importance.l Agriculture was the main economic occupation, and its role as seen by the authorities was to produce simple basic goods -- wheat, olives, etc. -- to supply the elementary needs of its inhabitants.2 Out of a total area of 5.5 million dunums, only 2.1 million were cultivated, and of this only 6.3 percent was irrigated land.
Moreover, according to the 1961 Jordanian population census, only 23 percent of the population participated in the labour force. Of these, 40 percent were employed in agriculture and 7 percent in industry. Unemployment was high, and there was a steady stream of emigration to the East Bank and the oil rich Arab states, as a result of the difficult eonomic conditions imposed upon the WE community.
The Jordanian government pursued discriminatory policies towards the West Bank in order to shift the centre of economic activity from there to the East Bank. The policy aimed at increasing the Palestinian population of the East Bank, both for the aforementioned economic reason, and in order to facilitate the Jordanization of the Palestinians.'
The discriminatory nature of the policies practised by the Jordanian authorities vis-g-vis the WE becomes clear when looking at the industrial sector. Policies directed against the establishment of industrial concerns in the West Bank assumed a number of forms including denial of licenses for new firms, and the forced transfer of existing industries from the West Bank to the East Bank.4 Thus, although the West Bank accounted for half of the population of the country, it had only 22 percent of Jordan's industry and 1 6 percent of its transport.'
It is also worth noting that the total number of workers was larger in the East Bank than it was in the West Bank, with 19,913 workers in the former in 1965, and only 17,101 in the latter.6 This, when taken in conjunction with the fact that the West Bank possessed 3,716 industrial establishments while the East Bank had only 3,122 industrial establishments, indicates that industrial firms in the West Bank were more akin to workshops employing no more than one or two persons at the most. Hence, they were more removed from modern industrial establishments than were the East Bank's firms. The latter, as well, benefitted from the Government's determined efforts to create a modern industrial base in the East Bank.

i. It is difficult to give an accurate picture of the WE economy prior to 1967 as there is a dearth of Jordanian statistics, and those that do exist do not provide separate figures for the two banks.
2. V. Bull, The West Bank: ~s It Viable? (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1975), p. 95.
3. A further aim was the thinning of the border area population in order to mlntmlze border incursions and smuggling which inevitably invited Israeli retaliation. (For a discussion of Jordanian policies, see: A. Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan 1947-57 [London: Frank Cass, 1981]).
4. H. Awartani, A Survey oflndustry in the West Bank and the Gara Strip (Birzeit:
Birzeit University Pub., 1979), p. 8. 5. Bull, p. 96.
6. R Musleh, "Industry in the West Bank 1967-79: Establishments, Wages and Workers," Shououn Falastiniya (Beirut), no. 99 (February, 1980), p. 4.

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