August 13, 2005
THE HOUSE ISN'T ALWAYS GREENER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE:
Farmers About to Be Uprooted in Gaza Agree to Sell Greenhouses: The buyer, a private international fund, will hand the facilities over to the Palestinians. (Laura King, August 13, 2005, LA Times)
Farmers from the Jewish settlements of the Gaza Strip signed an agreement Friday to sell most of their greenhouses to a private international fund, which in turn will hand them over to the Palestinian Authority.The deal, reached just days before the Israeli evacuation of the 21 settlements in Gaza is to begin, is aimed at preserving the settlements' primary agricultural asset for Palestinian use. That could provide the impoverished territory with a much-needed economic boost after the hand-over.
The greenhouses use sophisticated techniques that were developed especially for Gaza's desert-like conditions. Many Palestinians are familiar with the growing methods used in the greenhouses from years spent working in them, although the settlements had increasingly turned to Thai workers after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising nearly five years ago.
About one-quarter of the greenhouses have been dismantled and moved to Israel by their owners. The $14-million deal covers an additional 800 acres of greenhouses, which are owned by about 450 farmers.
The purchase is being made by the private Economic Cooperation Foundation, whose founders include Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians.
The foundation raised private funds to procure the greenhouses, including a personal $500,000 donation from James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank president who is a special envoy for the so-called quartet sponsoring a Middle East peace plan: the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.
"It shows that with some determination, one can get to the point of a rational agreement beneficial to both settlers and Palestinians," said Stephen Cohen, a scholar with the New York-based Israel Policy Forum who helped broker the deal.
The quicker you can get economic development going in Palestine the better for all concerned. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 13, 2005 12:00 AM
Anyone wanna bet that within a few years we'll see a story about how the Palestinians took these functional, high-tech, starte of the art operating greenhouses and turned them into yet another Third World pile of useless junk? (And as a bonus, it will be all the result of a plot by the Jewwwwsss!)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at August 13, 2005 12:25 PMPalestinians have never had much trouble maintaining a functioning middle class in the past--no reason why they should now.
Posted by: oj at August 13, 2005 12:31 PMWhat do you want to bet that within two years these greenhouses will be in shambles? Any takers? Nobody???
Posted by: ray at August 13, 2005 12:44 PMI'll take it.
Posted by: oj at August 13, 2005 12:49 PMWhen have the Palestinians maintained a functioning middle class that wasn't part of (or subsidized by) a larger society? Under the Ottoman Turks?
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at August 13, 2005 3:48 PMWhen had Americans until they got their own state?
Posted by: oj at August 13, 2005 3:53 PMAccording to a local show on WABC last night (John Batchelor), the PA refused to accept this deal earlier, forcing the private group to step in and "save" the greenhouses. The reporter on the show (John Loftus) said about the half of the greenhouses had already been removed from the site and the PA was in hot water because that loss represented a couple thousand lost jobs.
Batchelor was actually in Gaza for all of this week, so he confirmed the part about the equipment being removed.
Posted by: jim hamlen at August 13, 2005 10:54 PMThe story says they were moved.
Posted by: oj at August 13, 2005 11:18 PMI think the point Loftus made was that the PA could have had the whole thing, had they agreed to pay the $14 million (or so) - which, according to him, they did (several months ago). Now they will be lucky to get half, and who knows how much of the supporting equipment (pumps, controls, computers, piping, electrical, etc.) will be there.
A couple of nights earlier, Batchelor told of seeing flatbed trucks bringing big yellow cages into the area, presumably to 'house' the recalcitrant settlers.
There probably isn't a good way for the transfer to occur, but having youths from Gaza planting flags on top of blown up Israeli buildings seems like a bad start to a 'new chapter'. Especially with unrealistic settlers being dragged into cages just a couple of hundred yards away (by the IDF).
Posted by: jim hamlen at August 14, 2005 12:52 AMThe Soviets refused Marshall Plan money--enemies do silly things.
Posted by: oj at August 14, 2005 8:52 AM