Is there any question that Hamas’s rule of the jungle has caused the Strip’s humanitarian crisis? - by Prof. Efraim Karsh

It is not Gaza’s economic malaise that has precipitated Palestinian violence. It is the other way around: the endemic violence has caused the Strip’s humanitarian crisis. So long as Gaza continues to be governed by Hamas’s rule of the jungle, no Palestinian civil society, let alone a viable state, can develop.

The main conference hall of the Islamic
University of Gaza before its destruction
in the conflict between Hamas and Fatah
in 2007, photo via Wikimedia Commons

Prof. Efraim Karsh..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 855..
04 June '18..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/its-not-the-economy-stupid/

No cliché has dominated the discourse on the Gaza situation more than the perception of Palestinian violence as a corollary of the Strip’s dire economic condition. No sooner had Hamas and Israel been locked in yet another armed confrontation over the past weeks than the media, foreign policy experts, and politicians throughout the world urged the immediate rehabilitation of Gaza as panacea to its endemic propensity for violence. Even senior members of the Israel Defense Forces opined that a “nonmilitary process” of humanitarian aid could produce a major change in the Gaza situation.

While there is no denying the argument’s widespread appeal, there is also no way around the fact that it is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. For it is not Gaza’s economic malaise that has precipitated Palestinian violence; rather, it is the endemic violence that has caused the Strip’s humanitarian crisis.

For one thing, countless nations and groups in today’s world endure far harsher socioeconomic or political conditions than the Palestinians, yet none has embraced violence and terrorism against their neighbors with such alacrity and on such a massive scale.

For another thing, there is no causal relationship between economic hardship and mass violence. On the contrary: in the modern world it is not the poor and oppressed who have carried out the worst acts of terrorism and violence, but rather the militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society – be they homegrown terrorist groups in the West or their Middle Eastern counterparts.

Yasser Arafat, for instance, was an engineer, and his fellow arch terrorist George Habash – the pioneer of aircraft hijacking – a physician. Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was a schoolteacher, while his successor, Sayyid Qutb, whose zealous brand of Islam fired generations of terrorists, including the group behind the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, was a literary critic and essayist. The 9/11 terrorists and certainly their multimillionaire paymaster, Osama bin Laden, as well as the terrorists who massacred their British compatriots in July 2005 and those slaughtering their coreligionists in Algeria and Iraq, were not impoverished peasants or workers driven by hopelessness and desperation but educated fanatics motivated by hatred and extreme religious and political ideals.

Unemployment? All Gazans are Equal, But Some Gazans Are More Equal Than Others

...being shut down for five days in any random year makes hiring the son of a Hamas leader, as a corporate insurance policy, a very good investment.

Elder of Ziyon..
30 August '16..





Palestinian media are reporting that Hazem Ismail Haniyeh got a nice job as a manager of the computer department with Gaza's only mobile phone company, Jawwal, the day after he graduated.

He is the son of....

(Continue Reading)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar - Gaza is free of occupation and doing fine economically

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
19 September '12..

Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a devoted terrorist who is often described in the news media as foreign minister in the Ismail Haniyeh Hamas regime in Gaza, is not the kind of person whose opinions we normally choose to quote here. When his views do appear in our posts, it's generally because we feel statements he has made publicly need to be taken into account by people who think they understand Hamas, of which he was a founder, or the Gaza Strip where he lives.

A Palestinian Arab news channel, Maan, based in Bethlehem, ran a major article about him and his views on Saturday under the headline "Zahhar: Gaza more secure than West Bank". (They spell his name differently in Bethlehem.) The ideologically and religiously motivated racists who stand behind those Gaza-bound truck and boat convoys might want to comment on where this dominant Hamas figure got his facts mixed up.

Some direct quotes from Maan:

- "Seven years after Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip, several things have changed both at the political and the economic level... Gaza is free of occupation"

- "Contiguity with the outside world is easier as visitors from all over the world visited the coastal enclave.”

- "The economic situation has improved noticeably and the Gaza Strip became self-reliant in several aspects because lands in former Israeli settlements were planted. “We are self-dependent in several aspects except petroleum and electricity.”

- "The economic conditions in the Gaza Strip are much better than in the West Bank; people in Gaza receive full salaries..."

Ignores Gaza's millionaires, hypes poverty, blames Israel. Who else?

The New York Times

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
11 September '12..

According to reports in the Arab press, a thriving smuggling economy in Gaza has produced no fewer than 600 millionaires. Hundreds of tunnels to Egypt have become bustling export and import conduits -- with the ruling Hamas elite siphoning off millions of dollars from transit taxes. Beach-side hotels and a modern mall have become a testament to the territory's growing wealth -- especially since Israel lifted its blockade for most goods, except those that could be used by terrorists, with whom Gaza is copiously blessed.

Does this mean that the old picture of Gaza as a poverty-stricken hell hole has been completely erased? Not quite. There still are poor Palestinians in the territory, forgotten or exploited by their Hamas rulers.

But that's not quite how the New York Times depicts Gaza in a lengthy article by Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren ('''Forgotten Neighborhood' Underscores the Poverty Of an Isolated Enclave" Sept. 10, page A8).

Rudoren starts with a heart-tugging picture of Gazans who live in homes that have no floors and sit, eat and sleep on the sand. Parents have no money to buy their children school books and proper dress. During Ramadan, families slaughtered a horse and used it for kebabs because they couldn't afford beef or lamb.

Having sketched a picture of utter misery as the template for her story, Rumoren then switches gears and concedes that her lead paragraphs may have been a bit too grim. "There are certainly less-livable slums in Africa, South Asia or in Delhi, or Cairo," she writes. So why not spotlight those places as examples of dire poverty instead of Gaza?

Readers don't have to wait long for the answer. "Some see it as a sure sign that Israeli restrictions make the place a concrete prison," she hypothesizes.

Having blamed Israel -- what else would you expect? -- she softens the blow a bit by acknowledging that Israel may not be entirely to blame. Gaza living standards also may be repressed by "corruption, mismanagement and infighting among Palestinian factions," she adds. But make no mistake, Israel tops the list of likely suspects for Gaza's poverty.

How close to hell is Gaza? Depends whom you want to believe

Image from "Hungry in Gaza, More and More"

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
30 August '12..

Gaza will no longer be “liveable” by 2020 unless urgent action is taken to improve water supply, power, health, and schooling, the United Nations’ most comprehensive report on the Palestinian enclave said on Monday.

That opening sentence is a direct and vebatim quote from a Reuters syndicated report issued two days ago. You can see it in a large number of places on the Web; here's one from Gulf News, an Arab newspaper that gave it considerable prominence.

Many, many news channels are focused on its grim and pessimistic message - one that plays well with the energetically marketed image of Gaza as "the world's largest prison", a "big concentration camp", "stressed, desperate and in poverty". Characterizations like those go hand-in-glove with the shameless apologetics of Hamas and the terrorism-friendly ideologues with whom it travels.

The paragraphs below, by contrast, come from an article written by an unusually authoritative expert on the subject, an Arab. The chances that it will appear in the Gulf News or Reuters or other news channels of global significance are next to none. The writer is Khaled Abu Toameh. We have frequently reprinted here things he has published over the past six years.

Oil on troubled waters: Gaza is out of energy resources and guess who did it?

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
20 July '12..

Courtesy of the excellent Elder of Ziyon blog, here's an insight for those who care to understand the difference between self-serving Palestinian Arab propaganda and the miserable reality that characterizes actual Palestinian Arab lives.

Under the title "Hamas blaming Egypt, PA for restricting fuel delivery", EoZ's blog posting quotes from an article published this past Monday by the Palestinian Ma'an newsagency, based a few kilometers south of here in the town of Bethlehem. Maan writes:

Egyptian authorities have restricted the amount of Qatari fuel entering the Gaza Strip through an Egyptian crossing with Israel, an Egyptian source said Monday. While the Al-Ouja crossing in Egypt's northern Sinai has the capacity for ten trucks of fuel per day, Egypt only permits six trucks to cross, the official said, noting that this amount cannot meet Gaza's energy needs.

Hamas thrives in Gaza's besieged economy

Mai Yaghi
AFP
25 July '10

Posted before Shabbat

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (AFP) – The tranquil lawns of the seaside Garden Resort are a high-end oasis in the impoverished Gaza Strip -- and a new source of income for the Hamas-linked charity that owns it.

The beach club, one of several commercial ventures recently launched by groups and individuals linked to Hamas, illustrates the Islamist movement's growing dominance of an economy crippled by a four-year-old Israeli blockade.

The 1.25 million dollar (one million euro) resort is owned and operated by the Islamic Foundation, a charity established by Hamas's spiritual founder, Ahmed Yassin, that has long provided aid to poor families and orphans.

Some 2,000 people have visited each weekend since the foundation established the club and an adjacent fish farm earlier this year, with most paying the eight dollars per family admission fee and many dining at its restaurant.

"These projects provide a service to citizens in order to relieve the burdens of the (Israeli) occupation and the devastating war," said foundation chairman Abdelrahim Shihab.

"The project encourages economic growth ... But our priority is the citizen and not the investment."

(Read full story)

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