Freeze Politics: Cutting Nose to Spite Face
by Reb Akiva at Mystical Paths
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has acceded to US President Obama's request (demand) that Israel freeze settlement building "for peace", at least temporarily (by announcing a 10 month moratorium). We will not debate whether this is a smart move, putting the Palestinians and the US on the spot of actually having to take actions for their part, or stupid in giving in on a point never given before while strangling the people who act as the main buffer for Israel.
We will point out the following unintended side effect...
Palestinian Authority statistics from 2007 state that 13% of "Palestinian" men in the West Bank work in construction in the settlements and Israel (including Jerusalem and other supposed "occupied" areas).
In the name of peace, the U.S. just forced Israel to place 13% of "Palestinian" men, the main or sole wage earner for their families, on the unemployment line. Oh wait, there is no unemployment line in the West Bank. No unemployment insurance, government benefits, social security, dole, etc.
13% of the "Palestinian" workers of the West Bank were just set up to starve in the name of peace. Given an unemployment rate of 18% in the West Bank "Palestinian" areas, we're going to take that up to 31% for peace.
Happy Peace Process neighbor.
(Sources: Statistics - PA data here, News Report - here.)
3 comments:
Wow, seriously how ridiculous is all this "peace" garbage. I can't wait till America gets its nose out of Israel's business, and also can't wait until democracy is removed from Israel entirely, in our own government.
Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premises. Just because 13% of Palestinian workers work in construction doesn't mean they're all working in the settlements. In fact, given the number of people working, that seems highly unlikely.
The PA statistics document linked specifically states the number of workers that work in construction "in the Israeli settlements". I divided this by the total number of workers in the workforce (in the same document) to get the percentage.
Further, the total size of the workforce is only 660,000 total, 472,000 males (same document).
No premise, facts per the P Authority.
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