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The Wasteland

There’s a pertinent backstory to the situation in Gaza. In the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Fifteen years later, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. In 2000, in conjunction with negotiations brokered by the USA, the Palestinians began a lobbying effort to get Israel to relinquish control of Gaza. “Oh,” claimed the Palestinians in Gaza, “if only the yoke of Israeli oppression is lifted from our necks, we shall make of Gaza a Garden of Eden.” The Israelis left Gaza in 2005, bodily dragging protesting settlers back across the border.

Remember that the Gaza Strip lies alongside the Mediterranean Sea, a very beautiful, idyllic location for beach resorts. Members of the Palestinian diaspora in the USA envisioned creating of Gaza their very own Palestinian resort city with luxury hotels, pristine beaches, swimming pools and casinos. A splendid competitor to Monte Carlo, the gambling alone could finance the whole shebang. But these visionaries and dreamers hadn’t reckoned with their brothers and sisters on-site in Gaza.

As soon as the Israelis withdrew, the very first thing the Gazans did was to angrily dynamite the greenhouses, generators, guard barracks, police stations and any other infrastructure left behind by the Israelis. “We’ll show you!” they shouted across the border.

Next they elected a pious religious leadership who issued edicts based on the Holy Quran: Unmarried men and women cannot bathe together, so hotel swimming pools and pristine beaches are forbidden. Dancing, drinking and socializing between unmarried men and women is strictly forbidden. Gambling is a grave sin, absolutely forbidden and punishable by banishment!  

There was a family Tivoli down by the beach, with a Ferris Wheel, a Merry-Go-Round, some other rides for kids. “Certainly you cannot forbid us the pleasure of a family afternoon outing between a man, his wife and their children!” demanded less pious Gazans. With great reluctance and a lot of grumbling, the clerics agreed not to dynamite the Tivoli. They didn’t. Instead, one night, men wearing black hoods showed up with wire cutters, kerosene, dynamite and fuses. Breaking down the gate, they blew up the Tivoli.

A Palestinian-American arrived. Informed of these previous goings-on, he applied very carefully for a permit to build a water park. A simple green park with sprinklers, maybe a water slide. All very low-key. A high wall down the middle with identical facilities, including bathhouses, on both sides, one side for women, one side for men. Strict decorum. Financed by the rich, returning Palestinian out of his own pocket. So, of course, the authorities said “yes.” There was wiggle room for some baksheesh, and if this project went well, “the American” was willing to build apartment houses with financing from fellow émigrés in the diaspora. And it came to pass that he built the water park! And it was good. After several weeks, the clerics called him to their office and told him, “There are reports of unmarried men and women socializing at the entrance to the water park. Such activity is strictly forbidden by the Quran. We are retracting your permit and destroying this den of iniquity!” End of the water park.

All of this comedy took place in the first few years after emancipation.

The Israelis have a relationship with the Palestinians that has been in existence since before the State of Israel. Israeli technology and Arab labor. Whether in agriculture or industry, factory or street-cleaning, the Israelis have always been willing to hire Arabs and pay them well enough to make it worth their time and effort. This cross-border employment has been a feature of the West Bank and Gaza Strip right up until October 2023. Every morning, Palestinians with authorized employment documents traveled into border towns and agricultural collectives in Israel and put in a full day’s work, returning across the border in the evening with their pay in Israeli shekels, a strong currency with a lot of buying power.

There were still angry, frustrated Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. While the Gazans are wildly emotional in their seething hatred, it is the Palestinians of the West Bank who are most deadly, declaring a First Intifada or Uprising in December 1987 and then a Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005. There were Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli towns and cities, stabbings, drive-by shootings of Israeli soldiers at bus stops and other signs of Palestinian fury. In recent years, the Gazans would arrive at the border fence every Friday afternoon and burn automobile tires, blackening the sky.

For their part, the Israelis tried to solve the Palestinian problem. They elected left-wing politician Ehud Barak as Prime Minister on a party platform that focused on peace with the Palestinians. Barak tried. The Americans tried. In the year 2000 at Camp David, they offered Yasser Arafat land for a State of Palestine, the proverbial two-state solution, brokered by the White House to show good faith. Each day began with a recitation of the previous day’s agreements, each of which Arafat saw as a stepping stone to even further concessions. “We want our land back,” he bleated endlessly and who could blame him? Nothing was ever going to be enough because, after all, Yasser was holding out for the entire State of Palestine as it was in 1946, from Nahariyya in the north to Aqaba in the south, from Tel Aviv by the Mediterranean Sea to Jerusalem and the Jordan River. “If I sign this, when I get back to Ramallah, I am a dead man,” he is reported to have said on the last day, at which point President Clinton had steam coming out of his ears.

“Fuck it!” said the Israelis when Ehud Barak came home empty-handed. Forsaking endless, worthless peace initiatives, the Israelis elected Binyamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud Party as Prime Minister and began expanding settlements into the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Gazans elected Hamas over rival political party Fatah in January 2006. They elected Hamas. Their choice. In June 2007, Hamas took control of the enclave, chasing the last Fatah officials out of Gaza. Remember that the Gazans chose Hamas, a point worth considering when 6,000 of their shock troops breached the border fence on October 7, 2023, raped, burned, beheaded, pillaged and massacred 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped another 240. Not your usual political activity.    

Imagine for a moment how Gaza would look today if all the billions of dollars that Hamas has spent on tunnels and arms had instead been used to facilitate the existence of ordinary people. Decades of lament, “Boo hoo hoo, we have no bread, our children are starving, it’s the fault of the Israelis!” finally have a plausible explanation. The aid money has been used to build the 450 miles of tunnels under Gaza and stockpile the thousands of missiles and weapons in their arsenal.

The Gazans are suffering, their towns and cities flattened. Famine and disease run rampant. They brought it all upon themselves.