The advent of the occupation in 1967 found the industrial sector in the West Bank extremely small and lacking in modern techniques, capital, and technical expertise; furthermore immediately after 1967, a very high proportion of capital was exported out of the West Bank as a result of the occupation and the consequent instability and insecurity.7 In the Gaza Strip, the situation was much worse. The apparent prosperity, if it can be so called, which existed within the dire poverty and squalid conditions of the refugee camps teeming with thousands of unemployed people, was the result of a trade boom. The Strip benefitted from the easy foreign trade restrictions administered by the Egyptians; it served as a centre for smuggling goods into Egypt, and constituted an attractive shopping centre for many Egyptians.
Next to trade, the other main component of the Strip's economy was agriculture, dominated by the export-oriented citrus sector.There was no industrial sector at all, and the few "industrial establishments" that existed, consisted of two beverage bottling plants, two citrus packing houses, and about ten carpet and textile-making plants.8 Furthemore, the labour force participation rate in the GS did not exceed 19 percent, and the majority of the population were unemployed, subsisting on UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) handouts.

The Labour Force
Changes in the labour market have perhaps been the single, most important economic consequence of the Israeli occupation. Between 35 and 40 percent of the total active labour force have become employed in Israel, nearly half(45 percent) in construction, mostly as unskilled or semi-skilled workers.
At the onset of the occupation, it is estimated that some 200,000 of the approximately 770,000 WE Palestinians, constituting one fourth of the population of the entire WBGS, left their homes and emigrated to the East Bank of the Jordan.9 In Gaza, however, there was little change in the population (approximately 450,000) in the immediate aftermath of the war, although some people did later leave via the WE, or else settled there. It is further estimated that 20,000 people have been migrating every year since 1975.'0 In fact, the population of the WBGS in the latter part of the 1970s was actually smaller than it had been in 1952." 7. A. Samara, The Economics of Hunger in the West Bank and the Gara Strip.
(Jerusalem: 1979), p. 158. 8. Awartani, p. 9.
9. B. Van Arkadie, Benefits and Burdens: A Report on the West Bank and Cara Strip Economies since 1967 (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1977), p. 32. The September 1967 Israeli census gives a population figure of 600,000 for the WE.
10. International Labour Office, Report of the delegation to Palestine and the Occupied Territories, February/March 1979. "The Conditions of Arab Workers in the Occupied Territories," Samed Al Iktissadi, no. 9 (October 1979), p. 135. (Here after referred to as the ILO Report.) 11. G. Harb, "Labour and Manpower," in A Palestinian Agenda for the West Bank and Gara, ed. E. Nakhleh (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), p. 92.

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