In the Naqab, where ten Cisco technology equipped hubs are planned, two are located in Palestinian towns – one in Hura and the other in Ar’arat al-Naqab (two out of seven Palestinian Bedouin towns in the Naqab).[10] These hubs form part of the Israeli government’s industrialisation and resettlement plan which strives to create jobs in the Naqab, in the hope of drawing Jewish Israelis to settle in the region, while concentrating its Palestinian communities into ghettoized residential areas.
In 2008, Cisco signed a collaborative deal with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, for the investment of 10 million USD for the development of the Palestinian hi-tech sector. The investment was managed by Gay Hetzroni, then the manager of the software development department at Cisco-Israel.The deal involved outsourcing work to Palestinian engineers and technicians, led by Cisco-Israel. This Cisco project was a milestone in setting a trend in the outsourcing of work to a skilled, yet comparatively cheap Palestinian workforce by Israeli and Israeli intermediaries of international companies. Palestinian workers are paid well below the wages of an Israeli hi-tech worker (2500 and 4000 USD respectively). Since Cisco’s deal in 2008, the Israeli subsidiaries of Intel, Microsoft and Mellanox, have also outsourced work to Palestinian technicians. This outsourcing process reduces production costs through exploitation, and entrenches the dependency of Palestinian economic development on the economic and political interests of the occupying power.
Buoyed by training, investment or partnerships from Israelis or Israeli subsidiaries of American companies, more than 300 Palestinian technology firms now employ 4,500 people, FORBES estimates, up from just 23 firms in the six-year period leading up to 2000. More are on the way: There's at least $100 million in venture cash from Israeli or Western sources either looking for deals or recently put to work in Palestinian or Israeli Arab startups (with the latter community, representing one-fifth of the country's citizenry, increasingly agitating to get in on the action). Meanwhile, Chambers and his peers at U.S. technology giants have pushed their Israeli subsidiaries to outsource research and development projects to Palestinian startups or to hire local Arabs.
... a $50 million fund called Al Bawader (Arabic for "early signs") [is] earmarked solely for investments in Israel's Arab community. The funding is unlike anything before seen in the Middle East. The Israeli government has put money into Al Bawader, as have individual Israeli Jews, Israeli-Arabs--and Palestinians.More Palestinians, and more Israeli Arabs, are getting more jobs that pay more money.
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