Paving Palestine’s Way

It’s common wisdom in Israel these days to support both the building of the enormous barrier between the country and the occupied territories and the creation of a Palestinian state. Many Israelis say that when the barrier and the nation are built, let the Arab countries take care of their Palestinian brethren; Palestinians shouldn’t count on finding jobs in Israel. Yet how viable would a Palestinian state be if its citizens couldn’t regain the jobs they lost after the start of the uprising in September 2000?

This and other questions about how to build a functioning Palestine are the subject of two studies produced by the Rand Corp. last month. Some hurdles are likely to be higher than the reports admit, but planning for the future after the Israelis and Palestinians end their conflict is necessary. For the dangers of insufficient planning, look no further than Iraq.

Rand concluded what most Palestinians now admit: Israelis and Palestinians alike need peace and security. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, successor to Yasser Arafat, repeatedly preaches that the uprising, or intifada, has been a mistake. Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israelis have provoked reprisals that have resulted in the deaths of an estimated three times as many Palestinians as Israelis.

The relative calm since Arafat’s death in November has provided room for negotiations on a more lasting peace. Israel’s planned withdrawal of settlers from Gaza -- which the government Monday said would be postponed from July to August -- should also advance the peace process.

One Rand report said the best chance for a Palestinian nation to succeed would be for its West Bank territory to be connected, rather than separated by chunks of Israeli-controlled land, and for it to have relatively open borders with Israel. But even if the borders are tough to cross, as many Israelis envision, the country could still do well if its West Bank territory was contiguous.

A companion report describes the building of a corridor through the West Bank and into Gaza that could include a rail line, aqueduct, highway and fiber-optic cable system. Just building part of that would be worthwhile; putting Palestinians to work and getting money into their pockets could go far toward decreasing anger and boredom. The rail and road part of the corridor probably would cost about $6 billion; the overall estimated cost of all the reports’ suggestions is about $33 billion in the first 10 years of a new state.

That’s not an enormous amount of money, given the vast sums the United States, the United Nations and European nations have spent in the past decades on feeding and housing Palestinian refugees and trying to construct roads, buildings and infrastructure such as water and power plants in the occupied territories. By comparison, the U.S. now gives Israel about $3 billion a year in aid; an additional $2 billion goes to Egypt.

The reports’ goals for establishing the rule of law, shifting power from the executive to the legislative branch and significantly reducing corruption would be overly ambitious in the near term for nearly all Middle East countries, let alone a post-Arafat Palestinian nation. But the signposts they reveal are important and deserve study by both Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Independent neighbors at peace, no matter how cold that peace, would go far toward bringing stability to a part of the world where it has long been lacking.