West Bank Economic Development | The American Task Force on Palestine

Salam Fayyad: The Palestinian with a plan for statehood
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Leslie Susser - (Analysis) March 8, 2010 - 1:00am

Pundits and politicians have taken recently to comparing Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion. No less a figure than President Shimon Peres, one of Ben-Gurion's foremost disciples, is the latest Israeli leader to offer the accolade. The reason is simple: Like Ben-Gurion, Fayyad is building institutions of statehood.

Selling a piece of Palestinian Main Street
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - (Interview) February 15, 2010 - 1:00am

Is the West Bank ready for Wall Street? That's a question soon to be answered with the launch of the first-of-its-kind Palestinian private equity fund, which managers hope will raise $50 million to invest in businesses in the Palestinian territories. The Palestine Liberation Organization's finances have at times drawn criticism. Late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat was accused of controlling a $1-billion investment portfolio that, Western intelligence agencies said, was funded in part through money laundering, arms dealing and diversion of international aid.

A day in the life of the Palestinian Ben-Gurion
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Akiva Eldar - February 13, 2010 - 1:00am

There are tens of millions of people in the world who glory in the title "public servant," but Dr. Salam Fayyad is apparently the only one who wakes up in the morning and goes to work to build a state for his people. Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, is not calling for peace talks, for violent resistance to the occupation or even for civil disobedience. That's the department of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The most violent protest in which Fayyad participated was a ceremonial bonfire of goods produced in Jewish West Bank settlements.

Fayyad: West Bank raids, settlement construction must end
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 9, 2010 - 1:00am

Greeting the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Office of Political Affairs Oscar Fernandes on Monday, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad stressed the importance of the UN’s role in compelling Israel to abide by its roadmap obligations.

International donors, Palestinian officials discuss municipal projects
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 8, 2010 - 1:00am

Board of directors of the Palestinian Municipal Development Program held a meeting on Monday with international donors in Ramallah in the central West Bank, to discuss developments in municipal services. The conveners included Minister of Local Governance Khaled Al-Qawasmi, member of the board of directors Abdul Ghani Nofal and directors of PMDP as well as representatives of the World Bank, the German Development Bank, the French Agency for Development, the Danish Commission and the German Agency for Technical support.

A real plan to build Palestine
In Print by Hussein Ibish - The Guardian (Opinion) - February 2, 2010 - 1:00am

Two weeks ago the Palestinian Authority issued a detailed budget for the state and institution-building programme it adopted last August. The programme calls for Palestinians to unilaterally build the administrative, economic and institutional framework of an independent state in spite of the Israeli occupation and as a peaceful, constructive means of countering it.

A real plan to build Palestine
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Guardian
by Hussein Ibish - (Opinion) February 2, 2010 - 1:00am

Two weeks ago the Palestinian Authority issued a detailed budget for the state and institution-building programme it adopted last August. The programme calls for Palestinians to unilaterally build the administrative, economic and institutional framework of an independent state in spite of the Israeli occupation and as a peaceful, constructive means of countering it.

In the West Bank's stony hills, Palestine is slowly dying
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
by Robert Fisk - January 30, 2010 - 1:00am

Area C doesn't sound very ominous. A land of stone-sprinkled grey hills and soft green valleys, it's part of the wreckage of the equally wrecked Oslo Agreement, accounting for 60 per cent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that was eventually supposed to be handed over to its Palestinian inhabitants.

How Israel put the brakes on another Palestinian dream
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Independent
January 16, 2010 - 1:00am

The West Bank scene is all too familiar: yellow cranes lifting boulders, bulldozers scooping up soil, drills transforming a hillside set in a biblical landscape of rolling olive groves. But this is not another Jewish settlement under construction. Small Palestinian flags wave from the bulldozers, a hint that this is a nationally significant project, the start of the first planned city in modern Palestinian history.

Focus on West Bank, Not Negotiating
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Council On Foreign Relations
(Interview) January 13, 2010 - 1:00am

Elliott Abrams, a CFR expert who served as a senior Middle East adviser in the George W. Bush administration, says he questions the chances for a breakthrough in efforts to negotiate a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.