Gaza, Under Siege

When then-prime minister of Israel Ariel Sharon convinced his government that a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip would be to Israel's advantage in an obvious demonstration of offering to Palestinians the unobstructed freedom to forge a working infrastructure for a state of their own, the settlers that had made their homes there had to be physically forced to leave. They left the houses they had built, they left the businesses they had put together, they left a land that they loved and believed had biblically been returned to them.

They also left behind some key infrastructure that spoke to the huge success that Israelis in Gaza had made in producing fresh fruits and vegetables in an otherwise-sterile setting that had been left fallow for generations. Jewish philanthropists in a spirit of fellowship and hope for the future donated millions to leave 3,000 greenhouses that were responsible for a lucrative trade in shipping renowned quality foods abroad, in the hope that Gazans would appreciate the gift and use it to initiate an enterprise all their own.

Those greenhouses, after all, had employed over three thousand Palestinians, and it was not unreasonable to imagine that they would be quick to take up the challenge, becoming independently forward-looking and making for themselves a prosperous future whose value could expand as business grew and employed other Gazans. That, for a start; imbuing in them the spirit of enterprise and pride in accomplishment.

That never occurred, as the greenhouses were stripped of constituent parts for use elsewhere, and the greenhouses themselves abandoned, destroyed and left to rot, a reminder of yet another accommodation failure. What the Gaza Strip was left with on the withdrawal of Israeli troops was a condition of chaotic lawlessness, when Palestinians were preyed upon by their own, and tribal enmities reached full throttle. Fatah seemed incapable of restoring order.

When, two years after the Israeli presence was withdrawn, Hamas decided in 2007 to violently overthrow the Fatah presence and take the Strip as their own state-in-waiting, they restored a semblance of order, one that reflected their strict Islamist credentials. And Gaza became a launching pad for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to bombard Israel with their makeshift rockets. Those rockets improved over time, dependent no longer on their home-made status, but with the importation of increasingly sophisticated missiles from Syria, courtesy of Iran becoming deadlier.

Israel had no option but to impose a blockade for the very specific purpose of restraining Hamas and other terrorist groups from importing missiles and other arms with which to continue attacking Israel. Which has never stopped Hamas from moving building materials and building its weapons arsenal through the use of tunnels. And Israel has aided the Palestinians in a variety of ways; by permitting the trucking in of food and medicines and paying for it themselves. By treating sick Palestinians whom their own medical facilities are ill equipped to handle.

By providing the territory, just as it does the West Bank, with its electricity, gas and water. Even when the Palestinian Authority has amassed a credit default of millions by not paying its bills to the Israeli energy provider. In the current attempt by Israel to halt the barrage of daily rockets into Israel, a field hospital was set up adjacent Gaza to treat as many Palestinians as it can handle, who have suffered injury.  There was never a move by Israel to refuse to allow the exportation of goods from Gaza.

Nor did Israel refuse the importation of goods to Gaza. The gross tonnage of building materials, including cement that was to have been used for building social infrastructure, reflecting the complaints from official governing Hamas that they were short of materials for hospitals, schools  and other required buildings, is now found to have been used to build their incredible underground network of tunnels, including the Hamas underground command centre beneath Gaza City.

Israel had forbidden exports to Israel from Gaza for fear of bombs, weapons and materiel that could impact on security. This is the very same reason that Egypt kept control of the traffic coming out of Gaza and entering Egypt. Hamas is well known to be involved with Salafist Bedouin and al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-allied militias in the Sinai which attack Egyptian police and military.

The sealed borders did not acquire that status out of a wish to deprive Palestinians of freedom and prosperity, but to provide security to the nations and their people abutting the Gaza Strip. Hamas, once popularly seen as a defender of Palestinian rights in the Middle East has become more of a pariah of late in the estimation of most Mideast states who view it in the same earned category of the virally-sinister, violent Islamists like ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates who threaten the stability of the geography.

With the sole exception of Iran, Turkey and Qatar, Hamas is recognized in the Middle East as a devotee of terror, in much of the international community as a terrorist state, and there is no love lost any longer between it and Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League generally. Gazans are suffering their 'prison' complex directly through Hamas's supreme dedication to destroying the State of Israel, deliberately placing the population in the line of fire, for popular effect.

They reap what Hamas has sown.