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A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS |
NATIV ■ Volume Twelve ■ Number 3 (68) ■ May 1999 ■ Ariel Center for Policy Research |
SYNOPSIS |
The article presents a gloomy analysis of the economic
prospects for the Middle East in general and for Israel in particular, as a
result of the implementation of the Oslo "peace process". It points out that
unless one is willing largely to "de-Arabize" a Palestinian state there is no
reason to believe that its economic performance will be significantly better
than the dismal economic performance of other oil-devoid Arab states.
Furthermore, the essay exposes the basic contradiction in the position of Oslo
advocates, who insist that even after the implementation of the peace process,
Israel will still require a "strong army to maintain the peace". Unless one is
willing to discount totally military threats from the co-signatories of peace
agreements with the Jewish state, the new borders to which Israel will be
obliged to withdraw will impose a huge escalation in the defense spending needed
to deal with such threats. Thus, contrary to the claims of the Oslo adherents,
this increased expenditure on conventional defense will not only reduce the
amount of resources available for the civilian sector, but is also most likely
to diminish the resources available for spending on defense systems against
non-conventional threats from the "outer ring" countries such as Iraq and Iran.
Likewise, the vision of an economically prosperous "New Middle East" is
dismissed as dangerous fantasy. For there is little chance of establishing a new
economic order on the basis of the prevailing political order in the
region, where most of the regimes are military dictatorships which cannot permit
the freedoms required for the promotion of pan-regional development. For Israel,
the most prudent way to economic prosperity would be to adhere to the tried and
tested method embodied in the classic Zionist formula of "one more acre, one
more goat", that of gradual and doggedly determined progress which brought the
country its considerable economic accomplishments up until the Oslo era.
This paper was published as the ACPR's Policy Paper No. 87 in the book |