He writes:

Win-win, right? The settlers are compensated for their businesses, while the Palestinians keep their jobs.

Except that this reflects flawed economic thinking. It assumes that it doesn't matter who owns a business. That assets which are profitable under one owner will continue to reap profits under another. That all that matters is having skilled employees. That anyone can run a business if the market is right.

So you can just hand the greenhouses to new owners, and expect them to continue churning out revenues.

The falsehood of this assumption is so obvious to me it's hard for me to make the argument. Business management is a skill, involving talent and experience. The managers with those skills have left Gaza, presumably for good. The former workers may know how to grow plants, but they don't know how to nurture relationships with suppliers and customers, how to assess market conditions, how to motivate employees. And, having received someone else's business readymade, they will never have the same devotion to maintaining and growing it as would those who built it in the first place.

This recalls a several months old column by Jeff Jacoby, "Everybody loses in Sharon's Gaza Plan":

During a break in the shift, I ask some of workers if they like their jobs. They shrug. But when I ask what they think of the plan for Israeli withdrawal, they grow animated. If the Israelis go, they tell me through an interpreter, they'll lose their jobs. If the plant shuts down, they'll be out of work, and if the Palestinian Authority takes it over, they'll still be out of work -- their jobs will go to workers with better connections to the PA's ruling thugs.

''If that's how you feel," I ask, ''why don't you oppose the disengagement publicly? Why don't you tell the PA that you want your Jewish neighbors to stay?"

When my question is translated, the men look at me as if I'm crazy.

''It's forbidden!" replies Randoor, the only one of the workers who would give even a first name. ''We're not allowed to say that!"

I press him: Why not? What would be so bad about saying that Jews and Arabs should be able to live together? But Randoor shakes his head and crosses his wrists, as if being handcuffed. ''They might put us in jail," he says. ''They might call us 'collaborators.' " In the jungle that is Palestinian society, being called a ''collaborator" can be a death sentence. Indeed, the PA's newly elevated security chief -- a cold-blooded killer named Rashid Abu Shabak -- is known in Gaza as the ''collaborator hunter."

Gives you something to think about.
Technorati Tags: Palestinians, Israel.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.