The West Bank city of Rawabi, a brainchild of the Palestinian American entrepreneur Bashar Masri, was built to provide affordable homes for middle-class Palestinian families and spur economic growth. But despite good intentions and massive foreign investment, little has been achieved. Evelyn Gordon explains:
From the start . . . the Palestinian Authority (PA) did its best to undermine the project; despite repeated promises of support, it refused to provide even the basic infrastructure that most governments routinely provide to new residential developments. Thus . . . Rawabi’s water and sewage system, streets, schools, and medical clinic were all financed, like the houses themselves, by . . . Masri and the Qatari government.
The PA even tried to prevent Rawabi from obtaining running water by refusing, for five long years, to convene the joint Israeli-Palestinian water committee that’s supposed to approve all new water projects. Rawabi got its water only when Israel finally lost patience and approved its connection to water mains unilaterally. . . .
Over the 21 years of its existence, the PA . . . hasn’t built a single hospital or university or rehoused a single resident of the refugee camps located in PA territory; it would rather pay salaries to terrorists and finance campaigns against Israel in international organizations. And now, not content with merely failing to build Palestine itself, it’s even trying to prevent private entrepreneurs from doing so. . . .
Thus, as long as many Palestinians view ostracizing Israel as higher priority than providing their own people with basic necessities such as electricity and running water, the West’s dream of a Palestinian state will remain a pipe dream. You can’t build a state for people who would rather tear down the neighboring one than build up their own.
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/where-providing-water-is-a-crime/