Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said today that occupying the Palestinian territories is profitable for Israel.
“In order to end it, it must be made a costly occupation, through sanctions on settlements and their products,” Shtayyeh said in a video speech during the meeting of the Executive Directors of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.
The conference discusses some pressing issues, including the report: The Economic Cost of the Israeli Occupation for the Palestinian People: Fees on Additional Restrictions in Area C (2000-2020).
“The report confirms what we know and live. The report estimated the losses of Palestine at about $50 billion between 2000 and 2020 due to settlement and the restriction of economic development in various Palestinian areas, and this is equivalent to three times the gross domestic product (GDP),” Shtayyeh said.
In contrast, he added, the Israeli colonial settlement, including in Jerusalem, contributes to Israel’s GDP by $41 billion annually, which means $820 billion during the period specified in the report.
“In addition to its profits from our capabilities,” the Prime Minister said, “Israel is illegally deducting Palestinian tax funds, which puts the country in a difficult financial situation and a large financing gap.”
“If Palestine was independent and controls its own resources, we would not need foreign aid. Palestine would have been a prosperous country, according to the figures shown in the report,” he affirmed.
The Prime Minister praised the report, thanking UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebecca Greenspan, and her team that completed the report, calling on the international institution to intensify its work in documenting these important issues at the political and economic levels.
He also called for distributing the report’s outputs on the widest scale and sending it to the International Criminal Court as a document against Israel.
“Enabling Palestinians to access and invest in all areas, including those designated as C, control their resources and end settlements, is an indispensable condition for achieving sustainable development in Palestine towards the embodiment of the Palestinian state on the viable and contiguous 1967 borders based on the two-state solution in accordance with United Nations resolutions,” Shtayyeh stressed.
The report documents that Israel has implemented a long-term policy of building settlements since the occupation in 1967 in Area C in the occupied areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as areas B and A in the West Bank.
According to the report, Israel, as an occupying power, included more than 70% of Area C within the boundaries of the so-called regional councils of settlements, which means that they are outside the Palestinian economic benefit areas, and this means that the Palestinian areas are economically very restricted, and that restricts economic development in the Palestinian areas Including the ban on importing technology specifically and inputs under the double list, as well as the myriad restrictions on movement, which inflate the cost of production and undermine the competitiveness of Palestinian producers in the domestic and foreign markets.
Source: Palestine News & Information Agency