What investment and freedom would have meant for Gaza

When I first heard President Donald Trump’s “Gaza Riviera” scheme, it brought back memories of Palestinian hopes three decades ago during the heyday of the Oslo Accords. Back then, I was serving as co-chair of “Builders for Peace,” a project launched by Vice President Al Gore to encourage American businesses to invest in the Palestinian economy to support the fledgling peace process.

My fellow co-chair, Mel Levine, and I led a number of delegations of American business leaders (including Arab Americans and American Jews) to the Palestinian lands. Our first exposure to the problems we would encounter came as we attempted to enter via the Allenby Bridge from Jordan. American Jews and others passed easily, while Arab Americans were separated from the group and forced to undergo humiliating screening.

We convened a session in Jerusalem for Palestinians to meet with Americans interested in investment opportunities, but to enter the city Palestinians had to secure a pass from the occupation authority. The passes only permitted them a few hours in the city, limiting the time they could devote to our discussions.

Entry into and exit from Gaza was equally problematic. One deeply disturbing scene on leaving Gaza has stayed with me. Hundreds of Palestinian men filled what I can only describe as cattle chutes, waiting in the sun for permission to enter into Israel. Straddling these chutes were young Israeli soldiers shouting at the Palestinians below to look down and hold their passes above their heads.

Our meetings with Palestinian business leaders in Gaza and the West Bank were hopeful. They were eager to discuss possibilities with their American counterparts, and the Americans were impressed. A number of partnerships were discussed.

Two projects were notable: one to manufacture leather products, another to assemble furniture. Both sought to take advantage of Gaza’s proximity to Eastern Europe for export. As both projects required that Israel permit import of raw material and export of finished products, both failed. It appeared that Israel might have been willing to entertain such projects, but only if they operated through an Israeli middleman, thereby reducing the ventures’ profitability.

After a few frustrating years, I saw President Bill Clinton who asked how the project was developing. I told him about the Israeli impediments on investment in independent Palestinian economic growth. Troubled, he asked that I write him a detailed memo. In it, I outlined our specific problems and my complaint that his peace team was not taking these challenges seriously, insisting that any US challenge to the Israelis would impede efforts to promote peace negotiations. I told the president that since Oslo: Palestinian unemployment had doubled, poverty had risen, and Palestinians hope for peace was evaporating. To my dismay, the response I received from the White House appeared to have been drafted by his peace team, and was no response at all. At the end of Clinton’s first term Builders for Peace was disbanded along with hopes for Palestinian independent economic growth.

Over the next decade, absent any US pressure on Israel to change its behavior, negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians continued to falter, Palestinians became poorer, Israelis became more emboldened and oppressive, and Palestinian attitudes hardened, leading to renewed violence.

One of the more optimistic projects BfP endorsed was a proposal by a Virginia-based Palestinian American company to build a Marriott resort on the Gaza beachfront. After securing initial investment and beginning construction, they sought risk insurance from OPIC, the US agency created to guarantee investment against risk. The project was endorsed by then Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, a champion of our BfP, and supported by PLO head, Yasser Arafat, who both saw the resort hotel as laying the foundation for the future economic growth of a Palestinian state.

Yasser Arafat, speaking of Gaza’s future, would say that with investment and freedom from occupation it could become Singapore; if denied both, it could become Somalia. Israel did everything it could to guarantee that Gaza would become Somalia—and they appear to have succeeded.

Against this backdrop, Trump’s insulting plan to build an American-owned Gaza Riviera was painful to hear. It reminded me of what might have been, but, three decades later, is being discussed without benefiting any Palestinians from its development.

The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute