World Bank report on Palestinians based on false NGO reports and anti-Israel
bias
NGO Monitor
May 16, 2007
[For annotated version
www.ngo-monitor.org/article/_world_bank_report_on_palestinians_based_on_false_ngo_reports_and_anti_israel_bias_
]

Summary: On May 9, 2007, the World Bank published a report entitled
"Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank: Uncertainty and
Inefficiency in the Palestinian Economy." As the following analysis
demonstrates, the claims made by the so-called "technical team" of the
World Bank's report lack credibility, and are based entirely on the
publications of a variety of highly politicized groups and NGOs, including B'Tselem,
Peace Now, HaMoked, Bimkom, Amnesty International, and UN OCHA.
Furthermore, this report only focuses on one dimension of the complex issues
that are involved. The authors briefly note that "Israel had legitimate
reasons to take steps to protect its citizens from violence", but then
dismiss the implications of this central point. As a result, the allegations
and analysis contained in this report cannot reliably be used by policy
makers attempting to deal with the challenges posed by the combination of
ongoing Palestinian violence and economic crisis. In addition, this report
is inconsistent with the World Bank's apolitical humanitarian mission, and
reflects negatively on this institution.

This report purporting to examine economic conditions of Palestinian in the
West Bank is composed entirely of claims and allegations from various other
sources, primarily politicized NGOs and OCHA (the United Nations Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), with the addition of some
newspaper reports and partial quotes from Israeli government documents.
This report contains no original research by the World Bank. Of the 71
footnotes, 22 cite B'tselem claims; 6 are based on Peace Now's political
publications; with many others based on Hamoked, OCHA, Yesh Din, Bimkom, and
Amnesty International. In addition, the journalistic publications cited in
this report are themselves based on the allegations made by these NGOs and
by OCHA.
These organizations all have a long history of one-sided and inaccurate
reporting, reflecting political and ideological bias. B'Tselem and Hamoked,
which are repeatedly cited in the World Bank publication, have issued a
number of reports with allegations that were shown to be invalid. For
example, the jointly published report of May 6, 2007, entitled "Utterly
forbidden: The Torture and Ill-Treatment of Palestinian Detainees" used
misleading methodology and had no verifiable sources. As shown in a
detailed rebuttal published by the Israeli Ministry of Justice, the B'Tselem/HaMoked
report is "fraught with mistakes, groundless claims, and inaccuracies." The
MOJ notes that the report refers to a group which is named in the report as
'ordinary' detainees, concerning interogatees which were arrested between
13 -17 of July 2005 when on the day of July 12, 2005, there was a terrorist
attack in the city of Netanya, that caused the death of five people and the
injury of many others . . . as a result of the interrogations, the
perpetrators of the attack . . . were exposed. In addition, more terrorist
units were exposed and weapons that were to be put to use in future
terrorist attacks were handed over.

Thus, in basing its reports entirely on the claims of these NGOs, the World
Bank has also produced a report that lacks credibility.

One of many examples of the faulty methodology and lack of credibility in
this World Bank report can be seen in Section 27 (pp.9-10) which asserts
claims: "These findings are reinforced by another recent study funded by the
New Israel Fund and the British Embassy in Tel Aviv and conducted by the
Israeli organization, Bimkom.." However, the World Bank's "technical team"
did not directly cite and may not have read this report. Instead, the quote
is taken from a newspaper article (The Independent -UK) which reflected a
politically biased presentation. The Bimkom report makes the ideological
allegation that the separation barrier is "focused almost exclusively on the
desire to maintain the fabric of life of Israeli settlers," which is not a
fact and source based analysis.

In addition to such politicized NGOs, the World Bank publication also relies
heavily on OCHA (the United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs) for many of its allegations. However, an examination
of OCHA staff and reports suggest that this organization is also highly
politicized and its reports lack credibility. For example, the World Bank
report repeats OCHA's claim that there are 546 "non-fixed Israeli barriers
in the West Bank." In contrast, according to Deputy Defense Minister
Ephraim Sneh, the actual number is far less. "The World Bank report uses
data of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs [OCHA], which is inclined to count every opening in the separation
fence, checkpoints on the Green Line, and every two rocks on the road as
roadblocks in the West Bank." (Avi Issacharoff "Sneh: World Bank report
slamming Israel is one-sided", Haaretz , 13 May 2007.)

OCHA's biases and inherent lack of credibility reflect those of its
employees, including Allegra Pacheco, who heads the Information and Advocacy
unit at the UNOCHA in Jerusalem. Before taking this position, Ms. Pacheco
was deeply involved in radical anti-Israel campaigning, and this ideology
and core bias is reflected in OCHA's publications, including ReliefWeb,
which helps give additional publicity to claims by politicized NGOs, (as
documented by NGO Monitor). Many of Pacheco's speeches and writings
including oped articles use the rhetoric of demonization to refer to Israel,
such as "apartheid", "collective punishment", etc., while blatantly erasing
the context of Palestinian terror. In September 2000, Pacheco addressed a
pro-Palestinian political rally in Washington DC, whose official slogan was
"No Return = No Peace" and urged the dismantling of the Jewish state.
Pacheco called for the abolition of Israel, declaring "The solution is Awda,
complete and unrestricted return to Palestine, all of it from the Jordan
River to the Mediterranean Sea. [1]

The Israeli political organization known as "Peace Now" (and funded by
various European governments and other donors) is another source used by the
World Bank. In October 2006, this NGO published "Breaking the Law - One
Violation Leads to Another," falsely asserting that "a large proportion of
the settlements built on the West Bank are built on privately owned
Palestinian land." As initially pointed out by media accountability
organization CAMERA, this report is based not on research regarding land
ownership, but relies only on Palestinian claims to such rights. Many of
the claims, such as those made by the Jahalin Bedouin on Ma'ale Adumim, were
examined and rejected by Israeli courts long ago. As a result, Peace Now's
allegation that Ma'ale Adumim sits on 86.4% Palestine land stands in stark
contrast to the revised information indicating that only 0.54% of the land
is Palestinian. Peace Now admitted these core errors, but also claimed
credit for the resulting "media whirlwind". Similarly, in repeating such
false reports, officials at the World Bank are also primarily seeking to
create publicity, at the expense of credibility.

In summary, this report published by the World Bank is a political document
which is based entirely on claims and allegations published by NGOs and
other groups that lack credibility. The allegations and analysis provided
by the World Bank cannot reliably be used by policy makers attempting to
deal with the challenges posed by the combination of ongoing Palestinian
violence and economic crisis. In addition, this report is inconsistent with
the World Bank's apolitical humanitarian mission, and reflects negatively on
this institution.
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Note: The authors of this report are identified only in terms of a "World
Bank Technical Team", the content is highly political, reflecting references
to events, negotiations and agreements going back to 1949. Much of this
content is incomplete and/or misleading, reflecting the absence of detailed
knowledge or deliberate bias on the part of the members of this "technical
team". For example, this report cites various agreements out of context,
and many of the details are inaccurate. The so-called "Oslo Accords" are in
fact a series of agreements beginning with the 1993 Declaration of
Principles and followed by a series of interim documents which were
predicated on negotiations towards a permanent status agreement and a
cessation of violence and incitement by the Palestinians, none of which were
implemented. Similarly, the terms of the November 2005 "Agreement on
Movement and Access" were violated within a few days of the signing
ceremony. The references to the 2003 "Mitchell report" ("Report of the
Sharm el-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee") and the "Road Map" proposals remove
both the context of the ongoing mass terror attacks and the failure of the
Palestinian side to implement any of its security obligations.

Footnotes:
1. From "al-Majdal", (quarterly magazine of the BADIL Resource Center),
September 2000, and cited in
www.eyeontheun.org/assets/attachments/misc/2006_UN-NGO_Report.pdf