Level of Fragility of Palestinian Society and the Role of Stability and Elasticity of the Palestinian Economy to Reduce this Fragility Level

Abstract

Palestinian society has been shocked lereves timel during the last hundred years, the fragility was a main outcome of these situations. Precisely and thoroughly measure of this phenomenon is the first necessary step to be taken to reduce their effect.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to measuring level of stability and elasticity of the Palestinian economy and its impact on the level of fragility of the Palestinian society and to identifying the elements and requirements of economic development needed to reduce fragility. By achieving this, the researcher used two types of descriptive approaches. The first is the survey, where Economists (Palestinian university professors and Economists in Palestinian research centers) evaluated level of economic stability and fragility through a special tool. The second type is a correlation and a time series data which used for statistical data from official institutions and research centers. The results showed that according to FSI model, the level of fragility of Palestinian society during the last decade was 86.21  and it was 86.4 in 2018, and this level describes in FSI scale as a high warning level. there was a fluctuation in the level of fragility in Palestine, in 2009 was the highest level, due to the aggression on Gaza Strip which caused bad social, economic and political conditions within the Palestinian society, and the second shock in level of fragility was in 2014 for the same  1 Range of Fragility (0.0 less fragile - 120.0 more fragile)  Journal of Afro Asian Studies Sixth Issue July 2020  Democratic Arab Center – Germany – Berlin 192 reason.Moreover, the average level of economic stability in Palestine during 0447- 0432 and according to the FSI model was 8.31  and it was classified compared to surrounding countries as the worst. The level of economic stability is measured according to FSI model by measuring three sub-dimensions. The first sub-dimension is related to stability of economic reality as this sub-dimension stability reached at 8.6  and mainly causes of weakness of economic stability in Palestine. The second sub- dimension is Economic Inequality for economic sectors where the level of stability  reached at 8.3 and The level of Human Flight and Brain Drain, the third sub- dimension, was at 8.1. The elasticity of GDP per Capita, inflation, and unemployment  rate (as the main indicator to evaluate the situation of elasticity of Palestinian economy) is a very week elasticity, which means again that the elasticity of the Palestinian economy is very weak. As a result of this weakness, the Palestinian economy is instable. The correlation coefficient between level of economic stability and fragility in Palestine was 69.3%. This does not mean that the impact of economic stability on the fragility of Palestinian society is weak but it was strong, as the result shows that 47.3% of the value of fragility of Palestinian society is explained by the value of economic stability. Finally, the results show that restructuring Palestinian economic system was the first requirements to reduce level of instability and fragility of the economy in Palestine, the second one reduced the impact of corruption on the economy, and the third was restructuring the education sector in line with the Palestinian market. For this the main recommendation was restructuring the Palestinian economic system to increasing the contribution of agricultural and industrial sectors in the Palestinian economy. Thus, it increases the elasticity of the economic system, which means increases the level of stability and reduces the level of fragility.