JNS.org..
12 February '18..
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 compact area’s 2 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 if for no other reason than we’ve been hearing variations on this theme for 25 years, 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 the world considers 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.
This is wrong, but not just because Israel hasn’t occupied Gaza since 2005.
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