space of a few months, 11.5 hectares of rocky soil and flat, dry terrain will give way to an industrial zone of processing plants and modern factories capable of exporting the region’s high quality agricultural products to nearby Jordan and onward to lucrative markets in the Arab Gulf states and the European Union.

It is just one of three such zones—along with others in Bethlehem and Jenin—planned by the Palestinian Industrial Estates and Free Zones Authority (PIEFZA) to help increase jobs and opportunities for small- and medium-sized enterprises, as well as export earnings. If successful—and there are many “ifs” given Israel’s control of the surrounding region, the pioneering Jericho project, known as the Jericho Agro-Industrial Park (JAIP), could prove to be a boon to private and foreign investment, particularly from Palestinian and Arab entrepreneurs in the diaspora.

Editor’s Note

Spring has arrived for many of us, not least for Palestine, where the hills of the West Bank are breaking out in ever more patches of green and lavender – as I saw on my trip there last week.

I’ll be writing about that and about some of the projects I visited in Jericho, Ramallah, Jerusalem and Jordan, thanks to JICA, the Japan International Co-operation Agency.

Other stories coming up this April include:

• The Jericho Agro-Industrial Park and its use of solar energy;

• The Palestine Stock Exchange and its IPO;

• The UK’s new ICT initiative;

• PalTrade’s plans to promote exports.

Palestine’s first delegation to the Olympics, Atlanta, 1996; Reuters

Last, but not least, we’ll be highlighting the progress of four world-class athletes from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as they prepare to fly the flag for Palestine at the Olympics here in London in July.

Thanks for looking!

— Pam

Palestine’s Stock Exchange: The Arab World’s Best Performer

Although the Al Quds index on the Palestine Stock Exchange hit new lows for the year in October, its performance for the first three quarters of 2011 outstripped that of all other stock markets in the Arab world. Figures produced by the Exchange show that its indices declined by an average of just 0.29 per cent in the period from January to the end of September, compared to second-ranked Qatar, which registered a fall of 3.31 per cent and third-ranked Abu Dhabi, where the drop was 6.86 per cent. In Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest market, the Tadawul scored a loss of 7.68 per cent, while for the worst performers—Egypt and Syria, the declines were 42.07 per cent and 44.27 per cent respectively.

The Exchange Now Lists 46 Companies

Although the performance of the PEX was affected in October by the delayed outcome of the Palestinian bid for recognition at the United Nations, the Eurozone debt crisis, and by investors waiting for the country’s third quarter company results, the Exchange outperformed many others in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as in the US and Europe. It is now holding discussions with officials from both the global index company, MSCI, and London’s FTSE to discuss its inclusion in their frontier markets indices.

The Gaza Marathon

c. UNRWA

The Gaza Marathon was organised by the UN agency, UNRWA, this Spring, to support summer camps for Palestinian refugee children in Gaza.

It will take another Marathon to get the whole Palestinian Economy working, whatever happens at the UN this September.

This website seeks to look at the prospects for this Economy, for Investment, for Social Enterprises, and, above all, for ways to empower the Palestinian people, materially, wherever they are.
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We’re still UNDER CONSTRUCTION. So please bear with us.

We hope to be up and running in time for:

(mid-September) The UN General Assembly’s 66th Session, New York

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If you would like more immediate, i.e. exclusive, information on the international publication (print and digital), Investing in Palestine, that we are bringing out in September (with a host of prestigious sponsors), please email Pam at:

pamansmith@compuserve.com

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Thanks for reading.

Pam