Comments on: Zionism’s Losing Battle

By: JonCatalan

JonCatalan — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:26:05 +0000

Jim Latta,

I am not sure that I agree with your deduction. You are saying that a high birth rate leads to poverty. I disagree. I believe that poverty leads to high birth rates, because each member of the family produces less wealth, and so couples have more children. The Palestinians cannot provide the infrastructure they need to prosper without some sort of capital. Although, yes, a lot of fault is their own: lack of defined property rights, for example (although, it is difficult to build infrastructure when it is destroyed by Israeli military operations).

But, that capital will not exist until the Palestinians earn it themselves, or there is a foreign influx of capital. The former will require the Israelis to restore Palestinian's freedom of movement. The latter will require peace in Palestine.

Raed,

I'm not sure purchasing power solves everything, especially when close to 80% of the Gaza Strip is unemployed. For those who do make wages, that is great, but for the majority who do not, purchasing power means nothing. It is not about Palestinians earning more than Israelis, it's simply about restoring social and economic (in my opinion synonymous) freedoms.

By: Raed

Raed — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:24:16 +0000

Reply to Jim Latta,

I think that you are completely mistaken and lack the basic understanding of the conflict between the Palestinians and Istrael.

It is not about how rich the Israelis or the Palestinians are. It is about Land, Freedom of movement, Jewish settlements in the west bank, its about 565 Israeli check points in the west bank.

I lived in the area and i know what the conflict is about.

It is a fact the Israelis earn more money that the Palestinians but the Palestinians can afford to buy the same things as the Israelis because of the price differencies. That's why the Israelis used to come shopping to the west bank before the break out of the Intifada in 2000.

Thanks to the Billion dollars river flowing into Tel Aviv from the American Tax payers money.
I am a simple soul on economics but i dont think that the Palestinians will be so happy if they earn more money then the Israelis while having no freedom and no future.

The real problem is the Israeli occupation.

By: Jim Latta

Jim Latta — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 05:39:49 +0000

According to the CIA World Fact Book, Israel has a purchasing power parity GDP per capita of $28,200, while Gaza and the West Bank both have GDP per capita of $2,900. With an almost a10X difference in wealth per capita, it will be impossible for the Arabs not to succumb to wealth envy, jealousy and hatred, especially if they are allowed to work within Israel where they can observe the difference in living standards. If you plot a graph of GDP per captia versus births per woman for all the counties in the world, removing those with large oil production (which have high GDP per capita) and countries with communism (which have low GDP per capita) you will see they fit quite nicely on a curve that falls noticeably lower at breed rates over 2.1 births per woman. The average breed rate for Gaza and the West Bank is 4.125 births per woman. They are right where they deserve to be on the GDP per capita versus breed rate curve. Israel, with a breed rate of 2.75 births per woman is well above the curve (doing exceptionally better than they deserve). It will not be possible to reduce poverty among the Arabs living adjacent to Israel because of their high Muslim breed rates. It is simply too much to ask of a society to increase its water supply, electrical generation capacity, miles of paved roads, industrial production capacity, etc. at the rate the population is expanding among Israel's neighbors. Therefore, the Muslims adjacent to Israel will always be poor, and will have to be occasionally beaten back militarily whenever they rise up. If the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank lived next to any number of sub-Saharan African countries where breed rates are 6.0+ and GDP's per capita are less than $1,000 they would think they were rich and would be much happier..