Tag: Palestine Monetary Authority

Vivian Silver and Hamas

Vivian Silver, ”a 74-year-old Canadian Israeli peace activist, had vanished from her duplex in Kibbutz Beeri” on Oct 7 and is now one of the 242 hostages held by Hamas following their savage assault on Israel that killed 1,400 men women and children. “Israel war peace activist sons”

Israelis were and are divided over how Israel should respond to this attack. As of this writing (Nov 8) Israel’s bombing and ground attacks have killed over 10,000 Palestinians over half of them women and children. This ratio of Palestinians killed to Israelis killed (10 to 1.4) is about the same as the average over the last 50 years.

Israel’s savage attack on the people of Gaza was, in the words of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, “revenge”.  “Defending Israel”  But at a meeting in Jerusalem of hostage families, including Vivian’s two sons, Eli Cohen, the country’s foreign minister claimed that “Military pressure… would give Israel leverage in a hostage negotiation.”

Yonatan Zeigen, one of Vivian’s two sons, “believed that a ground invasion was not just bad strategy — it was immoral. It was a line Vivian might have said.”

Some days later while visiting the ruined remains of his mother’s home a solder leading a military tour of the ruins asked Yonatan: “’What do you think needs to be done about the hostages?’ And maybe it was because of where they stood, a few feet from his mother’s bedroom. Or because he was tired of trying to veil his opinions. This time, he made the moral argument.

“‘A cease-fire to save them,’ Yonatan replied.

“’Because the fighting puts them at risk?’ the soldier asked.

“’Yes, and I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.’

“’You don’t think it’s right to kill the terrorists?’

“’I think first we need to focus on the kidnapped people, and then make a major shift, and that will not come from war but from peace.’”

All of the above quotes are from the Washington Post article linked above. I recommend that you read it. I quote it at length to emphasize that every war casualty is an actual person with families and loved one impacted by their tragedy and that Israeli public opinion is very divided.

Hamas’ attack on Oct 7 was vicious and must be thoroughly condemned. Anger is a natural and understandable reaction, but it is not wise to determine how Israel can best protect itself from such atrocities in the future out of anger. Revenge is for foolish children. “Israel’s war in Gaza and Genocide” “Palestinian citizens Gaza war enemies”

Why did Hamas do what they did? Asking that question and seeking honest answers is not to forgive their atrocities but is necessary input to the development of a reaction that serves Israel best long run interest (which is living peacefully with its neighbors). We need to know and face up to Israel’s history of brutal treatment of the Palestinians they drove off their land to create Israel and those that continue to live in the so called West Bank and Gaza Strip. “Palestine Israel in perspective”

The brutal treatment of the Jews over their long history is well known and must not be forgotten either.

During one of my first visits to Israel to help implement the Oslo Accords provision for a Palestine Monetary Authority, I was driven by a very lovely estate in East Jerusalem by one of my Palestinian counterparts. She said: “that was my home and the home of my ancestors until the Jews drove us out. But I have given up demanding my ‘right of return’.” In 1948, Israeli forces drove an estimated 750,000 Palestinians out of their homes during the creation of Israel. In 1948, Israeli forces drove 750,000 Palestinians out in the Nakba – The Washington Post  The illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank aim to complete the job. “Amid the mourning Israel’s settlement enterprise celebrates a great victory”

Israel will not enjoy, and flourish in, peace until it establishes just relations with its Palestinian neighbors. But the necessary two state solution outlined in the Oslo Accords is hampered by an incompetent Palestine Authority. I don’t generally favor excessive American interference in other countries affairs, but we must stop allowing Israel’s illegal settlements and their mistreatment of Palestinians and must more actively promote an effective and honest Palestinian government. We have the financial and other leverage to do so.

Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, makes similar points that are well worth reading:   “Dominique de Villepin-on-the-conflict-in-Palestine”

My Travels to Jerusalem

Palestine: The Oslo Accords before and after, My travels to Jerusalem By Warren L Coats (2021) Kindle and paperback versions available at: Oslo Accords: Before and After

An intimate account of the establishment of the Palestine Monetary Authority and related adventures by one of the International Monetary Fund’s post-conflict, transition economy monetary experts. From being stranded in the desert without a cell phone, to hearing the sound at breakfast of a suicide bomber, to meeting with Yasser Arafat, and Stanley Fischer of the Bank of Israel, the author shares his adventures in the land of Canaan over a sixteen year period.

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 in Israel’s ancestral homeland required dealing with Palestine’s existing residents. In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel’s occupation of the territories given to the Palestinians when the United Nations first recognized the State of Israel (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) increased pressure to resolve that issue. The Oslo Accords offered a path to its resolution, based on an agreement between Yasser Arafat, representing the Palestinian people, and the government of Israel, to swap land for peace (the return of Palestinian lands in exchange for Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel and its right to exist in peace).

One of the elements of the Oslo Accords was the establishment of a central bank in the Occupied Territories. Between 1995 and 2011 Warren Coats lead or participated in the missions of the International Monetary Fund to assist the Palestinian Authority in establishing and developing the capacities of the Palestine Monetary Authority. This book recounts the highlights of his visits, which included meetings with Arafat, as well as Bank of Israel officials.

Previous Books

One Currency for Bosnia: Creating the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Warren Coats (2007)   Hard cover: One Currency for Bosnia

FSU: Building Market Economy Monetary Systems–My Travels in the Former Soviet Union By Warren L Coats (2020)  Kindle and paperback versions available at: FSU-Building-Economy-Monetary-Systems

Afghanistan: Rebuilding the Central Bank after 9/11 — My Travels to Kabul By Warren Coats (2020)  Kindle and paperback versions available at:  “Afghanistan-Rebuilding the Central Bank after 9/11”

Iraq: An American Tragedy, My Travels to Baghdad By Warren Coats (2020) Kindle and paperback versions available at: Iraq-American-Tragedy-My-Travels-Baghdad

Zimbabwe: Challenges and Policy Options after Hyperinflation by Warren L. Coats (Author), Geneviève Verdier (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition Zimbabwe-Challenges and Policy Options after Hyperinflation-ebook

Money and Monetary Policy in Less Developed Countries: A Survey of Issues and Evidence by Warren L. Coats (Author, Editor), Deena R. Khatkhate (Author, Editor)  Format: Kindle Edition Money and Monetary Policy in LDCs-ebook

Oslo: the Play

IMG_2150Yessar Arafat and Warren Coats in the PLO office in Gaza in February 1996.

Last night I saw the Round House Theater’s magnificent production of Oslo, the story of the secret meetings in Norway that led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.  It was a moving (heart wrenching) and balanced recounting of how these meetings achieved agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization on “land for peace” as it was called at the time after many years of failed official negotiations. I urge you to see it.

We heard the PLO negotiators lay out the Israeli theft of their homes and killings of their people and we heard the Israeli negotiators lay out the Palestinian attacks on Israelis and on the efforts of Jews to establish and secure an Israeli homeland.  For perspective, since the second intifada (between September 29, 2000 and January 31, 2018) at least 9,560 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis and 1,248 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians.  “The View from the West Bank”

The play focused on the unusual approach of these negotiations, which built on the development of trust and respect between the opposing negotiators and the agreement on achievable steps one step at a time. Between their long negotiating sessions in an isolated room near Oslo, they dinned, drank and bonded together. Unfortunately, the play fails to provide us with an overview of the resulting agreement, which applied the same step by step confidence building approach to the incremental establishment of a Palestinian government (the Palestinian Authority) and withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza. The PA was given governance authority for a limited number of functions in order—step by step—to build both institutional capacity and trust.

One of those functions was the establishment of the monetary authority (central bank). I led the IMF team that helped establish the Palestinian Monetary Authority and have many stories to tell of my many visits to Israel and the West Bank and Gaza in 1995-6 plus a number of visits in later years (most recently in December, 2011).

The PMA has developed into a well-run organization of which Palestinians (and those Israelis who see a successful Palestine government as important and necessary for their own security) can be proud.  It helped a great deal that the Bank of Israel and PMA developed good relations. Stanley Fischer was the governor of the BoI from 2005-13 and George Abed was governor of the PMA from 2005-7. They had both previously been colleagues at the IMF. “Jerusalem in August 2006”

It is with a broken heart that I watch Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with help from American President Donald Trump, increasingly abandon the two state solution of the Oslo Agreement for an apartheid single state regime in which “democratic” Jewish control is preserved by denying what would become the majority Palestinian residents their right to vote. “The Future of Israel and Palestine”