The Reform Agenda:
Regeneration of corruption and intensification of marginalization and exclusion of the rural areas and agriculture

 

Reforms have occupied key points in the agendas of political, cultural and economic quorums as well as intellectual, media and developmental elites, both worldwide and at the national levels. Apparently, the unilateral system of the USA is the main stirrer of global reforms. The Middle East, in particular, is drastically influenced by the American reform wishes and policies that aim to reformulate the region into a new subservient Middle East that would protect the US interests and its strategic ally (Israel) in the region.

For Palestinians, the reform concept has been a genuine national demand for decades. However, this concept has been deformed, reconceptualized and imposed by the US power that threatens to impose the Iraqi model against any country or people who dare to rebel against it or ho refuse to abide by it.

The Palestinian official socio-economic and developmental trends highlighted in the PA’s budget for 2005, the inflation of the PA’s bodies, and the PA’s expenditure dependent on foreign grants, aid and loans prove the predominance of the externally imposed reform agenda. The latter occupies a key position in the agendas of the political official circles as well as some of the NGOs’ elites. This is due to the fact that this agenda fits into and matches with the narrow interests of the local Palestinian quorums.

It is becoming very obvious that the unilateral security requirements constitute the focal point of the foreign reform agenda under various pretexts most particularly mopping out the so-called Palestinian “terrorism”. On the other hand, there is a constant attempt to restructure the Palestinian walks of life and reprioritizing them in such a manner that is consistent with the US purpose to enhance Israel’s power and superiority in this region so as to protect the values of neo liberalism and globalization. Thus, the American reform agenda means the reinforcement of multinational companies, the imposition of privatization and free trade system against the country’s national sovereignty and its control over resources.

Consequently, the reform agenda will undermine the trends to reinforce economic independence, food security and disengagement from the Israeli economy. Furthermore, it will increase the dependence of the Palestinian resources on the foreign market mechanisms. It will also destroy the productive agricultural and social infrastructures and transform the rural people to “black” laborers or the slaves of the 21st century.

In this context, Israel continues its settlement activities and the Wall construction, which forms a significant instrument for achieving this agenda. While globalization is excluding the free mobility of the labor force from crossing countries’ borders, the Israeli Apartheid Wall is preventing Palestinian farmers and laborers from crossing to the other side of the Wall where they have their farms and workplaces.

Regrettably, the Palestinian Authority is openly promoting and acutely implementing the foreign reform agenda via rotating and regenerating the corruption, personal interests and power relations in the same quorums. Furthermore, the PA continues to neglect rural areas and agriculture as well it persists with its efforts to subdue these areas to the swiftly spreading of consumption values and habits. Consequently, we notice a sizeable internal migration from rural areas to the main cities in the West Bank seeking a living there and escaping the extremely harsh economic and coercive political conditions.

Different ways are employed to restrain agriculture, which is the spine of the Palestinian economy:

1. selective ties with the external market for a number of crops, which are globally needed.

2. intensification of the capital investment in agriculture.

3. transforming farmers working on their own lands to cheap agricultural laborers.

4. encouraging black labor in the industrial zones, which produce anti human being and anti environment industries.

5. privatization of the agricultural processes and services.

6. destroying the role of the agricultural sector in ensuring familial and national food security.

 

Hence, the Israeli policy is coupled with the foreign reform agenda through their unified goal to turn the Palestinian rural areas to a garbage dump on one hand and to a natural human reserve on the others. The Israelis have a full power and control over 52% of the Palestinian land and its underground natural resources. The Wall swallows the rest of the land day after day. Thus, instead of compelling Israel to implement the recommendations of the High Court of Justice in LAHI regarding the Wall, the foreign reform agenda is encouraging the collapse of the social and agricultural productive base of the rural areas.

At the social level, the foreign reform agenda promotes passive values and attitudes among rural people such as isolation, segregation, egotism and dependence on the clan. It also strengthens the conservative political and social trends and societal convulsion. Eventually, a sovereignty vacuum in which the PA is powerless will prevail. Meanwhile, opportunist elites will emerge and the homeland will become a large investment project for them.

We do not deny the efforts of the Palestinian Authority to achieve the retirement law as well as to unify the security forces and to adopt the civil service law. However, these attempts are far from touching the root causes of corruption; they deal with the corruption consequences and outputs. Moreover, they aim to prepare a popular environment that can accept the obligations of the foreign reform agenda. In other words, these efforts correspond with the mechanisms that regenerate corruption through subjugating the new and young generations to the same system. Thus, they would produce a new copy of the corruption system.

Reforms and social change are a Palestinian vital need, which must emanate from the national interests and should correspond with the requirements of the people’s steadfastness and struggle to achieve the national liberation and democracy.

The aspired Palestinian reform agenda can be achieved by:

1. mass and popular tools, not by the elites which survive on the external grants and aid.

2. replacing the existing policies and priorities by new policies that serve the interests of the popular masses and advance the productive economic sectors.

3. rationalizing the service sector in a way that can meet the basic vital needs of the productive sectors.

4. diminishing the size of the security forces and their expenditure to an extent that the real security needs of the Palestinian civilians are met.

5. adopting policies supportive of the national food security with a significant support to agriculture that can be the major source of food security.

6. adopting policies supportive of economic sectors particularly the agricultural sector.

7. gradual shrinking of the size of the public sector  and increasing its effectiveness.

8. changing the frames and mechanisms that generate corruption.

 

Nitham Attaya

Developmental Media and Research Dept.

 

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