IT’S ROMNEY THAT’S CULTURALLY DEPRIVED, NOT PALESTINE

IT’S ROMNEY THAT’S CULTURALLY DEPRIVED, NOT PALESTINE

August 11, 2012 at 19:00 (Ignorance, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, U.S. Election, zionism)

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/its-romney-thats-...

By Zahi Khouri

I am a proud American. I am a hardworking businessman and job creator. I am a faithful Christian.

And I am Palestinian.

Much as my
multiple identities might drive Mitt Romney to head scratching, it is he
who needs a lesson in, to borrow his recent words, “culture and a few other things.”

Were he to
spend a day with me in the Holy Land, I could take him to the Jerusalem
neighborhood where my family home has stood for five centuries. I could
show him the orange trees in Jaffa that my family helped introduce to
the world in the 1930s.

That’s
right: Jaffa oranges are a Palestinian, not Israeli, trademark. Yet like
so many “cultural” markers claimed by the self-professed Jewish state,
even the fruit trees my people have tended for centuries have been
expropriated.

Romney
might be duped into thinking that oranges, falafel and hummus — staples
of Palestinian cuisine for generations — are Israeli products. But how
dare he claim that a state built at the expense of another people’s
history and accomplishments is guided by “the hand of providence”?

Israel did
not make the desert bloom. Instead, thanks to a deal struck with the
British viceroys of Mandate Palestine, it made away with a land, a set
of institutions and, indeed, a culture that was not its own.

It did so
at the expense of my people. Like more than three-quarters of
Palestine’s population, my family was forced to leave this land after
Israel’s creation in 1948. Even though we had to abandon our successful
businesses and centuries-old homes, however, we did not become the
“uncultured” victims that Romney’s caricature suggests.

Most of us
went to other Arab countries, where Palestinians became known for our
business acumen and management know-how, and helped to build nascent
private and public sectors. Ask our fellow Arabs in Lebanon, Jordan or
elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region and they will tell you: Palestinian
culture, with its premium on education and hard work, has been a force
for hope, development and prosperity.

Despite their circumstances,
Palestinians living under Israel’s brutal occupation share the same
culture and proudly claim the same remarkable achievements. I, for one,
returned to Palestine in 1993 to launch the first Coca-Cola bottling plant in the West Bank. It was granted a Best Country Bottling Operation award in
May by Coca-Cola, a testament to my colleagues’ ingenuity and
determination. But these traits alone cannot overcome the stifling
effects of Israel’s occupation.

If Romney
got one thing right, it’s that Israelis far outdo Palestinians in net
wealth. In fact, his estimates of the disparity were too conservative:
Israel’s per capita gross domestic product is roughly $32,000 to the
Palestinians’ $1,500.

Remarkably,
that $1,500 figure is roughly half of what Palestinians claimed in
1993, when the Oslo accords were signed. In other words, the
U.S.-sponsored peace process has made us poorer.

How is that possible?

Palestinians
have no say in our economic development. Every resource — water, land,
soil, minerals, airspace, humans — is controlled and commandeered by
Israel, which then deigns to sell us back a small portion.

In the West
Bank, for example, Israeli settlers consume on average 4.3 times the
amount of water as Palestinians. In the Jordan Valley alone, some 9,000
settlers in Israeli agricultural settlements use one-quarter the amount
of water consumed by the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank,
about 2.5 million people.

Palestinians
have no control over our borders. This means we cannot import or export
without being subject to discriminatory measures by our occupier. It
also means that, without Israeli permission, we cannot hire experts to
enhance our employees’ skills or send employees for overseas training.

Worse, we
are restricted within the territories ostensibly under our “control.” At
any given time, there are more than 500 Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks
and other barriers to movement within the occupied West Bank — an area
smaller than Delaware — hindering Palestinians and their goods from
moving between their own towns and cities and the outside world.

Palestinian
development of all kinds is severely hindered by the Israeli
occupation. Yet Palestinians have not given up. Palestine has one of the
highest literacy rates in the Arab world. Our youth continue to
graduate from our universities, opening businesses and gaining skills.
Our private sector innovates and grows.

All of this
is happening on the 22 percent of historic Palestine that is the West
Bank and Gaza. If Romney had any historical perspective, he would
dispose of his racist judgments about Palestinian culture and instead
imagine our potential without Israel’s imposed hindrances.