Palestinian UNRWA employees march in a Gaza City protest against the recent US decision to cut aid to the organization, Jan. 29, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Mohammed Salem.
Posted on 02/16/2018 4:34:05 AM PST by SJackson
Palestinian UNRWA employees march in a Gaza City protest against the recent US decision to cut aid to the organization, Jan. 29, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Mohammed Salem.
JNS.org – Gaza is broke. As Monday’s front-page New York Times feature explained at length, the conflict between the Gaza Strip’s Hamas overlords and the Fatah party that runs the West Bank has resulted in a cash crunch that has left many of the area’s two million people without money. Along with Gaza’s inadequate infrastructure, the resulting poverty from this crisis contributes to a general picture of despair for many Palestinians.
Of course, the notion that everyone in Gaza is starving is an exaggeration. As journalist Tom Gross points out, Gaza’s thriving malls continue to operate, as does its water park, restaurants, and hotels — inconvenient facts that are missing from the Times story and most of the coverage of the current crisis.
But even if we concede that the talk of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is probably exaggerated, there’s no question that most of the people there are poor and have little hope of improving their plight.
This means, as it almost always does, that Israel will be blamed for this awful situation. Since most of the world believes that Israel is still “occupying” Gaza, and is therefore responsible for the coastal territory’s problems, it is only natural that the worse things get there, the more opprobrium will be directed at the Jewish state in international forums and the press.
A full-fledged military assault on a predominantly Muslim community typically sparks a global wave of protests, condemnation, and sometimes calls... This is wrong — but not just because Israel hasn’t occupied Gaza since 2005.
That year, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew every Israeli soldier, settler, and settlement from Gaza. The international community cheered when philanthropists purchased the greenhouses built by Jews in order to give them to the Palestinians. The intent was to allow Gaza to become an incubator of development and peace. But within hours of the withdrawal, the greenhouses were demolished by angry Palestinian mobs determined to erase every trace of the Jewish presence. This goes a long way towards explaining why poverty is endemic in Gaza. It’s true that Israel has blockaded the territory since Hamas seized control of it in a bloody 2007 coup, though it has continued to allow food and medical supplies in, and to often pay for Gaza’s electricity. But Egypt has also severely restricted entry to Gaza. Both countries did so because they are rightly determined to isolate the Islamist terrorist state.
The financial crunch was exacerbated when the Palestinian Authority (PA) began to squeeze Hamas by cutting off its financial contributions to Gaza in order to force the Islamists there to cede power. There have been two sets of public employees in Gaza — one paid by Hamas and the other paid by the PA. The current money crunch means that tens of thousands of people in both groups are now out of cash.
But Gaza’s problems go deeper than the question of who pays for Hamas and Fatah patronage jobs, or which of its governing factions is paying the bills for its bureaucracy. If Gaza is poor, it’s because the welfare of the Palestinian people — or building a functioning state — has never been the primary goal of either Hamas or Fatah.
The United Nations pays for schools and other services via its UNRWA refugee agency, which exists to keep Palestinian refugees in place in order to perpetuate the conflict with Israel. Just as importantly, foreign donors have poured billions into both the West Bank and Gaza over the past two decades. Yet little of that money has been spent on providing a better life for the people of Gaza.
The reason is that almost all of these resources have instead been used to pay for Hamas’ military efforts. Vast sums have been spent on creating enormous underground bunkers for Hamas leaders and fighters, and to store their missiles and other weapons. Each time that Hamas launches terrorist wars against Israel, these structures are rebuilt and enlarged. We are often told during these conflicts that it is unfair that the people of Gaza have no air raid shelters. But in Gaza, the shelters are for the bombs — not the people.
Just as much has been spent on building an equally vast network of tunnels aimed at burrowing under the Israeli border. The purpose of this was to facilitate murder and kidnapping raids into the Jewish state, as we saw during the Israel-Hamas war in 2014. Since then, even more terror tunnels have been built, and Israel has been forced to build an underground barrier to prevent this tactic from succeeding.
If the focus of Palestinian nationalism had been on state-building and allowing the economy and vital services to thrive, the people of Gaza wouldn’t be in this fix. Had even part of the money spent on waging war against Israel been spent on infrastructure, Gaza would be much better off.
That’s why the people of Gaza and their rulers need to look in the mirror when they talk about their plight. Blaming Israel, Egypt, or the indifference of the world for their situation ignores the fact that the cash crunch and grinding poverty of many Gazans are the inevitable result of their own choices. At every point in the last century, the Palestinians have chosen war instead of peace. They prioritize a war whose goal remains Israel’s destruction over building a state that could live in peace alongside the Jews.
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have some sympathy for them, or that efforts to ameliorate their plight shouldn’t be undertaken. But those who wish to help must — as the US is belatedly doing — demand that the Palestinians stop spending money on terror. Until they do, philanthropic intentions won’t do a thing to change the situation.
Above, a toy shop and shopping mall in Gaza, as shown on Al-Jazeera but not on the BBC or CNN.
Unlike those typically seen in European and American media reports from Gaza, in the Al-Jazeera video, almost no Palestinian interviewed even mentions Israel. Instead, they point primarily to the internal Palestinian political rift between Hamas and Fatah as being their main concern in terms of their businesses thriving. Israel barely gets a look in.
Meanwhile, as I point out in my article below, if the situation in Gaza is as bad as many Western journalists and diplomats claim, then why is Gaza’s life expectancy (74.2 years) now five years higher than the world average?
It is higher than, for example, neighbouring Egypt (73 years), and almost on the same level as wealthy Saudi Arabia -- and life expectancy is higher for men in Gaza than in some parts of Britain.
-- Tom Gross
The good news about Gaza you will hear on Al Jazeera but not the BBC
By Tom Gross, The Spectator (London), February 9, 2018
Donald Trump’s election as US president has meant the whole notion of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ is now very much part of a wider conversation. But for decades before the Trump era, more honest or open-minded journalists were aware that some of their colleagues often didn’t tell the whole truth about all kinds of matters, or cherry-picked what they reported. And perhaps no subject has been so misreported as the Palestinian issue.
Western media has often focused on this issue to the detriment of many other conflicts or independence movements throughout the world. The BBC, in particular, has devoted an inordinate amount of its budget and staff to covering the West Bank and Gaza in thousands of reports over the years. But you would be hard pressed to learn from the BBC’s coverage that, despite many difficulties, Gaza’s economy is also thriving in all kinds of ways.
To get a glimpse of that you would have to turn instead to this recent Al-Jazeera report from Gaza, showing footage of the bustling, well-stocked glitzy shopping malls, the impressive children’s water park (at 5.25 in the video), the fancy restaurants, the nice hotels, the crowded food markets, the toy shops brimming with the latest plush toys (at 8.39 in the video). (This video was translated into English by the excellent Middle East Media Research Institute ).
The West Bank also has good quality shopping malls and other prosperous aspects to it. And while, of course, there are also many poor people in Gaza – just as there are poor people in London, New York, Washington, Paris and Tel Aviv – this prosperity among Palestinians is not just for the wealthy. Much of the population enjoys the benefits of it in one way or other. None of this is new. I have written about it several times before, for example, here in 2009 for the Wall Street Journal.
Occasionally, other journalists have too. Peter Hitchens, writing from Gaza for the Mail on Sunday, calls it ‘the world’s most misrepresented location’ and talks of ‘enjoying a rather good café latte in an elegant beachfront café’ and visiting a ‘sparkling new Gaza Mall, and ... eat(ing) an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant’.
Hitchens adds, in reference to the oft stated claim that Gaza is under siege: ‘Can anyone think of a siege in human history, from Syracuse to Leningrad, where the shops of the besieged city have been full of Snickers bars and Chinese motorbikes, and where European Union and other foreign aid projects pour streams of cash (often yours) into the pockets of thousands?’
But the BBC (which remember is under a legal duty through its charter to be impartial) and most other mainstream media don’t show you any of this other side of Palestinian life. And unlike those typically seen in European and American media dispatches from Gaza, in the Al-Jazeera video, almost no Palestinian interviewed even mentions Israel. Instead, they point primarily to the internal Palestinian political rift between Hamas and Fatah as being their main concern in terms of their businesses thriving. Israel barely gets a look in. What’s more, contrary to widespread opinion, Al Jazeera also shows some women without headscarves in Gaza, including businesswomen.
I am not alone in thinking the BBC is not objective in its coverage. Even Lord Grade, the corporation’s former chairman, has accused the corporation of bias against Israel and said the BBC failed to give viewers ‘the wider context’ about the Palestinians.
This is not true of all BBC output: BBC Arabic will (like other Arabic language media) sometimes report on Gaza’s more prosperous side (see for example, this BBC Arabic report on restaurants in Gaza), in a way that most Western media (including the BBC in English) will not.
Yet many Western journalists (and some diplomats) seem bent on painting a distorted picture of everyday life in Gaza, in what can only be seen as an attempt to portray Israel as some kind of monster-oppressor. (With Israel demonised in this way, no wonder anti-Semitic feelings in Britain are now running at an all-time high).
If the situation in Gaza is as bad as many Western journalists and diplomats claim, then why is Gaza’s life expectancy (74.2 years) now five years higher than the world average? I don’t recall any Western reporter mentioning that life expectancy there is higher than, for example, in neighbouring Egypt (73 years). Indeed, life expectancy in Gaza is almost on the same level as wealthy Saudi Arabia, and higher for men than in some parts of Glasgow.
In recent years, it has been difficult to escape reports of the dire situation in Gaza; former US president and Nobel peace prize laureate Jimmy Carter, for example, told us that ‘the people in Gaza ... are literally starving’. Only three weeks ago, the lead front page story of the international edition of the New York Times contained further warnings about the risk of starvation. Meanwhile, Qatar’s own Al Jazeera is broadcasting analysis of the thriving consumer sector in Gaza’s economy, complete with restaurant owners discussing the expansion of their business to keep up with demand, and shots of plentiful fruit and vegetable markets.
It goes without saying that Israeli misdeeds (like Palestinian ones) should be fully reported on. But not in a way that is so out of context as to lead to a misguided view of the situation. Unfortunately, this is all too often the case, and has, in turn, resulted in bad-policy making among governments in recent years.
More could and should be done to develop Gaza economically. Indeed, last week the Israeli government laid out a plan to help assist in building infrastructure relating to desalination, electricity and natural gas for Gaza. Gaza also has considerable political problems, perhaps less so these days in relation to Israel (Israel withdrew all its troops and settlers from Gaza over a decade ago) and more because of the poor level of governance by Hamas and the intense Hamas-Fatah rivalry. But Gazans are hardly the worst off people in the world. Elsewhere in the Middle East, for example in Yemen, millions of people really are at risk of starvation. So why should the US (or European) taxpayer continue to give Gaza quite so much money to the detriment of other people around the world, including America’s own poor?
At a time when the Trump presidency is finally planning to scale back on the lavish, largely unaccountable US funding of the Palestinians – money which has, in part, been diverted to line the pockets of corrupt politicians, or promote and pay for terrorism – it would be a mistake for European governments (as they are promising) automatically to step in and give more money to the Palestinian Authority. Instead, they should join Trump’s efforts to make this aid conditional on the Palestinian leadership first agreeing to enter peace talks with Israel, which they have refused to do for almost a decade now. A much needed two-state solution would be easier to achieve if the Western media didn’t distort the situation on the ground.
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Gaza is just like America’s urban zones. It’s always someone else’s fault. There, it’s the Jew’s fault.
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