While no one’s looking, the Palestinians are building a state

In the world of Palestinian politics, the recent weeks have been a study in contrasts. The international media has trained its focus off the shores of Gaza, where the flotilla fiasco has generated dramatic images of dead civilians and battered Israeli soldiers. But in Bethlehem, far away from the television cameras and breathless news reports, ...

ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images
ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images
ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images

In the world of Palestinian politics, the recent weeks have been a study in contrasts. The international media has trained its focus off the shores of Gaza, where the flotilla fiasco has generated dramatic images of dead civilians and battered Israeli soldiers.

In the world of Palestinian politics, the recent weeks have been a study in contrasts. The international media has trained its focus off the shores of Gaza, where the flotilla fiasco has generated dramatic images of dead civilians and battered Israeli soldiers.

But in Bethlehem, far away from the television cameras and breathless news reports, 2,000 Palestinian financiers also gathered recently at the second Palestine Investment Conference to quietly go about the business of building the economy of a viable Palestinian state.

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Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

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