Abstract
A strong Palestinian economy in the aftermath of the 1993 Oslo agreement has not materialized. This has had serious implications for employment outcomes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A number of authors have analyzed Palestinian labor markets during this period, but have focused almost exclusively on men's employment. This article examines changes in both women's and men's employment patterns in the post-Oslo period. It finds considerable shifts in the types of work that are available, with more educated, older men in particular gaining at the expense of youth, women, and less educated men. This, it is argued, is a function of Israeli, Palestinian, and U.S. policies. Economic ties between Israel and the Palestinian territories have been severed, to the detriment of less educated Palestinian men and women in search of employment. U.S. policies no doubt exacerbated this result, granting Jordan more favored trade status as part of the peace plan, thus contributing to the decline in the Palestinian textiles and apparel industries. The creation of a Palestinian public sector has led to some job creation, but primarily for more educated individuals, not those who were most likely to have lost their jobs in recent years.
Highlights
The Palestinian economy has been devastated since 2000, in large part as a result of the decision by the Israeli government to sever economic ties with the West Bank and Gaza Strip
Data collected in 1991 in the Bethlehem area suggested that about 2 percent of Bethlehem area women were commuting to Israel, while a survey conducted by the Norwegian organization FAFO the following year, which covered the entire West Bank and Gaza, found similar results, with about 98 percent of the commuters to Israel being male
As I have argued elsewhere, while men were far more visibly linked to the Israeli economy, a small, but substantial number of women depended on Israeli capital for their livelihoods
Summary
The Palestinian economy has been devastated since 2000, in large part as a result of the decision by the Israeli government to sever economic ties with the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Women’s dependency on Israeli capital was less obvious because their labor force participation rates were far lower (12 versus 60 percent) and because many of these workers were engaged in home-based or small factory manufacturing employment such as apparel production. A study of the Bethlehem area for 1991 suggests that 25 percent of both male and female workers were dependent on Israeli capital, much higher for men in terms of raw numbers given their far higher labor force participation rate.3
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