Here are some possible answers.
All of the above. Except to say re: 4). It’s not that Arabs are lazy but that Israelis have more of an entrepreneurial culture.
In place of 4) I would put that Israel has an open economy and a relatively transparent government with the rule of law and basic property rights. Those are necessary ingredients for a society to create and maintain wealth. Palestine has been run by a succession of corrupt despots or infighting ideologues for its entire history. Nobody is going to invest in Palestine if they are not confident that the government will guarantee fairness and protection.
Right. It’s why most of Africa and South America is poor, too. Terrorist leaders do not make good leaders of nations.
There’s also a ‘blame” issue- if you spend all you time blaming someone else for all your problems and not fixing them yourself, you never get out of that hole. Look at Mexico for a example.
It can’t be 2 or 3.
“Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip receive one of the highest levels of aid in the world.[2] Aid has been offered to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and other Palestinian Non-governmental organizations (PNGOs) by the international community, including International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs).
The entities that provide aid to the Palestinians are categorized into seven groups: the Arab nations, the European Union, the United States, Japan, international institutions (including agencies of the UN system), European countries, and other nations.[3]”
I’m not too familiar with Mexico, but how much blame rhetoric goes on down there? They certainly have huge problems with corruption and transparency, but when it comes to Latin American deflectoscreeching[sup]1[/sup], I think of Chavez-era Venezuela.
[sub]1. Yes, I just invented that. You owe me a dollar each time you use it.[/sub]
partly it’s a bootstrap effect. The government of israel, for example, was determined to provide electricity, water, roads phones, postal service, etc. to a european standard. The european arrivals expected nothing less. These immigrants also had among them the electricians, engineers, project managers, etc. to implement this infrastructure, and the education (literacy, etc.) to learn what they did not have. Despotic and corrupt arab leaders had much less incentive, money or technical experts to implement these changes, if at all, beyond the big cities.
Of course, if you want to implement a busines n th Palestinian territories, you have to deal with a corrupt local infrastructure - then you have to deal with a bureaucracy in Israel that did not want you to succeed; try to import any parts, and you have to prove they can’t be used to make weapons. (I.e, fertilizer and deisel fuel - hope you’re not planning an agribusiness). Your shipping will be massively delayed to cross the frontier, and your product could be trapped for weeks by a border closure after some idiot palestinian blows himself and others up and annoys the authorities.
Another part is banking - we have western banking, where a startup business routinely borrows to get started or expand - so does Israel. This presumes an open business environment, standard contract law, fair and open courts to collect debts etc. All this fails in a corrupt and arbitrary legal system.
The typical Arab middle eastern environment is to hide your wealth unless you have connections, as you are prone to arbitrary “tax” collection, extortion, etc.
I have often wondered why if the Arab world loves the Palestinians why they don’t indeed have the best army, air force and homes, food and agriculture in the world, after all the Arab nations seem to have plenty of cash to throw around. Also if the Palestinians are considered Arabs since they lived in the place now claimed as Israel, why re the Israeli’s not Arabs too?
Palestine makes a super convenient proxy army to kill Jews with. The Arab world funnels lots of money/supplies to Palestine, but mainly for the purpose of arming them to fight in a proxy war with Israel. Not to mention the wonderful PR victories that Israel keeps handing over.
An independent and prosperous Palestine is not in the best interest of the rest of the Arab world.
Can’t speak to the other items on your list, but as far as arab military power is concerned, you might find this article interesting:
A friend recently completed his MBA. Part of his assigned reading was a book titled Start-Up Nation. He recommended it to me; I haven’t read it yet, but I plan to. Amazon’s summary:
It does not seem to be good at that,the odd rocket lobed over and they get pasted. If the killing of jews was the idea they are doing it wrong. How much money anyway? Surely not as much as Israel spends in response.
And id agree that a prosperous Palestine would not seem to be the desire they seem to be just used as a rather ineffectual cats paw. Maybe useful only as a uniting force but not really cared about.
That is indeed an interesting article. Sounds rather like WW1 British army though. And like Stalin’s ww2 army which proved by sheer weight of numbers one can win.
I think this is better suited to Great Debates than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Exactly the point. A very small investment in rockets leads to a huge expenditure of money and a huge loss of international goodwill on the part of the Israel.
Use it? I can’t pronounce it.
Well, I can pronounce it. “Duh-flehk-toe-screech-ing.”
Oh, fudge!
(Hands a loonie to Friedo)
(Glares suspiciously at carnivorousplant)
You’re in on Friedo’s racket, ain’t ya?
Nah, the last guy who tried to take over Friedo’s racket got his knees busted.
I can’t evaluate that claim but I’m very skeptical it could be the case. I think we can say Israel worked very hard to make its land usable valuable and the Palestinians have not been able to do that. The fact that their land is currently being part-occupied can’t help, but there has also been a shortage of good or even interested leadership and planning.
I’m sure a lot of money has been sent to Israel that way, but it’s not what keeps the country going. Israel built an economy and it’s not subsisting on handouts from rich old Jews.
Not really.
The U.S. gives Israel a substantial amount of aid, but again, people overestimate how much. Israel does stand on its own two feet economically and if the U.S. stopped its support or reduced it, the country wouldn’t collapse.
Part of the issue might be because Israeli leaders don’t steal as much of the aid they get.
Cite.
Regards,
Shodan
The fact that you use the word “Palestine” demonstrates part of the problem, which is that the Palestinian Arabs are much more interested in the trappings of statehood (which they believe can be used to undermine Israel) than in doing the actual work of building and bettering themselves.
If they took the energy they spend in trying to undermine Israel and used it instead to develop themselves, they would probably be at least as rich as Israel by now.