THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

by Charlotte Smokler

No term has dominated the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more than the word "occupation." Whether debated in a television program or analyzed in a newspaper story about the middle east, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is assumed - without discussion and almost unconsciously -to be an unmitigated evil. During her speech at last summer's Durban conference Hanan Ashrawi described the Israeli occupation in the following inflammatory language: "Rarely has the human mind devised such varied, diverse, and comprehensive means of wholesale brutalization and persecution."

In "What Occupation?," his July-August 2002 article in "Commentary," Efraim Karsh, head of Mediterranean studies at King's College, University of London, disagrees. Given the importance of this dissent, we have decided to provide our readers with a digest of Karsh's statistics. It is by no means a summary of the entire article, which includes a broad discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict..

We have decided to limit all statistics to the period from June 1967 to the start of the Oslo Peace process in 1993, and for the following reasons: Between 1993 and 1997 an ever larger proportion of the Palestinian population changed from living under Israeli occupation to living under the Palestinian Authority. Thus when Israel relinquished control of Hebron in 1997, about 98% of the Palestinians were governed either partly or completely by the Palestinian Authority. To be specific, about 60% lived in area A which was completely under Palestinian rule; another 40% lived in area B, with military matters under Israeli rule and civil matters under Palestinian control. Only about 2% live in area C which was still completely under Israeli governance.

We have two other reasons for ignoring most statistics for the post-1993 period. In 1994, a rash of suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism forced Israel to institute checkpoints and territorial closures which greatly changed changed the living conditions of the Palestinian population. Furthermore the start of Intifada II in October 2000 and the subsequent periodic Israeli incursions into the territories made many of these statistics, especially the ones dealing with the economic situation, invalid.

Economy:

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the world's fourth fastest growing economy. They were ahead of such super stars as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and actually ahead of Israel. By 1991, the West Bank's and Gaza's per capita GNP had risen to $1,715 as compared to Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, and Turkey's $1,630. I n the same year, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double that of Syria and more than four times that of Yemen. .

Health:

Mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, and life expectancy rose correspondingly from 48 years in 1967 to 73 years in 2000. Due to Israel's medical programs, infant mortality rates were reduced from 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000. This compares favorably with the year 2000 infant mortality rate of 64 for Iraq, 40 for Egypt and 23 for Jordan. Childhood diseases like polio, measles, and whooping cough have been eradicated.

Education:

The number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent between 1967 and 1987, while the population grew by only 28 percent.. Adult illiteracy rates in 1987 had dropped to 14 percent , as compared to 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, and 44 percent in Syria. In 1967 there were no universities in the territories. By the early 1990's there were seven institutions of higher learning enrolling some 16,500 students.

Standard of Living:

By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population of the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, compared to 5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in homes as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967.

According to Karsh, the Israeli government did not attempt to control the educational system or the newspapers in the territories. It allowed the continued use of Jordanian textbook in local schools even though they were filled with anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli propaganda, and it limited its oversight of the Arabic press to military and security matters. The publication of pro-PLO editorials was permitted, and anti-Israel activities by PLO supporters were tolerated so long as they did not involve overt incitement to violence. Karsh considers this a grave mistake on the part of the Israelis, and he contrasts it to the American occupation of Japan, which saw a revision of the school curricula and censorship of media. It certainly indicates that the Palestinians lived with a good deal of leniency in many areas.

We should immediately add that these cited improvements represent only part of the picture. It has been generally agreed that the attitude of West Bank and Gaza residents became increasingly hostile during the 1970's and 1980's until it erupted spontaneously in the 1987 Intifada. While Karsh never discusses the causes of this development, other observers have referred to the settlement movement and the consequent expropriation of Arab land in the West Bank and Gaza, unfair allocation of the region's precious water supply and the experience of insensitive and patronizing attitudes by Israelis civilians, soldiers and officials..

So, while well aware of the many negative features associated with the occupation, we point to the above cited statistics as evidence that the occupation had not been an unmitigated evil but had led also to some substantial improvements in the lives of the Palestinian population.

Footnote: We have accepted the statistics provided in Efraim Karsh's Commentary article without independent verification.