Doing Business in Occupied Palestine

The lives of ordinary Palestinians is something that doesn’t tend to get much play in the American media. But here’s Sam Bahour, a Palestinian entrepreneur, talking about the difficulties of simply trying to peaceably start businesses in the West Bank. It involved spending 15 years on a series of tourist visas:

The absence of peace between Israel and Palestine is a negative-sum dynamic. Both sides, in other words, would be better off if peace could be reached. But there is no peace. And Israel, as the stronger party, has managed to allocate the vast majority of the deficit onto the Palestinian population. Israelis, in other words, are somewhat worse off than they would be under conditions of peace. But Palestinians are much worse off. The stronger side making the weaker side bear the brunt of the negative consequences of a bad situation isn’t particularly unusual. That’s life. But it’s not justice.