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Connecting the dots
Quantum note
Friday, March 07, 2008
Muzaffar Iqbal
On September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat, shook hands on the White House lawn, marking the inauguration of Oslo Peace Accords. The world was full of euphoria; the long standing conflict in the Middle East and around the world was finally going to come to an end. Because of this, Yasser Arafat shared the 1994 Noble Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Dan Gillerman, then president of Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce, mused that there was now a chance that Israel could become a Middle Eastern Singapore or Hong Kong where multinational companies would base their headquarters. At that time, Israeli economy was stagnant, its exports were limited, and although its Arab neighbours were impotent militarily, it was, nevertheless, under an economic siege.
Three weeks after the historic handshake, Boris Yeltsin staged his coup, sending in tanks to set fire to the parliament building in Moscow. Following Yeltsin's repressive measures, Russian Jews started to leave Soviet Union en masse. Over the course of next seven years (1993 and 2000), roughly one million Jews left the former Soviet Union and moved to Israel. This amounts to 18 per cent of Israel's total Jewish population. This demographic shift made Israeli economy independent of cheap Palestinian labour. The Russian immigrants took up the menial jobs formerly given to Palestinians who used to cross border everyday to sweep streets, pick up garbage, and build roads and houses inside Israel. Suddenly, the state of Israel was "self-sufficient" in cheap labour for the first time in its history.
Within weeks of the arrival of the first wave of Soviet Jews, Israel started to seal off its border with the occupied territories. It began slowly, as a temporary measure, to prevent the so-called terrorist attacks, but it soon became the new status quo: Palestinians were prevented from going to their jobs, from selling their goods, because now their jobs were being given to the new immigrants from the Soviet Union. No one connected the dots between the Israeli decision to start closing its borders and the arrival of cheap labour from Soviet Union.
The Soviet Jews soon established some of the most aggressive settlements on Palestinian lands, such as the Ariel and the West Bank settlements. Ariel is like a mini-Moscow, with signs in Hebrew and Russian. No one connected dots between Israel's offer to Soviet Jews and the emergence of new settlements.
By 1996, 66 per cent of the Palestinian labour force was either unemployed or severely under-employed. Their already constrained land was being rapidly incorporated into new settlements. On the other hand, the Israeli economy was booming, albeit in a quiet new direction: instead of looking for markets in the Middle East, Israeli businesses were now investing in high-tech, anti-terrorism ventures. Watchtowers connected to a central observation post, electronic fences, aerial surveillance and the like were attracting talent and capital. Palestinians, on the other hand, were seeing a new squeeze on their limited resources. Their land and water were being grabbed, their jobs had already been taken away, and their existence was now reduced to daily survival. Then, one fine morning in September 2000, Ariel Sharon, decided to visit al-Haram al-Sharif, setting off the second intifada.
With the second intifada, Oslo Accords became history, but more than that it was the beginning of yet another doomed effort by Palestinians to reclaim their lives. It was doomed from the beginning, not only because of the massive imbalance in military hardware (tanks against stones), but also because it was a spontaneous reaction of a besieged polity, totally sealed off from outside, left to its own by the entire world, including 1.6 billion Muslims who claim to have a stake in the conflict because of the sanctified mosque in Jerusalem.
Everyone connects the infamous Sharon visit to the second intifada, but there is seldom any connection made between that visit and the dot-com crash with which the Israeli economy went into a free fall. By June 2001, roughly three hundred top Israeli high-tech companies were on the verge of bankruptcy. The Israeli government intervened quickly, increasing its military spending by 10.7 per cent and encouraging the tech industry to branch out from information and communication technologies into security and surveillance. Young Israelis serving their mandatory time in Israeli defence forces were encouraged to develop new technologies and given assistance in turning their ideas into market plans. A slew of new start-ups were launched throughout 2001. These new companies provided state of the art devices and systems for high-tech surveillance and security.
Then came September 2001. Suddenly, the world was inflamed; there was a massive demand for new technologies--anything to do with security and surveillance. Airports needed new technologies, border forces and homeland security were looking for companies which could quickly provide technologies and training needed by them. The security fever was worldwide. And there as only one country poised to meet the demand immediately: Israel.
By 2004, Israeli economy was the fastest growing economy among all the western economies. It had positioned itself as a huge shopping mall for high-tech security devices and systems. In 2002, it launched its first homeland security conference and since then, it has hosted at least half a dozen such conferences every year. In February 2006, one such conference was attended by FBI, Microsoft, Singapore's Mass Transit System. In May 2007, directors of several large US airports were the main feature of another such conference. The result: Israel's exports in counterterrorism-related products and services increased by 15 per cent in 2006, and were projected to grow by 20 per cent in 2007, totalling $1.2 billion annually. Would someone connect these dots as Naomi Klein has done in her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which is the basis of much of the data in this column.
The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com
Connecting the dots
Quantum note
Friday, March 07, 2008
Muzaffar Iqbal
On September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat, shook hands on the White House lawn, marking the inauguration of Oslo Peace Accords. The world was full of euphoria; the long standing conflict in the Middle East and around the world was finally going to come to an end. Because of this, Yasser Arafat shared the 1994 Noble Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Dan Gillerman, then president of Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce, mused that there was now a chance that Israel could become a Middle Eastern Singapore or Hong Kong where multinational companies would base their headquarters. At that time, Israeli economy was stagnant, its exports were limited, and although its Arab neighbours were impotent militarily, it was, nevertheless, under an economic siege.
Three weeks after the historic handshake, Boris Yeltsin staged his coup, sending in tanks to set fire to the parliament building in Moscow. Following Yeltsin's repressive measures, Russian Jews started to leave Soviet Union en masse. Over the course of next seven years (1993 and 2000), roughly one million Jews left the former Soviet Union and moved to Israel. This amounts to 18 per cent of Israel's total Jewish population. This demographic shift made Israeli economy independent of cheap Palestinian labour. The Russian immigrants took up the menial jobs formerly given to Palestinians who used to cross border everyday to sweep streets, pick up garbage, and build roads and houses inside Israel. Suddenly, the state of Israel was "self-sufficient" in cheap labour for the first time in its history.
Within weeks of the arrival of the first wave of Soviet Jews, Israel started to seal off its border with the occupied territories. It began slowly, as a temporary measure, to prevent the so-called terrorist attacks, but it soon became the new status quo: Palestinians were prevented from going to their jobs, from selling their goods, because now their jobs were being given to the new immigrants from the Soviet Union. No one connected the dots between the Israeli decision to start closing its borders and the arrival of cheap labour from Soviet Union.
The Soviet Jews soon established some of the most aggressive settlements on Palestinian lands, such as the Ariel and the West Bank settlements. Ariel is like a mini-Moscow, with signs in Hebrew and Russian. No one connected dots between Israel's offer to Soviet Jews and the emergence of new settlements.
By 1996, 66 per cent of the Palestinian labour force was either unemployed or severely under-employed. Their already constrained land was being rapidly incorporated into new settlements. On the other hand, the Israeli economy was booming, albeit in a quiet new direction: instead of looking for markets in the Middle East, Israeli businesses were now investing in high-tech, anti-terrorism ventures. Watchtowers connected to a central observation post, electronic fences, aerial surveillance and the like were attracting talent and capital. Palestinians, on the other hand, were seeing a new squeeze on their limited resources. Their land and water were being grabbed, their jobs had already been taken away, and their existence was now reduced to daily survival. Then, one fine morning in September 2000, Ariel Sharon, decided to visit al-Haram al-Sharif, setting off the second intifada.
With the second intifada, Oslo Accords became history, but more than that it was the beginning of yet another doomed effort by Palestinians to reclaim their lives. It was doomed from the beginning, not only because of the massive imbalance in military hardware (tanks against stones), but also because it was a spontaneous reaction of a besieged polity, totally sealed off from outside, left to its own by the entire world, including 1.6 billion Muslims who claim to have a stake in the conflict because of the sanctified mosque in Jerusalem.
Everyone connects the infamous Sharon visit to the second intifada, but there is seldom any connection made between that visit and the dot-com crash with which the Israeli economy went into a free fall. By June 2001, roughly three hundred top Israeli high-tech companies were on the verge of bankruptcy. The Israeli government intervened quickly, increasing its military spending by 10.7 per cent and encouraging the tech industry to branch out from information and communication technologies into security and surveillance. Young Israelis serving their mandatory time in Israeli defence forces were encouraged to develop new technologies and given assistance in turning their ideas into market plans. A slew of new start-ups were launched throughout 2001. These new companies provided state of the art devices and systems for high-tech surveillance and security.
Then came September 2001. Suddenly, the world was inflamed; there was a massive demand for new technologies--anything to do with security and surveillance. Airports needed new technologies, border forces and homeland security were looking for companies which could quickly provide technologies and training needed by them. The security fever was worldwide. And there as only one country poised to meet the demand immediately: Israel.
By 2004, Israeli economy was the fastest growing economy among all the western economies. It had positioned itself as a huge shopping mall for high-tech security devices and systems. In 2002, it launched its first homeland security conference and since then, it has hosted at least half a dozen such conferences every year. In February 2006, one such conference was attended by FBI, Microsoft, Singapore's Mass Transit System. In May 2007, directors of several large US airports were the main feature of another such conference. The result: Israel's exports in counterterrorism-related products and services increased by 15 per cent in 2006, and were projected to grow by 20 per cent in 2007, totalling $1.2 billion annually. Would someone connect these dots as Naomi Klein has done in her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which is the basis of much of the data in this column.
The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com
Connecting the dots
