Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been crowned as "the Palestinian Ben-Gurion at the recent Herzliya Conference. However, there is a great gap between the achievements attributed to him and his abilities in practice.

Fayyad is credited with changing the corrupt PA apparatus, but even in the financial realm where his expertise lies, his abilities are mostly manifested through the drafting of impressive documents as well as fundraising.

Meanwhile, the absurdity inherent in his statements regarding "Palestinian independence within two years" is clear to anyone familiar with the Palestinian economy. Fayyad is a former World Bank official, but even on the financial front his deeds are far from the image he has nurtured.

The Palestinian economy is the only place in the world where the per capita GDP is less than half the disposable income per capita. This is the result of three factors:

1. The Palestinians barely produce anything. Most of their GDP comes from government expenditures by the PA itself.

2. The Palestinians receive immense sums donated by the world.

3. Tax collection is almost unheard of, aside from the taxes collected (for Fayyad) by the Israeli government, which provides the PA with NIS 450 million (roughly $120 million) monthly; this comprises about 40% of the PA's budget.

The result is clear: Low GDP, but high disposable income. Indeed, it's an economic miracle.

Meanwhile, the situation is even more extreme in the Gaza Strip, where the PA spends 57% of its budget. Fayyad hands over salaries and allowances to 150,000 people, yet tens of thousands of them don't work, while others receive two salaries: One from Fayyad and another from Hamas. This is why the only industries active in Gaza are imports through smuggling tunnels and real estate - the surplus of cash in Gaza's banks prompts them to offer mortgages, and this results in a rise in real estate prices...

The economies of Gaza and the West Bank (Judea/Samaria) thrived in the first decades (1967-1987) of that so-called occupation. Aside from UNRWA, little outside aid entered the territories. Yet under Israel's security umbrella and open borders, the areas thrived.

Those who get their "history" from the Palestinians ignore how much Israel invested in their infrastructure - water and sewage lines, electricity, schools and medical facilities - all of which were neglected under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. Infant mortality went down, average lifespan went up, agricultural output and average incomes skyrocketed.

Then Palestinian "nationalism" came to the fore in the first intifada, but it took Arafat's arrival to really screw things up. The territories are now rife with welfare dependency, corruption and bloated non-productive bureaucracies.