Washington - "Jerusalem" dot com - Saeed Erekat - Since US President Joe Biden assumed the presidency on January 20, 2021, his administration has been saying that the Palestinians deserve the same standards of "freedom, security and prosperity" as the Israelis , but "instead, They obtained American aid and permits to work inside Israel and the Jewish settlements," according to the Associated Press in a report on Monday evening, in which it is likely that "this contradiction will emerge when President Joe Biden visits Israel and the occupied West Bank this week for the first time since taking office."

Israeli officials are likely to point to the thousands of work permits issued to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, “allowing them to earn much higher wages and inject much-needed cash into a Palestinian economy faltering under Israeli restrictions.” He is also likely to speak. Biden about tens of millions of dollars in US financial aid to the Palestinians, which he returned after his predecessor, Trump, cut it off.

Supporters of the US president believe that such economic measures improve the lives of Palestinians and help preserve the possibility of an eventual political solution.

But when Biden steps past the towering Israeli checkpoint to meet the Palestinians in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, he will hear a very different story — of how Israel has consolidated its decades-long military rule over millions of Palestinians, without end. Sam Bahour, an American businessman of Palestinian origin who resides in Ramallah, said, "Economic measures have the potential to contribute positively to peacemaking, but this requires that Israel and the United States have a plan to end this 55-year military occupation..they (they) The Israelis) don't, so any "economic" confidence-building measures are merely measures to entrench the occupation.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli coalition government, which did not last long before its dissolution last week, had issued 14,000 permits to the Palestinians in Gaza, which has been under a suffocating blockade since the "Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)" seized power 15 years ago.

Israel claims the blockade is necessary to prevent Hamas from arming itself.

Israel has also increased the number of permits issued in the West Bank, where more than 100,000 Palestinians work within Israel and settlements, mostly in construction, manufacturing and agriculture. It has even begun allowing small numbers of Palestinian professionals to work in higher-paying jobs in Israel's booming high-tech sector, the Associated Press reports.

Israel claims these and other economic measures as gestures of goodwill, "even as it approved the construction of thousands more settler homes in the occupied West Bank."

The administration of US President Biden adopted a similar strategy, providing financial aid to the Palestinians, but did not exert any pressure on Israel to motivate it to end the occupation, or to demand that the Palestinians be granted equal rights. Even its (relatively) modest plan to reopen an American consulate in Jerusalem serving the Palestinians has collided with Israeli opposition, and it seems that the US administration does not want to prove its declared position in this regard.

The Associated Press quotes Michael Milstein, an Israeli analyst who has been advising the military body responsible for civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, as saying that the theory of "economic peace" - or the promotion of economic development in the absence of peace negotiations - is a policy that goes back decades, and "goes back to appearing because of the long lack of any peace process, and because of the political crisis inside Israel, but at best it will only lead to a temporary calm.” He adds that while this method can maintain stability to some extent, "but this is not a way to solve deep political problems."

For individual Palestinians, the permits are a godsend, as their average wage inside Israel is about $75 a day, double the rate in the West Bank, according to the World Bank. And in Gaza, where unemployment is about 50%, lined up Tens of thousands obtained permits (to work inside Israel) last fall."

But critics of the policy say the permits - which Israel can revoke at any time - are another tool of control and undermine the development of an independent Palestinian economy.

Bahour, an American-Palestinian businessman, says: "Every permit issued by Israel to Palestinian workers goes to serve Israel's economic development and empty the Palestinian workforce, so we will remain in the private sector, unable to create a different economic reality."

Even with the issuance of work permits, Israel is tightening its grip on what is known as Area C - that is, 60% of the West Bank is under full Israeli control according to the Oslo interim accords signed in the 1990s, while the Palestinian Authority enjoys limited self-rule in an archipelago of cities and towns in Area A ( a).

Area C includes most of the open spaces and natural resources in the West Bank. The World Bank estimates that lifting severe restrictions on Palestinian access to the area would boost their economy by a third.

The Israeli political system, which is dominated by right-wing parties, views the occupied West Bank as an integral part of Israel. Even if Israeli Prime Minister Lapid, who has said in the past that he supports a two-state solution, manages to form a government after the November 1 elections - which recent opinion polls indicate is unlikely - his coalition will almost certainly rely on some hard-line parties, preventing Without it.

Experts believe that the improvement in the economic situation of the Palestinians will ease the confrontations with the Israeli occupation authorities, as an opinion poll conducted by the "Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research" showed that 65% of the Palestinians support the so-called confidence-building measures, including the issuance of more work permits by Israel. . The poll included 1,270 Palestinians from all over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

But the same poll also found a remarkable rise in frustration, as (the poll showed) support for the two-state solution dropped from 40% to 28% in just three months, and 55% of those surveyed support “a return to confrontation and armed intifada.”