Sunday November 29, 2009

I've Been Thinking:

The Dubai financial crisis illustrates an interesting contrast between Palestinian and Israeli financial worlds.

Israel is primarily unaffected by the meltdown, the Arab boycott made certain of that.
Many Israelis wanted to get involved with Dubai, there is even an unofficial trade office under the auspices of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Dubai. But Dubai made it difficult - so despite the financial allure Israelis could not go it alone in Dubai. There were only a few exceptions who managed to work it all out and so, Israel will fell almost no repercussions from the crisis.

Palestinians were heavily involved in Dubai, most importantly, about 100,000 Palestinians worked in Dubai.

Most of those Palestinians worked as laborers in construction which has ground to a halt. Others were engineers involved in building. The next largest group of Palestinian workers was high tech computer developers, another field which has been decimated in the financial meltdown. The West Bank was heavily dependant on Dubai in another way, they depended on Palestinian workers in Dubai sending money back home to help support families and that has now disappeared.

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