Arab youths slip into Israel to beg

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/515771,CST-NWS-beg19.article

ABUSED AND ROBBED | Palestinian poverty sends children on dangerous trips through border

August 19, 2007
BY LAURIE COPANS

NAZARETH, Israel -- For 15-year-old Issa, days of summer start when the sun rises over a northern Israeli hill, shining on a garbage dump, a thorny field and then the dirty mattress that is his bed.

Issa is among hundreds of Palestinian child laborers who sneak into Israel from the West Bank, hawking or begging at traffic junctions.

Israel's massive barrier of walls and fences separating it from the West Bank has made it harder for adult laborers to enter Israel, so families wracked by poverty are increasingly sending their children instead.

Children as young as 3 stand at traffic lights for hours, in rain or baking sun. They beg for change or sell cigarette lighters and batteries. At night, they sleep in fields, cemeteries, mosques, drainage canals or on streets. Their earnings are often taken by thieves or shady middlemen, and some are sexually abused or forced to sell drugs.

[daninthemoon]

1. Makes you wonder about the wall we're building

[JonathanInTelAviv]

2. The wall

protects Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers, including kids taught by an Arab "Mickey Mouse" to blow themselves up, taking as many Israelis as possible with them.

[wuushew]

3. What is your point?

The article was economic in nature. Do you have any ideas or commentary on the Palestinian economic crisis? Even if all violence somehow stopped overnight what path would the West Bank embark on given the lack of resources and infrastructure?

The labor disparity mirrors the U.S.-Mexico situation.

[JonathanInTelAviv]

4. The article

tied the wall/fence directly to the economic plight of the Palestinians.

My commentary: Israel is 10 miles wide in some places. There are no more resources in the West Bank than there are here in Israel. Yet Israel has a very good economy. You figure it out.

[wuushew]

5. Israel has access to numerous seaports and favorable trade agreements

And a ridiculous amount of foreign aid.

All that so called prosperity has not come sustainably. When do you predict that the population will cease to increase? Then we will find out how truly well off Israel is. The sum total of goods and services has to exceed the cost of the large amounts of raw materials and food that you guys import.


Software and services can always be sent to India and China. That leaves tourism, specialty agriculture and armament manufacturing.

[JonathanInTelAviv]

6. What you wrote is partly true

The US foreign aid is generous, but amounts to just 2% of Israel's GDP. Even without it, Israel's GDP is much larger than that of all our neighbors put together. The prosperity Israel enjoys is due to our high productivity. Just like everywhere else in the world, that comes from education and free markets and an open society and the rule of law and hard work. Service and high-tech industries don't require raw materials, and Israel could probably be self-sufficient in food, other than meat.

Gaza could have an active seaport, if it wasn't gonna be used to import weapons with which to attack Israel (as in the Karine A). An independent Palestine would get all the trade agreements they wanted. And Palestinians have enough educated people to make it on their own.

The security fence/wall cuts both ways. Palestinians lose the Israeli market for agricultural products and labor, and Israel loses the Palestinian market for agricultural and other products. It's too bad it has to be that way, but if Israel can prosper with it, so can the Palestinians. And it's a hell of a lot better than seeing pieces of your people hanging from blown up buses.