The Economic Viability of a Palestinian State

The economic viability of a state in Palestine is not a new issue. Indeed, it was a dominant theme in the economic literature of the Zionist movement long before and leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel. The message then, simple and constant, was that a Jewish state in Palestine was economically viable and that there were no assignable limits, a priori, to the capacity of Palestine to absorb additional immigrants.

George T. Abed, formerly a senior staff member of the International Monetary Fund, is currently director general of the Welfare Association, a Geneva-based development assistance foundation. This paper was originally presented at the May 1989 Georgetown University symposium "The Palestinians: New Directions." It will appear early in 1990 in a book incorporating the proceedings of the symposium published by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University.