Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
07 December '10
The Gaza Strip is doing really well economically and the Hamas regime seems set to go on forever. It's raking in the aid money but every dollar and every project is shaped to ensure that Hamas remains in power, can return to violence in future and...wreck everything again.
"There are a slew of products here, and beautiful restaurants. Is this the Gaza we have been hearing about?" asked a Sudanese official arriving there, as quoted by the Palestinian news agency Maan. "Where is the siege? I don't see it in Gaza. I wish Sudan's residents could live under the conditions of the Gazan siege."
There is massive construction, including rebuilding what was destroyed in the war Hamas began against Israel two years ago. If Hamas were a normal government this would all be great. By normal government I mean even a normal dictatorship. Such a regime would say:
We’re raising living standards, we’re increasing our popularity. Why should we be so foolish as to go to war against a stronger neighbor and see all of this destroyed again?
But, of course, Hamas is not a normal ruling group. It believes that the Creator of the Universe is on its side and wants it to fight. Hamas revels in martyrdom. It thinks total victory and the killing of all Israeli Jews is achievable. And it knows that the rest of the world won’t let it be fully defeated and thrown out of power no matter how many rockets, martyrs, and terrorist groups it sends into Israel.
As a dictatorial regime intending to control everything and stay in power forever, Hamas is locking the Gaza population into its patronage system, a sort of Islamist welfare state, so that people wouldn’t dare break with their rulers.
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