Economy
In the Katif Bloc’s unique greenhouses, a uniquely developed advanced technology was used to grow bug-free leafy vegetables and herbs answering to the strictest health, aesthetic and religious requirements. Most of the organic agricultural products were exported to Europe. In addition, the community of Atzmona had Israel’s largest plant nursery, and with 800 cows, the Katif dairy was the second largest in the country. Telesales and Printing were other notable industries.
The total sum of exports from the greenhouses of Gush Katif, which were owned by 200 farmers, came to $200,000,000 per year and made up 15% of the agricultural exports of the State of Israel.
The combined assets in Gush Katif were estimated at $23 billion.
Of Israel’s total exports abroad, Gush Katif exported:
- 95% of bug-free lettuce and greens
- 70% of organic vegetables
- 60% of cherry tomatoes
- 60% of geraniums to Europe.
The Economic Cooperation Foundation, which is funded by the European Union, agreed to purchase the greenhouses for $14 million and transfer ownership to the Palestinian Authority, so that the 4,000 Palestinians employed to work in them could keep their jobs. Former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, contributed $500,000 of his own money to the project.
When the IDF left Gaza, thousands of Palestinians looted the area, and 800 of the 4,000 greenhouses were left unusable.
Read more about this topic: Gush Katif
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“War. Fighting. Men ... every man in the whole realm is in the army.... Every man in uniform ... An economy entirely geared to war ... but there is not much war ... hardly any fighting ... yet every man a soldier from birth till death ... Men ... all men for fighting ... but no war, no wars to fight ... what is it, what does it mean?””
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)