Abstract
In 2002, the Israeli government decided to build a wall inside the occupied West Bank. The wall had a marked effect on the access to land and water resources as well as to the Israeli labour market. It is difficult to include the effect of the wall in an econometric model explaining poverty dynamics as the wall was built in the richer region of the West Bank. So a diff-in-diff strategy is needed. Using a Bayesian approach, we treat our two-period repeated cross-section data set as an incomplete data problem, explaining the income-to-needs ratio as a function of time invariant exogenous variables. This allows us to provide inference results on poverty dynamics. We then build a conditional regression model including a wall variable and state dependence to see how the wall modified the initial results on poverty dynamics. We find that the wall has increased the probability of poverty persistence by 58 percentage points and the probability of poverty entry by 18 percentage points.
Highlights
Speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Atran et al (2007) concluded their article devoted to exploring sacred values and conflict resolution by the following words: “We urgently need more scientific research to inform better policy choices”
The aim of the present paper is to shed some light on the economic consequences in terms of poverty dynamics on the Palestinian population of what is called by the Israeli government a separation wall, a security fence
But significantly lower in the region where the wall was built and said to have impacted the population. This means that the wall was built in the richer part of the West Bank, confirming the analysis reported in the introduction
Summary
Speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Atran et al (2007) concluded their article devoted to exploring sacred values and conflict resolution by the following words: “We urgently need more scientific research to inform better policy choices”. The aim of the present paper is to shed some light on the economic consequences in terms of poverty dynamics on the Palestinian population of what is called by the Israeli government a separation wall, a security fence. The building of this wall was decided in 2002, after many political discussions, in order to prevent terrorist attacks starting from the. It was presented by the Israeli Government as being temporary, meant to be destroyed after peace negotiations. Assessments of the Barrier’s function can quickly become mired in controversy.”
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
