RAMALLAH, West Bank, 24 May 2008 — Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad yesterday said that the Palestine Investment Conference succeeded to raise around $1.4 billion for housing, telecommunications, and high-tech projects in the Palestinian territories.
Fayyad said at the closing session of the three-day conference in West Bank city of Bethlehem with the participation of more than 1000 local, Arab, and international businessmen and diplomats that the projects will create 35,000 job opportunities in West Bank.
“This is the start of moving the wheel of the economy, with a view toward the leading role of the private sector. We are throwing a party and the whole world is invited,” Fayyad said.
Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas hosted the conference to try to drum up as much as $2 billion in funding for more than 100 business projects in the West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, hoping to boost the Palestinian economy as they hold US-sponsored peace talks with Israel.
The $1.4 billion included about $550 million from major Arab investors for a new West Bank town and a shopping complex. Hundreds of potential investors from the private sector attended the conference in Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem.
International donors met in Paris in December to pledge $7.7 billion in state aid as a way of bolstering Abbas and his negotiations with Israel on establishing a Palestinian state.
Officials from the World Bank and the Palestinian government — including Fayyad himself — have stressed that while investment in the Palestinian territories is crucial, the economy will not flourish unless Israel eases restrictions.
Israel says its network of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank are needed to keep suicide bombers away from its cities but Palestinians call them collective punishment and say they hamper trade.
Fayyad, a former World Bank economist who was appointed last year after Abbas dismissed Hamas Islamists from government in a move that ended trade sanctions, said pledges made at the conference were just “the starting point.” “We are throwing a party and the whole world is invited,” Fayyad said at the end of the three-day conference.