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July 31, 2012

Romney's 'culture' remark angers Palestinians

The GOP nominee said "culture" was the reason Israelis make more than Palestinians, but economists say Israel's restrictions on Palestinian trade and movement is the largest reason for the discrepancy.

The Washington Post

JERUSALEM - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney angered Palestinian leaders on Monday when he suggested here that the Israeli economy had outpaced the economy of the Palestinian territories in part because of advantages of "culture."

Palestinians said that Romney had ignored the long-running Israeli restrictions on crossings from the Gaza Strip and West Bank, which they say are an enormous drag on trade.

Romney's campaign said afterward that the remark had been misinterpreted. "This was not in any way an attempt to slight the Palestinians," Stuart Stevens, Romney's chief strategist, told reporters in a later stop in Gdansk, Poland. "And everyone knows that."

Romney had said at a breakfast fundraiser that he had pondered the reasons for Israel's huge economic advantage over the neighboring territories.

"As you come here and you see the (Gross Domestic Product) per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality," Romney said, according to a pool report.

In fact, the difference is far more stark than that. According to the World Bank, Israel's GDP per capita is actually $31,282. The same figure for the Palestinian areas is around $1,600.

Romney said he had studied a book called "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," searching for an answer about why two neighboring places -- the U.S. and Mexico, for instance, or Israel and the Palestinian areas -- could have such disparate prosperity.

"Culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference," Romney said, repeating the conclusion he drew from that book, by David Landes. "And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things."

Romney also said he recognized the "hand of Providence in selecting this place (Israel)."

For Romney, the episode seemed another misstep in an overseas trip that has underscored the difficulty of being a candidate abroad.

So far, Romney has tried to follow an unwritten rule of American campaigning: Don't criticize the president on foreign soil.

But he has struggled with another unwritten rule -- one that applies to travel more generally. It is also a bad idea to criticize foreigners on foreign soil.

Romney's first troubles came in London, the first stop on his tour. He was lambasted by politicians and the British press after he pointed out well-known flaws in the preparations for London's Olympic games.

At the breakfast fundraiser in Israel, Romney also noted that Israel spends just 8 percent of its GDP on health care, while the United States spends 18 percent. "We have to find ways," he said, "not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to (fund) and manage our health care costs."

He did not note that Israel's health care system contains some features that Republicans have attacked when they were proposed in the U.S. Israel has universal health care, with a mandatory requirement to obtain health insurance.

Romney's campaign said that the candidate had made similar observations about cultural differences before. Staffers sent out a transcript of a speech that Romney gave in Chicago in March, in which he recounted the same research. In that case, Romney cited a slightly different Middle Eastern comparison: Israel and Egypt, a sovereign country that does not face the same trade restrictions as the Palestinian territories.

(Continued on page 2)

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