The Economic Pathway to Independence and Peace
A series of four studies being published simultaneously by MAS, addressing the strategic economic implications for the State of Palestine of the aftermath of the Israeli war against the Gaza Strip and, indeed, all of Palestine. The conceptual framework of the series was designed during the first stage of Israeli aggression in early 2024, in close consultation with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Department of Economic Affairs, as a necessary set of in-depth original economic policy research to prepare for addressing post-war challenges and future Israeli-Palestinian economic relations. The Institute was fortunate that a research grant from the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development enabled it to take on the task systematically.
Certainly, these four studies are predicated on an assumption of a “pathway to statehood” emerging from the ashes of the war on Gaza, as promised by the international community early on in this long trek, and to which it is still committed. That, in turn, assumes an Israeli partner willing to engage in a process of enabling Palestinian self-determination and sovereign statehood, a prospect that today, 30 years after Oslo, appears more distant than ever. The studies were prepared in the course of 2024 by a versatile team of Palestinian economists. Still, MAS, following closely the genocidal war, withheld publication until a moment when their political pertinence may be as evident and urgent to policymakers as the subject appeared to the authors to be, even while writing above an unknown future during the darkest moment of the genocide.
The four studies are intrinsically linked by a logical sequence premised on the ultimate goal of establishing a Palestinian state in all of the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, not in part of the land, nor in a way that separates the Gaza Strip, governance or economy-wise, from the rest of the State of Palestine. They also confirm that designing Palestine’s optimal economic relations with Israel, in their permanent shape, requires beginning with a 2-3 year “state inception phase” that brings partners back to some form of normal economic relations (Volume I). This would lead to an economic permanent status agreement that guarantees core Palestinian sovereign economic rights and the optimal economic relation with Israel, benefiting from previous experiences and numerous “day-after” economic plans since 1947 (Volume II). These are followed by a comprehensive investigation of the economic (theoretical and empirical) underpinnings and political governance of the monumental task of reunifying the fragmented Palestinian national economy (Volume III), and finally a study on principles, modalities, and comparative experiences in post-war reconstruction (Volume IV).
