Where does Palestine get their money? I looked in the CIA fact book and it does not mention them. Do they produce anything for exports? I do not see how they keep up their economy.
The short answer is, since the intifada, they don't. I think something like half the labor force is unemployed. Even before the intifada, they were dependent on Israel. They supplied labor to the Israeli economy (the Israelis hire Rumanians now), and relied on tourism (which is kaput in the territories, as you might expect). I believe, ironically enough, that some of the largest Palestinian businesses are in the construction area; they are busy building the Jewish settlements! And of course, there's the black economy -- Arafat runs some lively car-theft and extortion rings. But I'm not an expert on the makeup of the Palestinian economy.
As for aid, I think the PA gets about $100 million a year from the US and $80 million from the EU. The Arabs promise billions but deliver very little, knowing that money given to Arafat winds up in Swiss bank accounts. (I think Arab money is now flowing more to Hamas than to the PA. Hamas runs the social services, particularly in Gaza.) Another big source of money was Israeli sharing of tax receipts, but the Israelis stopped that when the intifada began, objecting, as they said, to paying the salaries of men who were shooting at them. |
