

West Bank Buzz: The Quiet Rise of a Palestinian Silicon Valley - fabuzaid
http://www.worldcrunch.com/tech-science/west-bank-buzz-the-quiet-rise-of-a-palestinian-silicon-valley/palestine-internet-ramallah-web-technology/c4s9946/#.UI6u0Gl278R

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kloncks
I had the privilege of being part of a delegation of American businessmen sent
to the West Bank earlier this month. It was planned by the US State Department
in conjunction with the Aspen Institute and we had the opportunity to visit
with business leaders, politicians, and startup founders all over the West
Bank and Israel.

Very eye-opening. A lot of great innovation in that region (on both sides).
Met a team that's independently constructing wind mills in the West Bank to
power up to 20% of their energy team. Another that is making custom furniture
for small spaces in Gaza.

There were Israeli companies outsourcing to Ramallah instead of Bangalore, and
ideas and ingenuity was very impressive. All in all, I was extremely
impressed.

The path forward, I've always believed, was rooted in economic prosperity.
Nothing creates chaos like poverty with no chances of escape.

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nostromo
I used to work for an American company with a large Israeli workforce.

When I left the company they were actively trying to hire engineers from the
West Bank. Apparently this used to be hard to do, but has gotten easier thanks
to a government-sponsored (from both sides) program.

I believe it's a win-win -- Palestinians of the West Bank are cheaper than
Israeli engineers and in need of better paying jobs. And hopefully working
together will lead to more cross-cultural understanding.

I found myself quite depressed by the politics of the region and didn't like
flying there -- but this provided a much needed glimmer of hope.

More info for the curious: [http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-high-
tech-compa...](http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-high-tech-
companies-outsourcing-to-palestinians-1.331256)

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killahpriest
Not quite the middle east depicted by the media:

At Asal, 120 software developers work in a large, air-conditioned open plan
office fronted by a semi-circular glass wall. Twenty percent of them are
women.

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JakeSc
Quite true! I am surprised to read this, and thrilled that the technology
industry is having an impact for Palestinians as well.

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redwood
The anti-NGO sentiment resonates with me. I spent the last year living and
working in Bangladesh and it's the same story. People get educated to get jobs
for foreign aid agencies, not to innovate. This creates a very clear, wide-
spread systematic culture of dependency.

Clearly aid agencies are doing good things sometimes. And there are NGOs
moving toward fostering business and accountability rather than traditional
giving. Still, a lot of work needs to be done. Basically aid should be
reserved for post-emergency situations, I believe. Multi-decade aid programs
are not going to lead to self-sustaining economies. At least not if some major
changes happen.

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benjlang
Great work. Hope us Israelis can start working more closely with our
neighbors. Definitely considering making a version of
<http://mappedinisrael.com/> for the West Bank.

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eli_gottlieb
Simplest question: has anyone made an Arabic translation for Waze?

Also, they take salaries of _70%_ less than us? Ya Allah, we're fucked. Better
get _all_ the West Bank tech workers employed to bring the wages up to our
levels.

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shpiel
This is great. The path to peace is education, high skill jobs and prosperous
businesses.

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iwwr
All hanging by a thread, since random buildings can be bombed or demolished as
'retaliation'.

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ilyay
You're thinking of the Gaza Strip, which is under Hamas rule. Israel doesn't
bomb buildings in the West Bank.

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makomk
Israel doesn't bomb buildings in the West Bank right now. They do demolish
them randomly in retaliation, or because they need the space to build more
Jewish-only roads and settlements, or... (Note that I do genuinely mean
Jewish-only rather than Israeli-only here; non-Israeli Jews are allowed but
Israeli Arabs aren't.) That's not to mention the odd state-sanctioned and IDF-
protected terrorist attack by settlers on Arabs in the West Bank.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Israeli Arabs

Nitpick: 'Israeli Arabs' aren't necessary non-Jewish; there are a number of
Arab Jews throughout the middle east, and some of them are in Israel.

(Your point still stands, but people are unaware of the above often enough
that I feel it's worth pointing out, because it emphasizes that the region is
not as black-and-white as poltiics sometimes seem.)

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_delirium
The term "Israeli Arabs" in particular is something of a term of art, meaning
roughly: people with Israeli citizenship who primarily identify themselves as
Arabs. Jews originating in the Arab countries (the Mizrahi Jews) tend not to
consider themselves Israeli Arabs, or be counted as such in censuses. Since
Israel identifies itself as "the Jewish state", they identify with the
majority Jewish population instead.

Whether Mizrahi Jews are Arabs in a more general sense ("Arab Jews") is a more
complex question with more disagreement. My sense is that most don't identify
as Arabs, at least not anymore, though a minority do. But they definitely
don't, in general, identify with the term "Israeli Arab", which denotes a
distinct socio-cultural group.

(It's probably worth noting, though, that many people who _are_ counted as
Israeli Arabs in that sense don't identify with the term either: a substantial
number prefer other terms that incorporate a specifically Palestinian
identity, such as "Palestinian citizen of Israel".)

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Apocryphon
Seems like Mediterranean climes are good for startups.

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nivertech
Low-cost outsourcing compared to Silicon Valley?

