Lies The Palestinians Tell!

New Report Reveals Startling Truth Behind International Dupe on Palestinian Poverty

By Abra Forman November 18, 2015 , 10:30 am

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“The dogs have a mighty appetite; they never have enough. But they are shepherds who have no understanding; they have all turned to their own way, each to his own gain, one and all.” (Isaiah 56:11)

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The five-star, $40 million Moevenpick Hotel in Ramallah. (Wikimedia Commons)

A recent report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) brings to light some painfully glaring contrasts developing amongst the ranks of the Palestinian Authority.

While many left-wing and human rights groups blame the Israeli “occupation” for poor living conditions in Gaza and Palestinian controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, the report paints a picture of a new class of Palestinians living in comfort and even luxury in a fast-developing society where literacy is high, infant mortality is low and citizens are happier than most Americans.

The report, entitled “Luxury Alongside Poverty in the Palestinian Authority”, explores the contradictions between a world narrative regarding the plight of the Palestinian “refugee” population and the realities of Palestinian daily life.

These realities for today’s Palestinian refugees are cushioned by billions of dollars of international aid which have gone towards improving conditions in refugee camps since 1948. The PA receives approximately $2 billion in aid annually from the UN, the US and other governmental bodies. Economic analysts estimate that the PA has received a total of $25 billion in foreign aid since the establishment of Palestinian self-rule in parts of Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the mid-1990’s.

Though much of this aid has been siphoned off by corrupt PA leadership to build luxurious homes and governmental buildings, the effects of the funds are visible in both refugee camps and in the building up of Palestinian towns and cities throughout the PA.

A typical refugee “camp shelter” generally consists of a 4-5 story concrete apartment building with electricity, satellite television and municipal garbage collection. According to the UN, 99.8 percent of camp shelters are connected to water networks, and 87 percent are connected to sewerage networks. In addition, as of 2013, almost 70 percent of Palestinian refugees lived outside of refugee camps.

While a percentage of Palestinians do remain trapped in the slums of old refugee camps, another population is emerging, quite literally, next door: a socioeconomic class which can afford luxury vehicles, new high-end electronics and gadgets, and visits to five-star hotels. Many cities located in the PA are thriving, full of prosperous shops and restaurants and beautiful new neighborhoods and homes. In Nablus, said the report, which is the largest city Palestinian-run city, there are more BMWs and Mercedes on the streets than in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

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The report includes dozens of photos of high-end buildings, businesses, homes and neighborhoods going up across Palestinian cities and Gaza. Ramallah, which is the capital of the PA, is now home to a five-star hotel which cost $40 million to build and employs a head chef from Florence, a pastry chef from Paris and a lobby covered in marble. The city boasts banks, brokerage firms, health clubs and a Mercedes dealership which sells luxury-class sports cars and SUVs to wealthy Palestinians. In the city of Jenin, a five-story $5 million mall recently opened whose wares include plasma-screen TVs, vacuum cleaners, espresso machines, china plates and crystal.

The JCPA reports the mall’s CEO, Ziad Turabi, as saying, “We believe we can make a very handsome profit. Many people in the…territories have money but they have nowhere to spend it if they’re after quality.”

In contrast to the dismal images of poverty, oppression and despair projected onto the world stage by the PA and its advocates, the report digests empirical data which reveals another picture entirely.

Some of the facts uncovered would probably shock a consumer of the mainstream media narrative. According to the CIA World Factbook, the poverty rate amongst Palestinian controlled areas was reported at 18 percent in 2011, a number actually lower than Israel’s 2012 poverty rate of 21 percent.

Life expectancy, which is 70 years on average worldwide, was 76 years for Palestinians in 2015. For contrast, the 2012 average life expectancy in other Arab states was 71 years. In 2015, the infant mortality rate in Palestinian areas and Gaza was 13 per 1,000 live births, significantly better than the 27 per 1,000 live births in other Arab states and 36.58 per 1,000 live births worldwide.

Palestinians also surpass other populations in education and literacy. In  2011, 63.5 percent of Arabs said they were satisfied with their education system, a higher percentage than people living in the US (62.8), Netherlands (60.3), Sweden (61.6) and Japan (54.6), and much higher than the overall percentage in Arab states, which was 50 percent. The average literacy rate for people aged 15 and above in Palestinian cities and Gaza was 96.5 percent in 2015.

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House of Palestinian businessman Mohamed Abdel-Hadi in Ramallah. (Photo: JCPA)

The JCPA report also mentions that many Palestinians are employed by Israelis, from whom they receive nearly double the salaries that they would get from Palestinian employers. In 2014, the official newspaper of the PA published an article praising Israeli employers for their treatment of Palestinian workers, admitting that the workers are eager for opportunities to work for Israelis, citing higher salaries, more benefits and better working conditions.

In another surprising reveal, the report cites the 2012 Happy Planet Index, which is a survey conducted by the New Economics Forum to measure happiness around the world. Out of 20 Arab countries, the Palestinian Authority ranked third happiest, but even more shockingly, it ranked 30th happiest worldwide, placing it above the US, the UK, Sweden, Australia and Canada.

As the report concludes, there is considerable wealth and a much higher living standard in “occupied” Palestine than PA leaders and pro-Palestinian activists would have the world believe.

Read more at https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/54139/occupied-palestine-more-bmws-mercedes-streets-than-jerusalem-tel-aviv-judea-and-samaria/#Q6htSY02iSl7HSj7.99

The Unintended Consequences Of Forcing Israel To Supply Concrete And Steel To Hamas!

How Humanitarian Pressure Helped Create Israel’s Terror Tunnel Problem

By Staff Writer August 8, 2014 , 9:10 am

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“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” (Psalm 145:18)

A view of a tunnel reportedly dug by Palestinians beneath the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel and recently uncovered by Israeli troops, on October 13, 2013. (Photo: David Buimovitch/Flash90)

By Josh Hasten/JNS.org

With the withdrawal of ground troops from Gaza on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it completed its mission of dismantling a network of terrorist tunnels. But how did Hamas get its hands on materials to build the tunnels in the first place?

Lt. Col (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi, an expert on the Middle East and radical Islam at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), explained that some of the materials, including cement and iron, were smuggled into Gaza by Hamas through other tunnels from Egypt. Yet due to pressure from international human rights organizations, until recently Israel itself was also providing Gaza with those materials. While the materials were earmarked for civilian construction projects, Halevi said that in reality, they were diverted by Hamas to create the network of attack tunnels.

“The pressure [on Israel to transfer building materials] was enormous and [was put on] by several [local] human rights organizations and international [ones], and was very effective in reaching out to the world’s public opinion, including the EU (European Union) and the U.S. administration,” Halevi told JNS.org. “And that, in a way, helped Hamas’s efforts in building these tunnels.”

Uncovering a terror tunnel. (Photo: IDF)

Numerous times during the ground operation—which destroyed 32 cross-border tunnels, according to the IDF—terrorists succeeded in using the tunnels to sneak under the border, popping up on the Israeli side with the goal of carrying out mega-attacks against civilians who live in kibbutzim and other communities. A significant number of IDF troops were killed in the process of thwarting these attacks.

A recent report by The Jerusalem Post indicated that Israel’s political and security echelon has come under criticism over the fact that little action was taken to address the tunnel threat following a 2007 state comptroller’s report that revealed their potential danger. According to the comptroller’s report, one such tunnel was used in the kidnapping of former IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who was eventually freed by Hamas in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

JCPA’s Halevi said Hamas has been digging hundreds of tunnels for operational purposes since the year 2000. He told JNS.org that human rights organizations who pressured Israel “overlooked or ignored Israeli warnings about the use of these materials to build Hamas’s military infrastructure.”

“So, in the name of humanitarian support for Gaza, Hamas misused the trust of the international community to build the infrastructure to attack Israel, with the help of human rights organizations,” said Halevi.

Regarding Operation Protective Edge, Halevi said that while the IDF “has had many achievements in fighting these tunnels, the problem is that Hamas during the last few years invested a lot of resources in digging them for use as a strategic tool against Israel, or as a Hamas spokesman said this past March, ‘We are not under siege anymore, we are imposing a siege on Israel.’”

Guy Inbar—a spokesman for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a branch of the Israeli Defense Ministry that facilitates humanitarian issues and infrastructure projects in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip—told JNS.org that his unit had been charged with transferring building materials to the private sector in Gaza, but that those transfers were halted in October 2013 “after Israel discovered a terror tunnel from Gaza to Israel that was to be used to kidnap Israeli soldiers or civilians.”

As a result, “a new mechanism was put in place with U.N. agencies to monitor the materials that go into Gaza, since we understood that some of the building material went to Hamas, and Hamas used it for building tunnels and even their [underground] headquarters,” said Inbar.

While declining to divulge exactly what percentage of Israeli construction materials in fact ended up in the hands of Hama, Inbar said, “I would like to emphasize that after examining the amount of cement used for those tunnels, we know that each tunnel could have been used to produce at least a three-story hospital.”

Inbar also would not comment on the amount of pressure being levied on Israel by NGOs to transfer cement and other materials into Gaza without restriction. But he said that there are “international organizations working in Gaza who know the exact problem, because of the Hamas terror organization’s rule over the Gaza Strip.”

Israel is still working with those international organizations to assist with civilian projects, including schools, hospitals, and medical clinics, according to Inbar. Even as they come under fire, he said, civilian workers from COGAT remain at the Israel-Gaza border crossings to transfer aid to the people of Gaza.

Map of Hamas’s terror tunnel network. (Photo: IDF Spokesman)

“I hope people will understand the problem we have with this terror organization, Hamas, which damages the quality of life of the population in Gaza,” Inbar said.

One of the organizations pressuring Israel to ease restrictions on supplying building materials to Gaza—even during the latest conflict—is Gisha, an Israeli non-profit whose goal is to protect the freedom of movement for Palestinians, particularly the residents of Gaza.

Sari Bashi, Gisha’s founder, told JNS.org that the Israeli restrictions have done significant damage to the economy in Gaza. Furthermore, she said her organization believes the restrictions have been ineffective in stopping the Hamas tunnels, claiming that the materials used in their construction were brought into Gaza from Egypt via the smuggling tunnels when prices were low—before the current regime in Cairo cracked down on such smuggling.

When asked how she can know with certainty whether the cement used by Hamas to build tunnels originated in Egypt or Israel, Bashi replied, “That is the wrong question.” Then what does Bashi believe should be asked?

“Is it legitimate to prevent civilian goods from entering Gaza?” said Bashi, adding that the “damage to the humanitarian and economic needs [of the people in Gaza] far outweighs any security benefit.”

Halevi said that while Israel might have stopped allowing cement into Gaza for the time being, America has still promised $47 million in aid to Gaza as a result of Operation Protective Edge.

“After each round of violence it’s the EU, the Americans, Qatar, and other countries who rush to give support [to Gaza],” he said. “And this support, without any effective control of the funds, enables Hamas to rebuild its military capabilities.”

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/19697/humanitarian-pressure-helped-create-israels-terror-tunnel-problem/#W2QlCau7Yv62C4eY.99