Gaza’s self-inflicted health crisis shows why peace remains a fantasy - by Evelyn Gordon

Not content with merely refusing to solve the crisis, Hamas is actively making it worse. A major factor in the crisis has been the overload of patients caused by Hamas’s insistence on holding violent mass protests near the Israeli border every week for almost a year now.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
13 February '19..

Gaza’s health system is on the verge of collapse, Israeli defense officials warned last week. Their report echoed an international aid agency’s findings that Gaza hospitals are severely short of doctors, especially specialists, and lack 60 percent of necessary medications, including basics like painkillers and antibiotics. Entire hospital departments have closed due to the inability to offer treatment, and patients with cancer, diabetes or renal failure are simply being sent home.

You might think this situation would prompt at least one of the Palestinians’ two rival governments to take action. But you’d be wrong.

The Palestinian Authority, which repeatedly proclaims itself the sole legitimate government of both the West Bank and Gaza and is recognized as such internationally, receives billions in international aid to provide for humanitarian needs in both places. It ostensibly budgets 150 million shekels a year ($41.3 million) for medical supplies for Gaza. But it hasn’t paid this money in months.

Yet this same P.A. has no trouble finding $330 million a year to pay salaries to jailed terrorists. Evidently, paying terrorists is more important to it than its people’s health.

Nevertheless, the P.A.’s behavior pales beside that of Gaza’s real governing authority, Hamas. Two weeks ago, Hamas discussed the humanitarian problem with foreign officials, who then presented its ideas to Israeli officials. The organization proposed three possible scenarios, Haaretz reported. But none of them involved Hamas lifting a finger to help the people it governs.

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Question: Who is Responsible for the Harsh Humanitarian Situation in Gaza? - by Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi

The Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah blames Hamas for controlling the Gaza Strip and exploiting its resources for its own private ends and abusing Palestinian residents, while taking advantage of their difficult situation.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
14 June '18..
Link: http://jcpa.org/who-is-responsible-for-the-harsh-humanitarian-situation-in-gaza/

Human rights organizations in Israel and around the world repeatedly claim that Israel is still an “occupying power” in the region and responsible for the severe humanitarian crisis there despite Israel’s complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. The Human Rights NGOs claim that being the “occupying power” makes Israel totally responsible for the condition of the Palestinian population in Gaza.

On June 12 and 13, 2018, the struggle between bitter rivals Hamas and the Palestinian Authority flared up in demonstrations against the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, where there was a show of support for Gaza and Hamas. The demonstrators called for the lifting of the PA’s sanctions on Gaza. These demonstrations expose the reality in the Gaza Strip, as reflected in the position of the Palestinian Authority itself.



Demonstrations in Ramallah June 13, 2018, demanding cancelation of the PA’s sanctions on Gaza.

The List of Charges against Hamas

In an official notice at the end of its weekly meeting on June 12, 2018, the Palestinian government, led by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, accused Hamas of unlawfully seizing control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, imposing its rule upon the residents, exploiting existing resources for its private interests, and abusing the Palestinian people while taking advantage of their difficult situation.

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.

NY Times Again Errs on Cause of Gaza Water and Medicine Shortages - by Gilead Ini

...It is clearly incorrect to attribute shortages of medicine and water to a naval blockade by Israel and Egypt and other restrictions. CAMERA has called on the New York Times to set the record straight with a correction informing readers that shortages of medicine and water are primarily a result of decisions by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and years of overpumping from Gaza's aquifer, respectively.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA Media Analysis..
15 March '18..
Link: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=3880

A March 12 story in the New York Times attributes a shortage of medicine and water in the Gaza Strip to "a blockade by Israel and Egypt," even though Israel's security restrictions do not prevent medicine and water from entering the Strip, and are not responsible for the shortages. Instead, shortages of medicine are a direct result of political decisions by the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank government, and water shortages stem from the overpumping of water from the aquifer under the crowded Gaza Strip.

The piece, "The Mideast Plan Is Nearly Ready. Will either Side Read It?" by Mark Landler, refers to Gaza as a territory that "has been racked by shortages of medicine and water after years of a blockade by Israel and Egypt." Of course, the laying out of a sequence in this way — x happened after years of y — will be taken to indicate a direct, causal relationship between the two. (A serious newspaper wouldn't assert that "schools shut down after days of heavy rain," for example, if the shutdown was actually due to a teacher strike.)

Medicine

As Amira Hass indicated last month in Haaretz, Mahmoud Abbas's government is responsible for a scarcity of medicine in the Gaza Strip. "The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority government is responsible for the purchase of medicaments, but fails to send them regularly to Gaza," said Hass, a strident critic of Israel, in a Feb. 8 story.

She continued, "Some argue that the shortages are politically motivated, constituting part of the pressure the PA applies on Hamas. The question of why Hamas spends money on rearmament and on electricity for mosques and not on public health is being asked, but not openly."

The latter point was echoed by the New York Times itself in a Feb. 14 editorial about suffering in the Gaza Strip. Though the editorial, as most Times editorials on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, did not spare Israel, the piece acknowledged that in the Gaza Strip "Money that should have gone to hospitals and medicine has been spent on futile confrontation with Israel and digging tunnels…."

BBC News ignores Gaza humanitarian conference - by Hadar Sela

...Remarkably, the BBC did not find that meeting – or the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to participate in it – at all newsworthy.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
15 March '18..

For over ten years the BBC has been reporting on “Gaza’s humanitarian crisis” and for over five years it has been telling its audiences that the Gaza Strip will soon become “unlivable”.

BBC audiences would therefore have expected to see some coverage of a meeting designed to address the topic of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip that included representatives from eight Middle East countries.

In a March 8th op-ed in the Washington Post the US special representative Jason Greenblatt wrote:

“In response to the burgeoning humanitarian situation in Gaza, key countries and stakeholders are preparing to act: There was a meeting in Cairo on Thursday, and there will be a brainstorming session at the White House next week to find real solutions to the problems that Hamas has caused. […]

The humanitarian disaster caused by Hamas’s exploitation of the Palestinians of Gaza demands that we focus immediately on basics such as power, sanitation and drinking water. Gaza is not without resources, however, and has significant opportunities to build prosperous energy sectors in natural gas and solar. Our Gaza conference in Washington will focus on ideas for how to develop, over time, a viable economy in Gaza.”

Two days later the Palestinian Authority announced that it would not attend that conference in Washington.

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Gazans held hostage by a terrorist organization that has brought them to the edge of the abyss - by Nadav Shragai

...As Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hamad described it, "Death for the Palestinian people has become an industry in which women and everyone on this earth excel. The elderly, the jihad warriors, the children excel in this. … We aspire to death as you aspire to life." It was a lie then, just as it is a lie now. Most people in Gaza aspire to life. 

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
05 March '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/gaza-held-hostage/

We need to talk about the Gaza Strip. The state of distress there is real, the result of undrinkable water, a mere four hours of electricity a day, growing morbidity and unemployment, and a health care system on the verge of collapse. Poverty is on the rise and tens of thousands of people have been imprisoned for financial debts. Desperation is palpable as more and more Gazans commit suicide or illegally cross into Israel for free meals in prison.

We need to talk about Gaza so that this powder keg does not explode in our faces, but also to jog our terribly short memories and end the self-flagellation that permeates the discourse on Gaza and makes it appear as if the poison is homegrown and the burden is on our shoulders.

Let us go back to 2009, when then-Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal spoke these formative words immediately after Operation Cast Lead: "Outwardly, the visible image in Gaza is one of talk of peace and construction, but the hidden image is that most of the money and the efforts are directed to military preparations. … We are working for the resistance."

Almost a decade has passed, and what is transpiring in Gaza is no longer hidden from view. Hamas' strategic priorities remain the same: the sacrifice of the population's needs in favor of building up the military, including diverting funds and resources donated by the international community for the rehabilitation of Gaza to terrorist efforts instead.

The NY Times is Puzzled: Who’s Responsible for the Mess in Gaza? - by Liel Leibovitz

Experts see no way to alleviate the economic crisis. Except, you know, not spending billions of dollars on trying to murder Jews.

Liel Leibovitz..
Tabletmag.com..
13 February '18..

This past Sunday, The New York Times treated its readers to another sad story straight out of Gaza. Here’s a representative sample: “’We are dead, but we have breath,’ said Zakia Abu Ajwa, 57, who now cooks greens normally fed to donkeys for her three small grandchildren.”

How to account for such misery? The Paper of Record is on it: Citing Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group and other “Gaza experts,” the Times grimly found that “Hamas itself has few ways to alleviate the crisis.”

Now, I’m no Gaza expert myself, but sad stories of starved children break my heart, so I grabbed the nearest napkin and did some math. Which, mind you, is not easy, because Hamas, like every self-respecting terrorist organization, takes care to hide its assets well.

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Actually, Gaza needs to look in the mirror - by Jonathan S. Tobin

If the people of Gaza are suffering, blame the leaders and the terror groups they support for spending on weapons and tunnels, not on infrastructure and building an economy.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
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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Gaza’s Latest Sampling in Self-Inflicted Misery - by Evelyn Gordon

...Meanwhile, much of the world will doubtless continue to blame Israel for Gaza’s woes. That will make many self-described humanitarians feel good about themselves, but it will do absolutely nothing to ease Gaza’s misery.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
29 November '17..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/gaza-latest-lesson-self-inflicted-misery/

Observing developments since Hamas and Fatah signed their latest reconciliation deal in October is an object lesson in just how much of the Palestinians’ misery is self-inflicted–or to be more precise, inflicted by their two rival governments.

The first thing that happened after implementation of the deal in early November was that prices of merchandise imported to Gaza plummeted by up to 25 percent. Having your money go 25 percent further is an obvious boon to anyone, but especially for impoverished Gazans. Prices fell because, for the first time in a decade, Gazans weren’t paying taxes to two different governments–the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza–but only to one. As part of the reconciliation deal, Hamas handed control of Gaza’s borders to the PA and dismantled the tax collection checkpoints it had set up at the border crossings.

This long-overdue relief didn’t last long. Earlier this month, I pointed out that, since Hamas would remain the dominant military power in Gaza even after the deal was implemented, it wasn’t clear how anyone could stop it from extorting taxes again once it had gotten what it wanted from the deal. I overestimated Hamas’s patience. Though the PA has yet to fulfill most of its promises to Hamas, the latter has already resumed collecting taxes.

True, the checkpoints are gone, but Hamas found another method to seek the rents on which it survives. It simply summoned several hundred businessmen to appear in its offices and demanded payment of tax on everything they have imported to Gaza since the reconciliation was signed. After all, Hamas needs that money; it has rockets and tunnels to build. So who cares that Gazans will once again be paying inflated prices they can ill afford?

The reconciliation was also supposed to bring another benefit: the reopening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which has been closed almost continuously for the last four years. Since Israel allows only limited traffic from Gaza through its territory, Rafah’s closure has meant that leaving Gaza is virtually impossible for most Palestinians.

Israel and Egypt have restricted traffic from Gaza for the same reason: Hamas’s incessant efforts to undermine both countries’ security. In Egypt’s case, Hamas has cooperated enthusiastically with Islamic State’s affiliate in Sinai, providing money, weapons, training, medical care and refuge in Gaza for terrorists fleeing Egyptian security forces. An open border would simply have made it easier for Hamas to supply all these services, as Israel can attest. Israel allows thousands of Palestinians to enter its territory from Gaza every month for business, medical care or transit to another country, and Hamas has exploited that traffic to smuggle everything from cash to explosives.

Surprise? Gaza’s electricity crisis continues but BBC reporting does not - by Hadar Sela

...Remarkably though, the BBC now seems to have lost interest in the subject of the plight of Gaza residents struggling to make do with a few hours of electricity a day – despite having extensively covered that story for six months.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
27 November '17..

When the long-running electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip was exacerbated by the Palestinian Authority’s decision to cut payments for electricity supplied to the territory in April of this year, BBC audiences saw coverage of that topic (albeit often lacking accurate background and context) on a variety of BBC platforms.

After Hamas and Fatah announced their latest ‘reconciliation’ in mid-September, BBC coverage of the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip suddenly waned and no further reporting on the topic has since appeared.

However, if BBC audiences perhaps assumed that reason for that dramatic drop in coverage is that the Hamas-Fatah ‘unity deal’ (which was reported profusely and enthusiastically by the BBC) has solved the long-standing crisis, they would be mistaken...

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BBC World Service ‘big prison’ framing of Gaza Strip misleads audiences (part two) by Hadar Sela

...So as we see, in this very long item the BBC World Service promoted a carefully framed picture of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip which once again failed to adequately clarify its background. While excluding Hamas terrorism from audience view, the item did however steer listeners towards the erroneous belief that the crisis involving electricity, water, medical and sewage has some connection to the blockade imposed by Israel, while completely ignoring the topic of why that measure is necessary.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
06 September '17..

In part one of this post we discussed the first part of an item about the Gaza Strip aired in the September 3rd edition of the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Weekend‘ which ended with presenter Paul Henley saying:

Henley: “Najla – a mother of two young children with impeccable English who lives in Gaza. And she paints a grim picture of a place to live, of a quality of life, Stewart.”

Studio guest Stewart Purvis for some reason responded by bringing up an unrelated BBC linked story and misleading listeners with regard to Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 during which all the communities in – rather than “around” – Gaza were of course evacuated. [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]

Purvis: “Yes; very, very depressing to listen to and it’s actually about ten years since I was last in Gaza visiting the BBC bureau there and I came away pessimistic and I suppose my pessimism was partly confirmed when a few months later the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was taken hostage, if you remember, and happily was later released. But I just…I mean at that point the Israelis had withdrawn from settlements around Gaza and there was some sense of momentum. But that momentum seems to have completely disappeared and there is really so little signs of anything positive happening almost on any front.”

While one might have expected the discussion to turn at that point to relevant topics such as the 2007 violent Hamas take-over of the Gaza Strip, the terror organisation’s subsequent escalation of attacks on Israeli civilians and its Israel erasing agenda or the decade-long rift between Hamas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, instead Henley turned to his other guest, Jane Kinninmont, with a topic much less helpful to audience understanding of the topic of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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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....

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Keep this tunnel in mind when the "hopelessness of life" in Gaza gets cycled back into the news again

...Naturally, the people from OCHA maintain a long-standing UN tradition of seeing no evil, hearing no evil and reporting no evil even as massive attack-tunnel construction - and cement pilfering by Hamas officials - goes on month after month right under their noses.

Truckloads of cement shipped to Gaza via
Israel, 25 Nov. 2014 [Image Source: Getty]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
18 April '16..

Why are so many Gazan Palestinian Arabs still homeless? Because that's what Hamas wants, and what Hamas wants, Hamas - with its total, iron-fisted control of resources inside the Gaza Strip - gets.

This morning (Monday), Israeli officials revealed that, about ten days ago, the IDF

had found a concrete-lined tunnel stretching hundreds of meters from Gaza into Israel, reminiscent of dozens of tunnels destroyed by the army during a 50-day war with Hamas-led fighters in 2014 launched in part to thwart the underground passages. Speaking to reporters in his Jerusalem office, Netanyahu warned Hamas against trying to harm Israeli citizens and vowed that Jerusalem will continue to invest heavily in mechanisms to detect tunnels dug from Gaza into Israel. “The government is investing a fortune in thwarting the threat of tunnels. This is an ongoing effort; it does not end overnight; we are investing in it and will continue to invest steadily and firmly,” he said. [Times of Israel, April 18, 2016]

(And a second tunnel discovery may be on the way.)

For Israelis, this is a major story: concrete proof of where the Islamists of Hamas are focusing efforts; validation for the restrictions imposed lately on cement shipments into Gaza; a taste of what might be around the corner this summer; and a sign that the exceptionally thorny matter of how you detect an enemy's attack-tunnels might have a technological solution.

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Gaza and what manipulative, highly-politicized foreign aid can buy - by Arnold Roth

...Understanding why so much misery goes on for so long in Gaza despite the phenomenal sums of money that have been channeled into countless relief efforts, special funds and emergency humanitarian appeals, remains Mission Almost-Impossible. Chronic distortion of facts is an essential part of the whole sad and endless process.

The red carpet is constantly out for visitors to Shujaiyeh 
neighborhood, Gaza City. This non-Photoshopped photo is from nearly
a year after the destruction [Photo Credit: Dan Cohenvia 972Blog]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
30 December '15..

Gazan suffering. It's a vastly potent issue that drives much of the passion on the Palestinian Arab side.

With bitter wintery weather setting in fast, why are so many Gazan Palestinian Arabs still waiting for homes destroyed in 2014's summer battle with Israel to be reinstated and/or replaced?

Some digging around by reporters for the Wall Street Journal today offers surprising insights: "Politics Slows Rebuilding in War-Ravaged Gaza Strip | Political differences among Gulf Arab states play large role in who gets aid" [Rory Jones and Abubakr Bashir | Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2015]

It frames the question in terms of the very different fates experienced by a pair of Gazan brothers and their two adjoining residences. They are Abdelraziq Harara, 53, and and Jihad Harara, 65, two Palestinian Arab everyman-like unknowns who happen to have lost their neighboring Gaza homes in the storm of war that swept over them in July 2014. That's when the densely-populated Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City became the center of fierce fighting involving the terrorists of the rocket-rich Hamas regime and the IDF. More than 140 Hamas rockets had been fired in the general direction of Israel from the Harara brothers' neighborhood in the 12 days commencing July 8, some of them reaching well into Israel's centers of population in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and .Israel's patience got stretched thinner and thinner. Then it ended. At that point, Israel took some extraordinary preliminary measures before commencing a much-needed counter-offensive. Starting on July 16, 2014, and with the intention of minimizing the loss of civilian lives,

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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 as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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The cheque for Gaza is in the mail, or whatever

...Not for the first time, it's evident that the death and mayhem that results from Islamist hatred and jihad has cash at its heart. And what of the rights, the interests, the well-being of the Gazans? We estimate they rank about as high up the ladder of Arab concern as the safety and security of the Syrians, the Iraqis and the Libyans and the countries they lived in until mind-numbingly vicious Arab-on-Arab savagery descended upon them.

The headline from Aljazeera's coverage of 
the October 2014 donor conference in
Cairo posed a question to which we
now have the answer [Image Source]

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
27 May '15..

Money, who has it and who does not, the corruption that accompanies it, and the frequent silliness of those providing it, plays a key role in the terrorism that has long been at the heart of the Arab/Israel conflict.

Exactly half a year ago, we wrote ["23-Nov-14: Gaza's wealth and where it is - and is not - going"] that Hamas had emerged as the world's second wealthiest terror organization; its annual income is on the order of a billion US dollars.

Along with the wealth controlled by the organization itself, its kleptocratic, blood-stained leadership [details here: "27-Jul-14: Gaza's death toll keeps rising but for Hamas insiders it's all worth it"] has made out like thieves - in particular Mousa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Mashaal who despite their lowly origins are generally reckoned today to be personal billionaires. As we said last November, invoking one of the world's wealthiest despots, Arafat would have admired their cynical brazenness.

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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 as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter, 
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Exactly why does Israel supply Gaza with electricity and cement?

"The notion that a Belligerent Party in wartime is duty bound to supply electricity and fuel to its enemy is plainly absurd.”

Dr. Emmanuel Navon..
i24news.com..
23 July '14..

When my children ask me why Israel supplies Hamas with the cement and electricity used to build tunnels for the storage of rockets and the kidnapping of Israelis, I refer them to an unforgettable scene from the movie Ice Age 4. In it, terrified prehistoric animals flee the apocalypse but two of them keep laughing. “Doesn’t it weigh on you?” asks a puzzled co-traveler, “that the world might be ending?” Trying to give a serious answer, the two merry fellows reveal their secret: “We are very, very stupid.”

Is Israel just being stupid, or does it have a legal obligation to supply the Gaza Strip with cement and electricity? As explained by Prof. Avi Bell from Bar-Ilan University in a recent paper published by the Kohelet Policy Forum, a think-tank, Israel is under no legal obligation to provide Gaza with electricity.

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states, inter alia, that the contracting parties shall allow the free passage of food, clothing and medicine to children under 15 and to pregnant women (the article mentions neither electricity nor cement). The Gaza Strip is not a contracting party to that Convention, nor is it occupied by Israel. Israel, for its part, is not a party to the First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1977, whose Article 70 imposes wider duties upon belligerents (though it doesn’t mention electricity and cement, either). Even if these articles were to apply to the conflict between Israel and Gaza, Israel would still be under no obligation to supply electricity to Gaza because the parties are required “to allow the free passage” of goods (Article 23) and to “allow and facilitate” their “rapid and unimpeded passage” (Article 70) - but not to supply them.

On the specific issue of electricity, targeting electric plants during wartime is a widespread and accepted practice. How can a country be allowed to destroy its enemy’s electric supply but be required to guarantee that supply? This is why Prof. Yoram Dinstein, a renowned expert on international law and on the laws of war, writes in his book "The Law of Belligerent Occupation:"

"The notion that a Belligerent Party in wartime is duty bound to supply electricity and fuel to its enemy is plainly absurd.”

Imagine! Israel wanted to prevent the import of construction materials that could be used for military purposes

...Rather than a place where wicked Israelis are oppressing trapped Palestinians, Gaza is a terrorist enclave whose only export is violence. That it is an independent Palestinian state in all but name is a reminder of what Israel can expect should it ever withdraw all of its forces from the West Bank as it did from Gaza in 2005. The rest of the world needs to draw similar conclusions.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
13 October '13..

Though it has long been debunked as outrageous propaganda, much of the international community still tends to speak of the “humanitarian crisis” Gaza. Even when its southern communities were being battered on a daily basis by terrorist missiles, Israel never cut off the flow of food or medicine to the Hamas-ruled enclave. But it did seek to enforce the blockade of the terror statelet in order to prevent the import of construction materials that could be used for military purposes. Due to international pressure, Israel relaxed that blockade to allow concrete into the strip that we were told was necessary for the rebuilding of structures destroyed during the fighting with Hamas. Like many other Israeli stands on security issues, most media outlets treated their complaints about letting supplies into Gaza as merely as mean-spirited rather than rooted in a genuine peril.

But those who assumed that the concrete was being used to help the people of Gaza got a wakeup call today when the Israelis revealed the discovery of a tunnel they had discovered that Hamas digging under the border with the Jewish state. The structure was 18 meters deep and 1,700 meters long (including 300 that were underneath Israeli territory. Built with 500 tons of cement that had been allowed into Gaza for civilian uses, the purpose of the tunnel was clear: provide easy access into Israeli territory for terrorists to kill and/or kidnap Israelis. So will everyone who opposed Israel’s blockade of Gaza now realize they were wrong? Don’t bet on it.

Egypt Cracks Down on Gaza. Where's the Coverage? Where's the Flotillas?

When Israel tries to protect its citizens from thousands of rockets, missiles and terrorist attacks from Gaza, there’s a hue and cry, outrage and indignation. When Egypt responds to terrorism in the Sinai… Where are the protests? Where are the flotillas? And for heaven’s sake, where’s the coverage?

SC..
CAMERA Snapshots..
17 September '13..

Remember when Gaza was an “open air prison,” as the Huffington Post called it? Remember when the tunnels, smuggling terrorists and weaponry in and out of the Strip, were “a legitimate trade and passenger route, one that is necessary for survival,” according to The New York Times?

That was when Israel was trucking in tons of goods and the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza was open.

Well, Israel is still trucking food, medicine, clothing, construction materials and other supplies into Gaza. Last week, September 8-14, Israel sent 1,428 trucks carrying 38,545 tons of goods into the Palestinian enclave. So what’s changed? Egypt is cracking down on Gaza, that’s what.

Then how come you don’t hear much about the suffering of Gaza residents? Because it can’t be blamed on Israel.

IRIN, the Integrated Regional Information Networks, describes itself as an editorially independent, non-profit project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). On September 17, IRIN reported:

Residents and officials in Gaza say the repeated closures of the border crossing into Egypt, a key lifeline for Palestinians in the occupied territories, is destroying livelihoods, harming health and lowering basic living conditions.

The border crossing at Rafah has now been closed for seven consecutive days - the second sustained closure in the past few weeks - following instability in the Sinai region on the Egyptian side of the border.
A reopening is promised tomorrow, Wednesday, but the closures, reduced operating hours and the crackdown on smuggling tunnels are squeezing the country’s most important supply line.

[…]

The closures, along with the large-scale destruction of smuggling tunnels that were a major supply route into Gaza, are leading to shortages and higher prices for basic goods.

OCHA estimates that fewer than 10 tunnels are operational, down from 50 in previous weeks and 300 before June [when demonstrations erupted in Egypt, culminating in the removal of President Mohamed Morsi].

So, Egypt –which is not trucking supplies into Gaza– closes the Rafah crossing and shuts down the smuggling tunnels that are “necessary for survival”. Naturally you’ve read about this in The New York Times and the Huffington Post. No?

Could Gaza get lots more goods through Israel? Yes, but they choose not to

People and businesses in Gaza don't need that many imports from Egypt - but Hamas does.

Elder of Ziyon..
16 August '13..

This week I had an email conversation with the COGAT Gaza spokeswoman about the precise process of how goods get transferred into Gaza.

Here is how it works. (These are mostly COGAT's words, I edited them from multiple emails):

When a Gaza businessman wants to order goods from Israel privately, his first stop would be at the PA offices. There, there's a committee that is in charge of integrating all the requests and putting them in order, the Civil Committee of the PA, according to the format that is familiar to both sides. After that, it is that committee's job to pass a list of trucks that are to cross the next day. The head of the civil committee is in direct contact with the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) and they work with him closely every day, through phone calls and meetings, in order to make the work process efficient. The PA committee is the CLA's POC, but it is not the one ordering the goods.

When the lists are received at the Gaza CLA, they get to the approval process, and once they are approved they are passed to the CLA's representatives at Kerem Shalom, who are the first to receive the truck drivers the next morning.

As of today, the capacity of Kerem Shalom is 400 trucks per day. Due to the number of requests from the PA Civil Committee the number of trucks crossing per day never reaches 400. It can go up to 300 trucks on a good day.

Of course, if the Palestinian side would like to add more trucks to cross at Kerem Shalom, they're free to do so. The Israeli side will make its arrangements to meet the demands.

Unfortunately, many trucks are a no show at the crossing, for Palestinian personal matters. The trucks are coordinated, and are on the list, but every day the CLA sees a large number of blank forms for trucks that never crossed. That depends almost entirely on the Palestinians. Should they decide to cancel a truck for whatever reason, the CLA only knows about it at the end of the day, when they sum up the merchandise that went through. (It appears possible that the Israeli seller might renege sometimes as well, but that doesn't appear to be the normal case.)

The Palestinian businessmen do their coordination with Israeli private companies on their own. They only interact with COGAT (through the PA) when it comes to making sure the goods actually cross.

My comments:

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Recalibrating the "humanitarian crisis in Gaza" meme

Elder of Ziyon
07 August '10

For literally decades, we have been hearing about how Gaza was suffering from a "humanitarian crisis." Back in December 2007, a full year before the Gaza war, I enumerated how this "crisis" had been spoken about since at least 1993!

No one is saying that Gaza is a paradise. However, it not nearly as bad as it has been portrayed, and years of skewed and misleading coverage from NGOs and reporters with an agenda have succeeded in giving the world a very inaccurate picture of Gaza. As a result, Gaza has gotten much more attention, and much more money, than the tens of millions of people who really need it and who really are ignored.

In the wake of bloggers noticing Gaza's gourmet restaurants, spas, luxury hotels, the new mall, water parks and other resorts, the media has finally started to give a more nuanced view of Gaza. In this unintentionally funny piece in Slate, a clueless reporter is shocked that Gaza really isn't like sub-Saharan Africa:

GAZA CITY—Aid officials in Gaza all recite the same statistics: "44 percent unemployment [actually, 34%, we cannot expect a Slate reporter to actually check the facts, can we? -EoZ], 80 percent food-aid dependent, and 60 percent living on less than $2 a day." It sounds like a script they've grown tired of delivering to passing journalists.

After multiple rounds of similar briefings, I'm staring at Kamla Joudah's parlor in Nuseirat refugee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. The warm beige tones of the furniture reflect the heat, and the walls gleam. The frequently cut power is on today, so the fan whirls. Tea and coffee are brought out on a small tray.

Kamla catches me appraising her home. "What are you looking at?" she asks, with some pique.
"Your house," I reply, "It's very nice."

She looks at me quizzically, "This is not Darfur," she snaps. The family members in the room burst out laughing as I blush.

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