Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Elder of ZiyonFor example, last August he put out an open question on what young Palestinian Arabs think and if they had any suggestions. There were a few replies about education and employment.
One more interesting discussion between Fayyad and a young man named Yasser mentions that he works at an Israeli factory and is concerned that Fayyad is going to stop Palestinian Arabs from working in Israeli factories - he might have meant in the West Bank. He mentioned that work conditions are better on the Israeli side than the PalArab side, and asked, given high expenses that force Arabs to seek work in Israel, if Fayyad was going to restrict workers from having jobs in Israel, does he have a plan to employ them?
Fayyad answered for him to read the newspapers, that he is working with Europeans to fund programs to create jobs in the PA to get workers away from working in settlements.
On his wall, he asked his readers whether they were OK with the idea of banning Israeli settlement products, given that the locally-produced products were inferior. Which was more important to his readers, he wondered: quality or dignity?
Most answered that they support the boycott of Israeli products (not only settlement products) but they did mention that in the past, these boycotts resulted in Palestinian Arab merchants having no incentive to improve their own quality and ending up selling junk for high prices. One also said to be careful, because boycotts could work both ways and PalArabs could not afford to lose the Israeli market.
Altogether, it doesn't get that much traffic, which means that some people might have some fun there....
