The latest Palestinian Human Development Report, in foregrounding donor-driven development, is being accused of concealing the main problem: Israel's occupation, Amira Howeidy reports The initial release of the fifth Palestinian Human Development Report (PHDR) in Ramallah earlier this month seems to have gone unnoticed in the Arab media. Otherwise, the controversial statements of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad during the launch on 9 May -- where he said that the objective of the Palestinians was economic and environmental control, rather than liberation from Israeli occupation -- might have generated the heated debate that broke out in Doha, Qatar, this week upon the report's regional launch. The Human Development Report 2009/10, "Investing in Human Security for a Future State", is the latest in a series of reports funded by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) since 1997, six years after the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians were signed. Now, 17 years into Oslo, the foundations of the promised Palestinian state have been practically buried under Israeli settlement construction across the entire occupied Palestinian territories. What's left of the proposed "future" Palestinian state is a fragmented territory -- an archipelago -- where illegal Israeli settlements and a massive apartheid wall that cuts through the West Bank are woven into its structure, rendering sovereignty and statehood impossible. During the regional launch of the fifth PHDR in the Qatari capital on 21 May, Ayman El-Sayyad, editor of the Egyptian Weghat Nazar (Points of View) cultural monthly, flashed the archipelago map of what remains of Palestine -- testament to the shocking dispossession brought on by the occupation. El-Sayyad was opening a two-day conference organised by his magazine, the UNDP, Al-Jazeera Centre for Studies and the Centre for International and Regional Studies of Georgetown University in Qatar, on statehood. While the map was meant to convey that the most compelling challenge for the Palestinians is Israel's 62- year-old occupation, the PHDR's principal author, Sufian Mushasha, focussed on the need for foreign donations to sustain the Palestinian economy. While acknowledging that the occupation impedes development in the occupied Palestinian territories, Mushasha's presentation of the PHFR appeared more concerned with macro-economy, environmental control and "sustained development". His wording reflected the spirit, tone and arguments made in the 170-page long PHDR report. The thrust of Mushasha's argument was that since the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel has been "obsessed" with state security at the detriment of the "human security" of the Palestinians. Meanwhile, on the official Palestinian front, emphasis has been on building a state without taking into consideration the "needs" of the Palestinians. The occupation and settlement expansion effectively weakened the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its ability to deliver in the health, education and economic sectors. "This situation allowed for violence and weapons," Mushasha said, in reference to armed resistance. He then went on to say that the Palestinians have the right to live in dignity under occupation. And in order to achieve this, they should build a strong economy that would "motivate" a "strong popular movement" aiming to achieve political and economic rights. If there is agreement between Palestinians and the international community over the two-state solution, he added, international donors must adopt a neutral approach and not associate funds with the political process. Ever since Oslo, the international donor community committed itself to pumping the Palestinian economy -- for the sake of the "peace process" -- with donations, making the occupied territories one of the largest recipients of per capita foreign aid in the world ($14 billion since 1993). But since the 2006 elections, when Hamas won a landslide majority in the Palestinian parliament and became part of the PA, the US and the EU froze their funding to the PA and opted to channel aid directly to beneficiaries of their own choosing. Thus, the US supports Fatah while the EU supports the West Bank's development projects. "International aid should not be politicised," said Mushasha. "We need foreign aid, to maintain the steadfastness of the Palestinian people." While the fifth PHDR repeatedly points out that the Israeli occupation impedes "Palestinian progress", its language and the nuances of its arguments throughout its five chapters do not hold Israel alone as primarily accountable for the situation in the occupied territories. In Chapter 3, the report appears to equate the impact of the occupation with reverberations of the Fatah-Hamas division since the latter won the 2006 elections and then took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 after a power struggle with US-supported Fatah. The report goes further, attributing the drastic measures Israel has undertaken against the Palestinians since 2000 to the "extremely violent" second Intifada and the first Intifada that preceded it. From the second Intifada to the present day, the report states, small gains made by grassroots women leaders have been reversed. Mushasha, a 47-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem, put it as follows: "I don't think that armed resistance will liberate Palestine, given the disproportionate balance of power; otherwise we would have invited the Arab armies to fight Israel." Instead, and in line with the report's recommendations, Mushasha proposes building a "self-sustaining economy" and "galvanising a popular movement aimed towards the realisation of civil and political rights" as "the key to alleviating insecurity". This conclusion might not be completely surprising in light of the fact that the report opens with a quotation from US President Barack Obama on the importance of security to development, made during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, delivered amid a surge of US troops in Afghanistan and wherein he defended the "just war" doctrine. To Yasser Zaatra, a Jordan-based Palestinian researcher and columnist, both the fifth PHDR and Mushasha's presentation "amount" to the vision of Palestinian Premier Salam Fayyad who has promised a "de facto" state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by 2011. Fayyad made his promise in August 2009. The foundation of his envisioned state is based on US-Western funded economic infrastructure and Palestinian public institutions. It has no borders, no army, lacks any form of sovereignty and does not specify how, given the archipelagic nature of what remains of Palestine, it will be determined geographically. More importantly, it accepts its statehood under the Israeli occupation. Critics accused it of being the antithesis of a Palestinian state -- a liquidation of the Palestinian cause. "The essence of the PHDR, despite the effort put into the report," said Zaatra, "is precisely the project of Fayyad, General Keith Dayton [US Security Coordinator for Israel-PA), and envoy of the Middle East Quartet Tony Blair. By calling on the international community to continue supplying the Palestinian economy with billions of dollars, it is effectively relieving Israel, the occupying power, of its obligations and duties under international law." Zaatra, who was present in the Doha conference, charged that the "Fayyad-Dayton-Blair project" is a long-term endeavour that seeks to persuade the Palestinians to give up on resistance to occupation in order "to live" on foreign aid. "This would transform the Palestinian struggle from an issue of national liberation to a border dispute," he said. Debate on the "meaning" of international aid to the PA raged on. It was described as a gift to Israel, since the money is practically "funding the prison" of the Palestinians living under occupation. Hayat Attiya, a Lebanese media expert and researcher, said that emphasis on foreign aid as a Palestinian priority diverts attention from the core issue of occupied land and the Israeli occupation. "How can we talk about economic rights without political rights?" she asked. The gist of the fifth PHDR reduces the Palestinian question from national rights to "humanitarian rights". Whereas the report focussed on standards of living in order to raise the dignity of the Palestinians, according to Attiya, "There is no dignity under the occupation." A minority defended the report for its "practical" approach towards the situation in the occupied territories. This view was strengthened by Mushasha's defence: "As a Palestinian who lived in Jerusalem all my life, I have learned to adopt a realistic view regarding the occupation," he said. "What critics here regard as defeatist, I call being realistic."
