Looking at Gaza

This week during a conference call that I participated in, Andrew Whitley, Director of UNRWA (The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine) described the situation in Gaza, both humanitarian and political. From a humanitarian perspective the economy in Gaza has completely collapsed. 75% of Gazans are totally reliant on international aid for food, power, water and other necessities of life. The other 25% are primarily government workers who are still being paid. The Fatah government employees are being paid by the Palestinian Authority to stay home and not work. Sewage treatment plants are not functional as a result of power cut offs and lack of spare parts. Sewage runs in the streets and rivers. (For a first hand view, click here) From a political perspective the youth are becoming increasingly radicalized. (50% of Gazans are under 18) Groups sympathetic to Al Qaeda’s agenda of violent political Islam are becoming increasing visible. He believes, if the current state of affairs continues, that Gaza is in danger of becoming a Somalia-like ungovernable area where criminal gangs, warlords and violent radical Islamists flourish. As the violence in Gaza escalates, it appears increasingly unlikely that the state of affairs will change. Although polls show that a majority of Israelis believe that the Israeli government should take Hamas up on their offer of a negotiated cease fire, US/Israel feels the need to inflict a political defeat on Hamas. The standoff between Hezbollah and the IDF during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war and the Hamas success in breaking down the Gaza-Egypt border barrier have raised the political standing of these militant Islamist resistance groups. To reduce Hamas’ standing in the region, Israel has stepped up the pressure on Hamas controlled Gaza by cutting off food, fuel and other necessities while escalating their attacks across the border. The US has quietly cheered from the sidelines. Absent a ceasefire, homemade missiles have continued to rain down on border communities in Israel. While these missiles are extremely inaccurate, (The safest place to be may be where they are aiming.) they do occasionally hit something. This week one Israeli was killed by a Qassam missile. This has prompted a massive Israeli retaliation which has resulted in hundreds of Palestinian casualties including women and children. A senior Israeli defense minister has declared that Israel will inflict a “holocaust” on Gaza. As Andrew Whitley pointed out, it is only a matter of time until one of these rockets hits a sensitive site like a kindergarten. When that happens, the current violence will look like a walk in the park. Without cooler heads prevailing on all sides (cool heads seem to be in short supply), the extreme violence that I forecast in this space, if nothing happened in the peace negotiations which resulted from the Annapolis Conference, will come to be. As leaders in Tel Aviv, Washington and Gaza City ponder their next moves, they might consider how they will explain their decisions to the parents of the kindergarten children.