British Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted on Sunday that increased economic investment in the Palestinian territories would be rewarded with the prize of peace in the Middle East.
On his first official visit as premier to Israel and the occupied West Bank, and accompanied by the heads of top British firms, Brown stressed the need to boost the Palestinian economy to secure a lasting peace with Israel.
Brown visited Bethlehem for talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad and to urge both British and Palestinian business chiefs to work together to drag the West Bank and Gaza Strip out of poverty. He promised further economic aid to the Palestinians, aimed at bolstering the US-backed Middle East peace process.
"We have pledged 500 million dollars for economic development in Palestine over three years to 2011," Brown said after meeting Abbas.
"I can announce today a further commitment of 60 million dollars, 30 million of which we will give as direct budgetary support, bringing our total support to the Palestinian Authority this year to 175 million dollars."
The money will go towards economic and security assistance for the Palestinians.
In keeping with his "economic roadmap to peace," Brown pledged support for a new mortgage authority which he said would help to finance some 30,000 new Palestinian homes and generate up to 50,000 new jobs.
He said that recent investment conferences in Paris and London had been a success and said London would host a follow-up event later this year.
Brown and Fayyad also attended the UK-Palestine Business Meeting, which brought together top British business chiefs such as the heads of BT, Lloyds TSB Bank and British Midland with local business leaders. Brown told them that increasing prosperity would "make the costs of ever returning to violence so high and so unacceptable that the vast majority will not want to have anything to do with those who preach violence."
He added: "There is an economic prize before us. "But there is also a double dividend: there is a real chance to build up not just the peace process but the ingenuity and skills and the commitment of the Palestinians to build prosperity right across the region.
Fayyad said the Palestinian economy had been "ravaged for many, many years" and was performing "way below potential." "If it were not for those conditions of the past eight years, our economy could easily have been twice the size it is today."
Lord Digby Jones, Britain's trade minister and a former head of the Confederation of British Industry trade body, said business chiefs could see the Palestinian territories were ripe for investment.
"If European companies get in at the bottom right now, the profits are going to be enormous because this is only going to go one way," he told AFP, on the first visit by a British trade minister to the Palestinian territories for more than 12 years. "Palestine has got products it can sell around the world, especially to the wealthy markets of Europe, with a skilled, young workforce and a relatively rich very neighbour next door."
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