Israel Matzav

'Palestinian': 'I hate settlements but a job's a job'

Here's an interview with a 'Palestinian' who works at SodaStream. He claims to be opposed to Jewish 'settlements' in Judea and Samaria, but when the 'Palestinian Authority' tells him to quit his job at SodaStream because he's betraying his 'people' he tells them that he will if they can find him another job that pays three times the average wage for 'Palestinians' in the 'West Bank.' Of course, they can't, and he continues to work for SodaStream.

Let's go to the videotape.



SodaStream is hardly the only Israeli company employing 'Palestinians' in Judea and Samaria.

All the hubbub obscured an important fact: SodaStream is hardly the only business with a hearty business in occupied territory. The 500 Palestinian employees at the 220,000-square-foot Ma’ale Adumim plant, which includes three manufacturing buildings and four warehouses, are a fraction of the 20,000 Palestinians working at Israeli firms in Area C. (The West Bank is divided into three zones, or areas. Area C, unlike Areas A and B, is under full Israeli control and encompasses 61 percent of the West Bank’s land mass. It is home to about 300,000 Palestinians, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.) Other Palestinians at Israeli companies in Area C make things like circuit boards, ceramic pipes, plastic bags, exfoliators, and fake lawns. In the Mishor Adumim Industrial Park, where the SodaStream factory is located, there are roughly 300 factories, most of which are owned by Israelis. On top of all this are the Palestinian firms hired by outside companies and scattered across the West Bank. Intel and Cisco employ Palestinian programmers. Fanzilla, which helps clients up their Facebook fan base, has Palestinian software developers. All of these outfits — those with a presence in Area C and those that just outsource to the wider West Bank labor market — benefit from the depressed wages made possible by, among other things, Israeli occupation.

It's doubtful that 'Israeli occupation' is behind low wages for 'Palestinians' in Judea and Samaria. Wages for 'Palestinians' in Judea and Samaria are much higher than they are anyplace else in the Arab world. That's thanks to Israel - and not to the 'Palestinian Authority.'

The Palestinian Authority has done little to boost growth. It is deeply corrupt; in December, the European Court of Auditors reported that the PA had been using European funds to pay Gaza workers who had not worked for seven years, prompting the EU to rethink its aid policy. Palestinian officials also oppose Israeli investment in the West Bank, said Arye Hillman, an economist at Bar-Ilan University who has studied labor markets in Israel and the West Bank.

The 'Palestinians' who work at SodaStream are lucky.

The Palestinian Authority may eventually change its tack. In 2013, the West Bank’s unemployment rate was just over 22 percent. There are not enough new businesses to create the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are needed to reduce that figure. The bottom line is that taking a principled stand against SodaStream is not only arbitrary and probably pointless — it also ignores the plight of the Palestinians who work there. Rivlin, the economist, said that he opposes the settlements but that it would be a bad idea for SodaStream, or any other Israeli firm in the West Bank, to pull out right now. This neatly reflects the tension at the heart of the factory’s very existence — the unavoidable sense that things are not as they should be, and the equally powerful sense that there are no viable alternatives.

Read the whole thing. 

Bottom line: Israel is giving these 'Palestinians' an opportunity they would not otherwise have.

Labels: BDS, Judea and Samaria, Palestinian Authority, Scarlet Johansson, SodaStream

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:08 PM