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Palestine 'open for business'
11/03/2008 20:14 - (SA)
Ramallah - International Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair on Tuesday urged investors to attend a West Bank conference in May, saying Palestine is "open for business."
The conference is an "important opportunity for us to show that despite all the problems that are obvious and evident, nonetheless here, in this part of Palestine, it is actually open for business," Blair said at a press conference with Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad.
"The world is invited to this party we are throwing," added Fayyad. "From the depths of all this misery, we Palestinians are determined to authorise and to build that state despite all obstacles."
The May 21-23 conference in the West Bank town of Bethlehem is aimed at drawing investment to the Palestinian territories in order to bolster the peace talks with Israel that were revived in November.
It comes amid a flurry of international projects in the occupied West Bank, including a tourism project in Bethlehem and two agro-industrial projects in Jericho, aimed at stimulating an economy battered by a seven-year uprising.
Calls for Israel to do more
At a Paris conference in December, international donors pledged about $7.7bn to help resuscitate the Palestinian economy in the West Bank and Gaza.
Both Blair and Fayyad called on Israel to do more to ease restrictions on movement in the West Bank, the larger half of a promised Palestinian state that is dotted with more than 500 Israeli roadblocks that feed resentment on a daily basis.
"In order to achieve the economic change that we want we've also got to get a lifting of the access and movement restrictions," said Blair, the former British prime minister.
"We have to create the conditons on the ground where the parties and, more important, the people think there is a real prospect for change...There is a credibility gap between what people are negotiating about and what they can see in their daily lives."
Israelis and the Palestinians relaunched peace talks in late November after a seven-year freeze, but the negotiations have made little progress since.
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