You won’t hear about this via AP, Reuters, or the New York Times:
Israeli sales in the Palestinian Authority will rise 10-15% to $1.9 billion this year, the same level as before the intifada. The Manufacturers Association of Israel made the prediction at a meeting with leaders of the leading Palestinian business organization in the Gaza Strip.
In 1999, a peak in trade between Israel and the Palestinians, Israeli sales in the Palestinian Authority totaled $1.9 billion.
Are you listening, PCUSA? Are you listening, would-be divestment proponents? Because here’s more evidence that Israel and the palestinians are starting to work together:
The Manufacturers Association hosted the Palestinians in order to consider ways of strengthening dialogue and economic connections between Palestinian and Israeli businesspeople.
The guests consisted of six Palestinian businesspeople from the Palestinian Businessmen Association (PBA) in the Gaza Strip. The goals of the organization, which consists of 130 Palestinian businesspeople, are to represent the Palestinian business community in the Gaza Strip, and encourage foreign investment and the domestic economy.
Mind you, that won’t stop the anti-Israel protesters from demonizing Israel. It isn’t Israel’s policies they’re protesting, really. It’s Israel’s existence.
I’ll be looking for those “Divest from Israel, Screw a Palestinian” placards. Oh, sure.
Reminds me of Shiva Naipaul visiting “frontline” African countries during the time when everybody and his dog was boycotting South Africa to protest apartheid. In the stores in places like Zambia Naipaul found huge quantities of South African goods.
I also remember reading how during the 70s Julius Nyerere, Tanzanian prez and socialist heartthrob of all right-thinking tiers-mondialistes, calmed a food riot in Dar es-Salaam by promising to import grain, from South Africa.
These boycotts and divestments and similar are for patsy Western liberals/lefties. The people in the countries involved are much more hard-headed.