The Trump administration's $50 billion economic support plan for the Palestinians cannot succeed without addressing the political elements of a Middle East deal, international financial chiefs and global investors said Wednesday in comments that pushed back on the U.S. insistence that the two must be separated.
Panelists at the two-day conference in Bahrain welcomed the proposal's ambitious investment and development goals, but warned it would fall short without good governance, rule of law and realistic prospects for lasting peace through a political vision, which they noted is missing from the initiative.
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Their views were aired as the Palestinians repeated their outright rejection of the "Peace to Prosperity" plan. The Palestinians have boycotted the Trump administration since December 2017, when it recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
The #Palestinian 'collaborators with the occupation', who attended the #BahrainWorkshop, will be 'seriously punished' in their business, ex-Palestinian minister Ashraf Al-Ajrami tells @YishaiFleisher ?➡ https://t.co/np5AB45xyM pic.twitter.com/290DJVzzAN
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) June 26, 2019
Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund who participated in the conference, suggested that peace was the missing part of the proposal, which was put together by President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.
The Palestinians have great economic potential that can only be fulfilled with serious reform and protections for investors that must include serious anti-corruption efforts, but those alone are not enough, Lagarde noted, stressing that a "satisfactory peace" is imperative for prosperity. "It's a matter of putting all the ingredients together," she said.
"Improving economic conditions and attracting lasting investment to the region depends ultimately on being able to reach a peace agreement," she said in a statement released later by the IMF.
Lagarde's comments appeared at odds with the views expressed by Kushner when he opened the conference on Tuesday and said an economic plan was "a necessary precondition to resolving what has been a previously unsolvable political situation."
"I think we're now seeing a situation in the Middle East where a lot of interests are
aligning between non-traditional allies."https://t.co/um1hYzOSQw— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) June 26, 2019
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had a hand in earlier peacemaking efforts and has been supportive of Kushner's plan, also spoke of the need for the economic proposal to have a political component.
"Obviously, it isn't a substitute for the politics," Blair said in a conversation with Kushner. "There will be no economic peace. There will be a peace that has a political component and an economic component, but the economy can help the politics and the politics, of course, is necessary for the economy to flourish."
The only Palestinian on the agenda, Ashraf Jabari, downplayed the Palestinian Authority's rejection of the plan. He noted that it had not been formally invited to the conference but he said a Palestinian state was necessary for economic improvements.
"This is our objective: to have an independent state of Palestine," Jabari said. "The Palestinian people would like to be independent and we are sure that this will lead to the development of the Palestinian economy."
Kushner's proposal depends heavily on private sector investment in the West Bank, Gaza as well as Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, where it envisions creating a million new jobs, cutting Palestinian unemployment to single digits, doubling the Palestinian gross domestic product and reducing the Palestinian poverty rate by 50% through projects in the health care, education, power, water, tourism, transportation and agriculture sectors.
The plan acknowledges that its success hinges on the completion of a long-elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
But that necessity was driven home by participants who sprinkled their comments with repeated references to "Palestine," a "country" and a "nation-state."
