A joint committee of Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization is financing Arab home building on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and supplies capital for Arab universities and other enterprises in the territories, according to a report in the newsletter of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
The report, written by Hillel Frisch, contends that Arabs building homes in or near Jerusalem can obtain mortgages of between $21,000-$30,000 on favorable terms from the joint committee. The PLO also funds Bir Zeit and A-Najah universities on the West Bank, the latter in Nablus and finances the pro-PLO Arabic newspapers Al Fajr and A-Shaab in East Jerusalem, Frisch reported.
He said this activity represents the Arab policy of “summud”, a word which translates roughly to “steadfastness, ” in contrast to the policy of mass flight adopted by Palestinian Arabs in 1948 and 1967. The purpose of “summud,” according to Frisch, is the infusion of Arab capital into the occupied territories to achieve Palestinian political goals.
The policy was endorsed at the Arab summit meeting in Baghdad in 1979 which called for the injection of some $150 million annually into the territories, Frisch wrote.
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