Anybody who has traveled to the West Bank city of Ramallah recently must have been astonished by its economic boom, high-rise buildings and flourishing commerce. ``Like Tel Aviv, or Paris,'' boasted a Palestinian friend, who called to invite me to one of the cafes that had mushroomed in the city in the last year.

He had only one warning for me, and it was not about security; it was about parking. Indeed, with the shining BMWs and Mercedeses cruising in the bustling city, you would even think it was Monte Carlo.

The reasons for this surge of prosperity are varied: restoration of law and order by police forces trained by Americans; slow but persistent ``bottom up'' work by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to create a civic society; removal of Israeli roadblocks, facilitating movement of people and goods.

Needless to say, such development is good not only for the Palestinians but for the Israelis as well. A happy neighbor is a good neighbor. Indeed, Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, remarked in The Wall Street Journal last week that, ``The seeds of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called `economic peace' are, in fact, already blossoming in the commercial skyline of Ramallah.''

`New Middle East'

``Economic peace'' might sound good at first, until one is reminded of ``The New Middle East,'' the brainchild of Shimon Peres, Israel's president. Back in the 1990s, Peres, as foreign minister, entertained the idea that economic development and commerce between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East could happen even before a real development on the political peace process had been achieved. Furthermore, he believed that the economic progress might even become the driving force behind the political peace process.

A series of Palestinian terror attacks in 1996, followed by the second intifadah in 2000, brought an end to the dream of ``The New Middle East,'' leaving many Israelis (including the present writer) skeptical about its viability in the first place. No wonder that when some of us today hear the phrase ``Economic Peace,'' we treat it with a well-earned and healthy suspicion.

Behind those concepts and theories lies a basic idea, namely that people who have something also have something to lose. Therefore, as long as the Palestinians are prospering, they will presumably stay away from trouble. Indeed, more than 70 years ago, when the Arabs in Palestine launched their Great Revolt against the British rulers, the British noticed that terrorists only came from the vicinity of poor Arab villages. Rich villages just kept those people away, fearing British retaliation. In other words, people who are not hungry and poor will not be inclined to push forward extremist positions.

By adopting such views, Israelis are leaving out of the picture at least half of the Palestinians -- the followers of Hamas.

Even if we deduct the people who voted for Hamas as a protest against the corruption of Fatah, and those who had been brainwashed by the imams in the mosques, we are still left with enough people who resort to extremism not because of poor economic circumstances, but rather because of being devout Muslims. Not to mention Osama bin Laden, surely not the poorest of them all.

But even if we direct this ``Economic Peace'' to the West Bank only, hoping that the people of Gaza, envious of the success of their brothers and sisters in Ramallah, will eventually drop their radicalism and join the economic party, we might sooner or later find out that doing business without moving the peace process ahead is just not enough.

Middle-class revolt

It was Alexis de Tocqueville, the French historian and thinker known for his Democracy in America, who noticed that there was no natural link between positive socio-economic conditions and political moderation. In his other book, The Old Regime and the Revolution, he wondered why the French middle class had revolted against the nobility and the clergy, precisely when their standard of living had never been better. The answer of the wise Frenchmen: When you are well fed and well educated, you are better equipped to notice grievances and stand up against them.

It is naive, then, to hope that Palestinian prosperity alone will somehow solve the problem here. Instead, Israel should take the bull by the horns and initiate a new political drive to jump-start the peace process. By taking such a win-win step, Israel will surely find strong allies in the streets of Ramallah.

Uri Dromi is a columnist based in Jerusalem

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