Targeting Israel Is Hitting Palestinians

"...[O]nce again, the biggest victims of efforts to advance the 'peace process' will be ordinary Palestinians." Evelyn Gordon As the Associated Press reports, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled Thursday that the EU's free trade agreement with Israel does not apply to the West Bank, and therefore, goods made by Israeli firms in the West Bank are subject to EU import taxes.

The EU has accords with both Israel and the Palestinians that ended customs duties, but the ruling by the EU's highest court stipulates that the disputed area is not part of Israel and Israeli goods made there are subject to EU import taxes.

For years, European countries exempted Israeli firms in the disputed territories from import duties. Many Israeli firms moved to the West Bank to benefit from cheaper Palestinian labor. As Palestinians are largely barred from working in Israel and have few job opportunities in the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank, jobs making such products as cookies, pretzels, wines, cosmetics and computer equipment in these factories are highly sought after.

The imposition of the new import taxes will lower these firms' profits, meaning that many factories will lay off workers. Furthermore, as the import tax increases the price of these goods to an unacceptable margin, the Israeli owners have already started moving factories back to Israel, a trend which is only likely to get worse.

Thousands of Palestinians could lose their jobs, and the factories will hire some of the many Israelis who are out of work.

Evelyn Gordon discusses the latest European attempt to punish Israel and why it actually hurts Palestinians: "What has changed is not the law but the politics: seeking to persuade Israelis that 'the occupation' doesn't pay, EU countries recently began taxing such imports."

Europeans are obviously entitled to put principle above the consequences for Palestinian employment; countries make such decisions all the time. But the fact remains that once again, the biggest victims of efforts to advance the "peace process" will be ordinary Palestinians.

This is nothing new. Gordon also notes that srael is the region's strongest economy. The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, is the world's largest welfare society. It will be years before the PA can match Israel's employment capacity, if ever.

And it only gets worse as the Peace-by-Pieces Process drags on. Gordon writes:

Thousands of Gazans, for instance, used to work for Israeli firms in the Erez industrial zone on the Israel-Gaza border. Today, Erez is a ghost town with no prospect of ever reopening: having withdrawn from Gaza, Israel could no longer protect these firms, and the Palestinians would not.

Moreover, tens of thousands of Palestinians used to work inside Israel; today, almost none do. The second intifada made a massive flow of Palestinians into Israel too risky, and Israelis felt no obligation to employ residents of a state-in-the-making that was waging nonstop physical and diplomatic warfare against them.

"The Palestinians, after all, cannot simultaneously demand independence from Israel and jobs inside Israel."

And yet, they do, along with other benefits &mdash like health care, water, and electricity &mdash which the PA has no legitimate plan to provide.

It is Israel and the Israelis who make it possible for Palestinians to live. Those nations who try to use the Peace-by-Pieces Process to punish Israel for its success only succeed in harming Palestinians.