How The West Bank Was Won

Since 1967, when Israel annexed the West Bank, the Zionist authorities have gradually "integrated" the region into the Israeli economy. The West Bank has provided Israeli business with a new market for its manufactured goods and a source of cheap labor and, for a few years at least, helped slow the stagnation in the Israeli economy.

Today Arab workers from the West Bank are concentrated in the most menial and poorly paid jobs in Israel, and earn on an average only 40 per cent of that earned by the average Israeli worker. To justify this discrimination, the Zionists rely on racist ideology. Dirty, back-breaking, un-skilled work is "Arab work, fit only for Palestinians to do". As well as pay discrimination, Arab workers in the West Bank do not receive unemployment benefits or other rights enjoyed by Israeli workers, such as health and welfare benefits.

Israel's rule in the occupied territories denies Palestinian Arabs the most basic democratic rights. They have no right to organise. All committees, parties, trade unions or other Palestinian organisation is completeley prohibited in the occupied territories. It is forbidden for Palestinians to demonstrate or to go on strike. But the repression of Palestinian opposition does not stop there. Dr Israel Shahak, chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, points, for example, to the Israeli practice of "collective punishments". In a recent statement, he explains: "The facts are well known: when the occupation authorities arrest a suspect, even before he is put on trial, sometimes even before he is officially 'indicted', an order is issued to destroy the house in which the suspect lived. Sometimes it is the house of his family, sometimes not. Sometimes 'refinements' are introduced. All the inhabitants of the village are forcibly concentrated on a nearby hill, so as to watch the 'educative show'. It must be stressed that such an act is fundamentally barbaric. People who, even in the eyes of the authorities, are innocent are outsted. Children, old people, women, sick, cripples, and all of them together are thrown onto the street regardless of weather... Aside from that punishment, there is a whole set of different collective punishments. Does one want to punish the area of Hebron? Grapes are not allowed to be transported on the roads during harvest time, until the 'notables' finally fall on their knees before the military governor. Does one want to punish the city of Ramallah? The sale of mutton is forbidden in that town for two months, or the municipality is not allowed to receive contributions from natives of Ramallah a abroad and sent for purposes of municipal development. Does one want to punish the town of El-Bireh? An order is issued to take pictures of Palestinian folklore off the walls of the city hall and to hid them in a cellar. I could go on indefinitely and give innumerable examples of this kind."