When Obama's visit to Egypt was orchestrated and his Middle East peace plan was
being forged, a new book was published, entitled "The Cost of Conflict in the Middle
East." It sums up a study conducted by a team of international experts and
sponsored by the Governments of Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and Qatar. The study
attempted to estimate the price of wars and conflicts in our region over the two
decades that followed the Madrid Conference of 1991. The price they cited is
enormous: USD $12 trillion. This is sunk cost, irreversible expense, money down the
drain.
How did we ever reach such a huge sum? The researchers estimated that if peace were
attained 20 years ago and the region abounded with cooperation and prosperity, as
many hoped it would at the time, the Middle East growth rates would have been 8%
annually and the level of per-capita income would have been twice its current level.
In Israel, for example, annual per-capita income would have soared to USD $44,000
(based on the fact that in 2006, when the data for the study were gathered, it was
USD $23,000), and the Palestinians could have reached the level of USD $2,500 (more
than twice their current USD $1,200) annual per-capita income.
How the Math was Done ?
As we all know, this did not happen and the conflict kept exacting an ever rising
toll. The researchers focused on the elements that made the total price and
distinguished between direct costs -- fatalities and casualties, military expenses,
economic damage, and infrastructure and environmental destruction -- and indirect
costs -- such as emigration, brain-drain, the rising power of extremist groups, the
declining power of the civilian society, and more.
The math on the Palestinian side goes like this: Ever since 1991, some 6,000 people
were killed in the territories. For comparison's sake, the number of Israeli
conflict fatalities since 1948 is some 13,000, and the number of the Iraq War
casualties is estimated at between 100,000 and half a million people. The
researchers further added the 11,000 Palestinian held in Israeli prisons; the plots
that the Palestinians lost to the State of Israel and the Jewish settlements; the
deserted farming grounds; the expanding levels of unemployment and poverty; and the
number of houses demolished. They even factored in the time that the Palestinians
wasted waiting in line at the roadblocks and reached the figure of 1 million work
hours lost each month.
On the Israeli side, next to casualties and the economic and social damages it
sustained, the researchers reviewed fluctuations in Israel's international status
(which they measured by inspecting world media articles). Some of the data is
unclear and even arbitrary. For example, they estimated the cost of the settlements
as somewhere between USD $10 billion and USD $60 billion.
Comparing their findings with data from other countries, the researchers found, for
example, that between 1997 and 2006, the Middle East countries purchased more
weapons than any other region in the world. Saudi Arabia took the lead, procuring
three times as much as Israel did, as it came in second, and Iran was rated third.
All the other countries are way behind.
And What is the Price Peace Today?
After I finished reading the book, I went looking for other data, trying to estimate
the direct cost of a current peace arrangement. The largest clause will be the
solution for the Palestinian refugees' problem, which the experts estimated at USD
$55 billion at least, and the evacuation of some 150,000 Jewish settlers from the
West Bank, estimated at some USD $15 billion. This too is a lot of money. Thus, if
we want an economic study of peace and war, we should examine whether maintaining
the conflict is worthwhile. It may well be that keeping the conflict going is
cheaper, a real bargain, particularly if we factor out the cost of suffering,
orphanhood, and bereavement.
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