Just to follow up on this--here's an article from a pro-Palestinian paper on the status of the greenhouses.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1025/p04s01-wome.htmlChristian Science Monitor
October 26, 2005
Troubled season for Gaza's greenhouses By Joshua Mitnick
NETZER HAZANI, GAZA ? Rows of irrigation hoses run across the bare sand
floor of a greenhouse shell in this former Jewish settlement.
But as Hatem Awad prepares to plant the first crop of tomatoes since
Israel handed these plantations over to the Palestinians last month, he is
troubled by rips in the sheeting covering the metal greenhouse frame.
"If the wind blows a little bit here, [the saplings] will all fly away,"
says Mr. Awad, who worked in the greenhouses for Jewish settlers evacuated
from here in August. "The winter is coming tomorrow and the viruses will
come and kill the plants."
Hoping to save the jobs of thousands of Palestinian farm workers,
international donors enlisted by former World Bank President James
Wolfensohn paid Jewish settlers $14 million on the eve of the pullout from
Gaza. The hope was that they would leave behind at least 800 acres of
greenhouses, which grew flowers and produce, to be ready for September
planting.
But that hope was jeopardized when Palestinian looters damaged many of the
greenhouses, stripping them bare, for instance, of computers that the
settlers used to monitor crops. Irrigation pumps were stolen, electricity
networks paralyzed, and protective sheeting for the hothouses were torn.
Greenhouses covering one-fourth of the land were damaged during looting
after the handover, according to Palestinian officials. The inherited
farms have the potential to nearly double the output of the local
agriculture industry, the largest domestic private-sector income engine in
Gaza's $1 billion economy.
Now as the Palestinians try to restart a lucrative agribusiness that
yielded exports to the US and Europe, the greenhouses face an uncertain
future. Lax security and unreliable access to foreign markets threatens to
turn profit-making ventures that grossed $75 million annually into a money
pit.
A microcosm of the redevelopment challenges facing postwithdrawal Gaza, a
successful revival of the greenhouses could boost the administration of
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, says Khan Younis Mayor Osama
al-Farra. If the project falters, this could add steam to Islamic militant
groups such as Hamas, who are already vying for control of the new Gaza
territory.
While Palestinians spent precious weeks on repair and clean up, orders of
strawberry saplings were held up for days at the Karni border checkpoint
while Israel closed down the crossing because of a security alert. The new
managers of the agricultural estate have won praise for starting to plant
earlier this month and hiring 3,000 workers, but the first season under
the Palestinians could see a two-thirds drop in sales, says a Boaz Karni,
a treasurer at the Economic Cooperation Foundation, an Israeli
nongovernmental organization that helped facilitate the transaction.
"It is certainly true that this is going to be a struggle to make work,"
says Bill Taylor, a US member of the international team headed by Mr.
Wolfensohn charged with assisting Gaza's economic recovery.
"Concerns about this being a profit-making enterprise are legitimate,"
he
adds, citing uncertainty over free passage for products slated for export
and continuing security problems.
Before Israel forced them to relocate, Israeli settlers cultivated 1,125
acres of land. About three-quarters of the hothouses were covered in the
deal, which assumed that Palestinians workers could use their agricultural
know-how to keep the businesses alive.
The greenhouses once employed 3,600 workers, the overwhelming majority of
them Palestinians. The mediators who solicited foreign donors to
compensate the settlers for the hothouses knew that under Palestinian
ownership, the businesses had the potential to create another 3,000
nonagricultural jobs to support the venture. "This was a good economic
deal in terms of benefit versus the price," says Mr. Taylor.
For the Palestinian laborers who helped clear away the debris around the
hothouses before planting, the preparations were accompanied by a mixture
of anxiety and hope. With the potential to earn between 50 shekels ($11)
and 200 shekels a day, the workers' fortunes are linked to the
greenhouses' survival. And yet many wondered if their new bosses would be
able to manage the businesses as successfully as the settlers.
Standing just outside a greenhouse, Awad confided that he was tempted to
join his old employer on a new farm inside Israel. A few hothouses away, a
group of workers complained that the new planting methods were rudimentary
compared to those of the Israelis. "The new system isn't sophisticated.
Maybe they don't have the experience," says Shahdeh Ajwah. "I dream that
one day it will be full of green plants like it used to be."
For the time being, the agricultural estates are owned by the Palestinian
government and managed by a private contractor. The goal, however, is to
privatize them. In an economy which has traditionally relied on income
brought home by Palestinians hired inside Israel as cheap laborers, the
greenhouses offer a new source of domestic jobs.
Whether or not the Palestinian Authority (PA) chooses to keep the
greenhouses operating over the next few years is still unclear, says
Mohammed el-Samhouri, who sat on a ministerial committee that is assessing
what to do with assets left behind by the Israelis. Other development
projects could become more attractive.
"We're not sure if greenhouses are the best use of our land in that part
of Gaza. Agriculture is one option but not necessarily the only option
that we have for the future use of land," say Mr. Samhouri. "For political
reasons we just wanted to make a statement that we were able to use those
greenhouses."
Back in Netzer Hazani, Subhi Firwana, an 18-year veteran of the hothouses,
worries that the cleanup job will be terminated and he'll be forced to
return to the ranks of Gaza's unemployed. If the PA successfully manages
the greenhouses, he will be able to earn a living without seeking work
inside Israel. But if the government can't keep out looters, there is
little hope for him - not to mention the Palestinians' aspirations for
statehood.
"We hope they will learn from their mistakes," Mr. Firwana says, speaking
of the Palestinian government. "If I start to destroy instead of building,
there won't be a state."
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Don't you wish this wasn't true? (Read 1271 times)
