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Shopping Spree with Foreign Aid & UN 1.6 Billion more to come
28 January 2008The economy in the Arab Middle East is flourishing. The twenty wealthiest Middle East Arabs are worth more than $123 billion primarily due to the spiralling price of crude oil, according to the Middle East Times in Egypt. Seven of the top 20 are from Saudi Arabia, which contains 25 percent of the world’s oil reserves. Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud’s worth was estimated earlier this year at $20.3 billion. Since then, he has raised another $2.3 billion through a public issue of his holding company. Half a dozen of the richest billionaires have made money in the banking industry, with Dubai’s wealthiest banker Mashreqbank’s Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair’s worth estimated at $8 billion.Over 800,000 plus [poverty stricken] Arab Gazan refugees flooded into Egypt, emptying out stores in the border towns of Rafah and El-Arish, while visiting relatives in Egypt. In El-Arish alone, Gazans spent some $250 million over five days, according to the Egyptian daily Elbadeel which cited the local chamber of commerce. The shopping binge depleted Gaza’s dwindling cash reserves, however $1.6 billion in foreign aid is soon to come via UN & EU. Over 30 billion foreign aid has been allocated to the Palestinian Arabs in the last ten years, hence the Palestinian economy is bullish.
On the Egyptian side of Rafah, Alaa Ghoneim, who sells electric appliances, said he was able to restock his whole store three times as sales soared. Ghoneim hired a doorman for crowd control. He fought with a customer who kept coming for more and then sold Ghoneim’s goods for a higher price just a few blocks away. Gaza trader Basel Arabeed bought 20 Chinese-made motorcycles, and quickly sold 18 for $1,000 apiece – a 100 per cent profit.
Abdel-Karim al-Ashi, a Gaza distributor, was loading his trucks with electronics for the fifth time in two days which will last for the next six months. In a market in Gaza City, vendors offered their Egyptian wares. Gazans filled duffel bags with garlic cloves and cigarettes. Another sold a computer case and a webcam. Egyptians driving into Gaza bought blankets, jeans and scrap metal that had been destined for Israel but could not be shipped because of border closures.
Previously Hamas took over the estimated 150 smuggling-tunnels from Egypt into Gaza, and charged the owners $3,000 each per day. The 150 tunnels brought in a total of some $150 million annually, the value of men, weapons and other merchandise smuggled in each year totalled over a half-billion dollars not including heroin which tally’s over 1 billion annually. In the last 10 years Gaza smuggling earned revenues of over 15 billion dollars. The tunnels were run in a systematic manner, with compensation being paid to the family of a tunnel-digger who dies during the work and with judges who mediate in various disputes that arise.
The Palestinians have brought into Gaza more than 30,000 rifles during the past two years, more than six million rounds of ammunition, more than 230 tons of explosives, and scores of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. Rafah was divided between Gaza and Egypt when the border was drawn according to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979. In the fall of 2005, just weeks after the last Jew was forcibly removed from Gush Katif and other areas in Gaza, Israel transferred control of the Gaza-Egyptian border to Egypt. The agreement stipulated a 750-man Egyptian border force patrolling the border line known as the Philadelphia Route.
