Homepage Feature

Palestinian business hampered by visa problems

Audio: Play | Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3

(Photo: Daniel Estrin)

Vice President Biden’s Middle East trip could not change the impression that the peace process there is as stalled as ever. A viable Palestinian state is not imminent and developing the Palestinian economy remains difficult. Investors are even having trouble getting visas to the Palestinian territories – and that’s blocking economic growth in the West Bank. Daniel Estrin reports from Ramallah.

• BBC coverage
• On The World: Biden criticizes Israel over building project
• Israel and the Palestinians

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  Israel’s security measures around the West Bank are meant to prevent terrorists from getting into Israel.  But they also mean that Israel controls who gets into the West Bank and that may be having a negative effect on economic growth there.  Daniel Estrin reports from Ramallah.

DANIEL ESTRIN:  Khaled Sabawi is 26 years old.  He came to the Middle East from Canada only a few years ago, but he’s already making waves.  His company was the first to bring geothermal technology to the region.  The technology heats and cools a building without emitting carbon dioxide and saves on energy consumption.  He installed it in his own office building.

KHALED SABAWI:  So that quiet hum that you hear.

ESTRIN: Is it the compressors?

SABAWI: These are two geothermal, or ground source, heat pumps.  So what they’re doing right now they’re taking heat out of the building and projecting it down to the earth.

ESTRIN: Sabawi is proud of his achievements.  For the last year and a half he’s traveled in and out of the Palestinian territories to promote his company.  Last January he represented the only Palestinian company at a major renewable energy conference in Abu Dhabi.  His company was on the same floor in the convention center as Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

SABAWI: Our booth was a hit.  A lot of people came to see it and they were very surprised by the work that we’ve done.

ESTRIN: But when he and his Canadian sales manager tried to get back to Ramallah, Israeli border officials refused them entry.  They stayed in Jordan for a week and tried to cross the border again, but they were denied.  So they went back to Canada and worked from there.  A month and a half later, Sabawi finally managed to arrange a short term visa.  But every time he traveled through the Israeli border, he’d be interrogated for hours and given different kinds of visas, for one month or for just one week.

SABAWI: I still don’t have a work visa.  The visa that was given states on it in large letters, not permitted to work.  They say you’re coming here to work, but your visa says not permitted to work.  And I said, well they knew that when they gave me that visa.

ESTRIN: For Sabawi, it’s a Khafka-esque nightmare of bureaucracy.  But Sabawi is by no means alone.  The Palestine Trade Center, a group promoting the Palestinian economy, along with the World Bank, released a report this week which said that visa refusal was the number one obstacle to foreign investment in the Palestinian territories.  They said that direct foreign investment is what’s needed to ensure long term economic growth here.

YIGAL PALMOR:  There is no policy against foreign investors wishing to invest in the West Bank.  I have to say that.

ESTRIN: Yigal Palmor is a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry.  He says his government is committed to economic peace in the West Bank and that the visa complication is simply a bureaucratic blunder.  Israel began enforcing tougher restrictions last year to combat illegal foreign workers, but the blanket restrictions also caught up international NGO workers and foreign investors.  Palmor calls them collateral damage.  But Palmor admits that international businessmen of Palestinian descent do face a harder time than most.

PALMOR:  If you’re talking about people of Palestinian origins wishing to stay in the West Bank, then the general rule will be stricter regulation because of the phenomenon of illegal immigration by former Palestinians into the West Bank of Israel.

ESTRIN: But Sam Bahour, an American businessman with Palestinian roots, says this is not a bureaucratic mishap, nor a new phenomenon.  He’s lived in the West Bank for more than a decade, most of that time leaving and returning every three months to receive a new tourist visa.  Bahour says visa restrictions are keeping out the very people needed to bring about change.

SAM BAHOUR:  We’re talking about people who want to come back to their homes in the West Bank, investors, academics, health professionals, who basically bring with them a set of skills and resources and a different set of values that they’ve learned from being scattered around the world, to be able to create a different reality in Palestine.  I’ve come to the conclusion that Israel does not want a constructive, positive reality to be created in Palestine.

ESTRIN: Bahour and others have spent years lobbying Israel and the United States to change the situation.  But Bahour wonders, with so much else on the diplomatic table, if the issue of foreign investors will be addressed any time soon.  For The World, I’m Daniel Estrin, Ramallah, the West Bank.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.