I am doing a 10-12 page research paper on the productivity losses in
the recent (i.e. last two years) Arab-Israeli conflict. Basically, I
want to try and establish some actual numerical figures for how much
each side has lost in economic producivity. I am looking for any
newspaper or journal articles on the topic (I have access to most
journals and newspapers through my university) as well as any other
sources of information e.g. websites, that would be useful.

Hi, zgall1-ga!


First, a small recomendation: You may want to focus on articles that
show you *both* sides of the conflict. Due to

the very heated nature of this issue, I'm almost certain that there
are many "numbers" available which have been

twisted by people who want to use them for propaganda purposes. Try to
read every article as critically as you can,
and ask yourself about the primary purpose of the article and its
author. I've tried my best to filter my results

for information that seemed relatively unbiased, but let the reader
beware -- there's some incredibly vicious and

one-sided information out there cloaked in an aura of scientific
statistics. I'm not expert enough to tell the

difference for all of this, but be sure to read everything on the
topic with a critical eye.

Second, be aware that much of this area of the world has been affected
by the global hi-tech recession as well as

the military conflict. I'm unaware of anybody who can prove exactly
how much of the drop in the Israeli and

Palestinian economies was caused by military conflict and how much was
caused by general worldwide economic issues.

The Israeli Ministry of Finance has published data available in
English at this address:

	http://www.mof.gov.il/englishframe.htm

Click on "Israeli Economy". There's quite a lot of information and
published numbers on the general Israeli economy

there, and you can probably use it in your paper.

For sake of comparison, here is the Palestinian National Authority web
site.

	http://www.pna.net

They don't appear to have a separate address for anything similar to
the Israeli Ministry of Finance site, but you

may be able to find articles of use to you by searching for the term
"economic". (I tried a search under "economy"

and got very little.) There's a summary of a UN report posted here,
though, which may be helpful:

	http://www.pna.net/Search/TitleDetails.asp?txtDocID=363

I was unable to find the original version of this report on the UN web
site ( http://www.un.org ).

Clearly, both Israeli and the Palestinian Authority have had
significant economic loss as a result of the current

situation. Israel's economy is heavily reliant on tourism, which has
obviously gone down as a result of suicide

bombings and also as a result of September 11th in the USA. Prior to
the current Intifadeh, many Palestinians would

commute to their jobs in Israel. As the situation worsened, fear
caused the Israelis to make it more difficult for

Palestinians to travel in the Territories. As a result, unemployment
in the Palestinian Territories became much

higher.

For any paper you write, keep in mind that Israel's economy could
easily be considered first-world; the average

salary in the country is comparable with many European countries. The
Palestinian economy was much weaker even

before the Intifadeh. According to Lonely Planet ( 

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/middle_east/israel_and_the_palestinian_territories/
), the per capita
GDP in Israel is US$18,300. In the Palestinian Territories, it is
US$1600.

Below, I've included links to various articles which have specific
numerical statistics about economics in Israel

and the Palestinian Territories. 


[People's Daily: Israeli-Palestinian Clashes Bring About Lose-Lose
Situation]
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200109/28/eng20010928_81248.html

Excerpt:

"According to statistics released by Israel's Finance Ministry last
Tuesday, its gross domestic product (GDP) will

grow by only 0. 5-1 percent in 2001, far less than the estimated 4
percent.

Finance Ministry expert Michael Sarel told Xinhua that the violence
has eaten into at least two percentage points of

the GDP growth, amounting to 2.4 billion U.S. dollars. Furthermore,
the forecast of Israel's GDP growth in 2002 has

been downgraded from 4 percent to 2-2.5 percent.

This year would be the worst for Israel's tourism industry in a
decade, with a reduction of about 50 percent in the

number of tourists in the first six months from the same period last
year. Economic losses in tourism industry

already amounted to 1.2 billion dollars.

[...]

For the Palestinians, the clashes brought about even more economic
losses. According to Palestinian sources, the

one-year-old clashes have so far resulted in an economic loss of at
least 5.4 billion dollars.

About 300,000 Palestinians lost their jobs in Israel and the
unemployment rate in most Palestinian cities rocketed

to 50 percent."



[Woodrow Wilson Internation center for Scholars: Prospects for a
Peaceful Settlement Between Israel and the

Palestinians]
http://wwics.si.edu/NEWS/digest/isrpalpeace.htm


"In his July 15, 2002, meeting at the Wilson Center, Shlomo Gur
discussed the prospects of a peaceful solution to

the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The present day Middle Eastern
conflict has taken its toll on both sides,” said

Gur.  For the Israelis it has meant fatalities as well as economic
loss, as the effects of decreased economic

growth, on tourism, and on foreign investment coupled with
double-digit unemployment and inflation, have been

severe, he added.  For the Palestinians, the conflict has resulted in
many fatalities and casualties, unemployment

above 50 percent and a decrease in the GDP by over 33 percent.  The
overall consequences of the conflict have been

an ever-widening gulf of mistrust between the two." 



[Seeking Mideast Peace? Think Economics]
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/opeds/kamal_middle_east_bg_081702.htm

"The impact of the economic slowdown can be seen throughout the
region, fostering bitter hopelessness on a deeply

personal level, igniting the anger and emotions that fuel violence.
Unemployment in Israel has moved beyond 10

percent and for Palestinians it is well beyond 25 percent.

[...]

The economic loss for the Palestinians is also significant. The
120,000 Palestinian workers that earned their daily

livelihood legally in Israel are now jobless. Their imposed
unemployment is a financial blow to both the Israeli and

Palestinian economies. In Israel they were the foundation of the
construction and agricultural sectors. In the West

Bank and Gaza their income fueled their poor communities."



[News blurbs from www.jewish.co.uk]
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:3hmQo11d_vgC:www.jewish.co.uk/news220702.php3+israel+%22Michael+Sarel%22&hl=en&

ie=UTF-8

"The Israeli economy has lost some $11 billion in the past two years
of conflict with the Palestinians, the Finance

Ministry's chief economist said Monday. Michael Sarel said that the
loss amounted to about 10 percent of Israel's

gross domestic product. The Finance Ministry issued a dismal forecast
for next year, predicting that unemployment

could reach 11 percent, or 300,000 people. In a grim convergence, the
Israeli high-tech company Comverse announced

it was beginning to lay off some 1,200 workers, half of them in
Israel."

[Treasury Expects negative per capita growth in 2002]
http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:_J_DjhwaXpAC:www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/02/25/Digital/Digital.44090.html+finan

ce+%22Michael+Sarel%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

"Last year the economy contracted by 0.5%, due to the global hi-tech
meltdown, the Palestinian uprising, and the

September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. Per capita GDP fell by
2.9%."



[BBC: Israeli economy mired in crisis]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1827484.stm



[CNN: Israeli ban tripled unemployment, says U.N. report]
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/12/05/mideast.economy/


I hope that you find all of this information useful in writing your
paper.

The following are links to searches which I performed to obtain this
information:

[ israeli + palestinian + "economic loss" ]
://www.google.com/search?as_q=israeli+palestinian&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=econ

omic+loss&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

[ israeli + palestinian + "economic productivity" ]
://www.google.com/search?as_q=israeli+palestinian&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=econ

omic+productivity&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

I also found it helpful to search for "Michael Sarel" whose name
appeared in some of the articles listed above.


Thanks for your question and good luck!

/ephraim

---

Clarification of Answer by ephraim-ga on 02 Nov 2002 18:41 PST

zgall1-ga --

I apologize for the poor formatting of my answer above, but something
seems to have gone wrong when it was posted.

Be aware that some of the web links I've posted above have been
truncated and split between two lines. You may need to cut and paste
both lines in order to access the links. Let me know if you need any
assistance with this.

/ephraim

---

Request for Answer Clarification by zgall1-ga on 03 Nov 2002 00:24 PST

I was wondering why you were unable to find any articles from any
economic journals (as opposed to newspapers)?

---

Clarification of Answer by ephraim-ga on 03 Nov 2002 10:34 PST

zgall1,

There appears to be an electronic collection of journals available at
http://www.jstor.org . Unfortunately, access is limited to paid
subscribers, so I have no ability to search through the archives. If
you attend a university, then there's a decent chance that the entire
school might be a JSTOR subsriber, so you should check it out either
via a school-based internet link or at your school's library.

JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org

Without JSTOR, you could browse through the following list of online
economic journals. Given the hundreds of journals available on this
list, it would be almost impossible for me to sort through them
without some type of indexing and/or search software as JSTOR appears
to provide. Also, many of these are also available to subscribers
only:

http://www.oswego.edu/~economic/journals.htm


Here's two more links to papers of an academic nature which may help
you.

The following link doesn't seem to have hard numbers, but gives
abstracts of numerous papers that are likely to have this type of
information:

[Annual report from the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute]
http://www.palecon.org/masdir/annual2001.pdf


Here's an academic paper which appears to have been written based on
data from before 2 years ago, but which may provide you with a
baseline from which to work:

[Sovereignty and Economic Development: The Case of Israel and
Palestine]
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:1LHvah9GawgC:www.st-and.ac.uk/~res2000/papers/pdffiles/tuesday/Arnon2.pdf+economic+journal+israel+palestine&hl=en&ie=UTF-8


Another useful search might be:

[ economic + journal + israel + palestine ]
://www.google.com/search?as_q=economic+journal+israel+palestine&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

Please let me know if these have been of assistance to you.

/ephraim