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False hopes for Palestine
Over the last six months, there have been numerous reports on the apparent signs of hope in West Bank cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin. The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, has also enjoyed flattering coverage in the likes of Newsweek and the New York Times, with his unilateral state-building strategy praised by a variety of commentators. The Israeli government, for its part, has trumpeted improvements in Palestinians' daily lives–from the easing of restrictions on movement, to a boosted economy. Yet as I discovered during a visit at the beginning of this year, these sunny reports bear no relation to Israel's colonization of East Jerusalem and West Bank, where the permanently-temporary occupation continues to defy state-building efforts.
The first problem with the West Bank progress story is that even in economic terms the prospect of genuinely sustainable Palestinian growth is compromised by Israel's regime of control.