How the Palestinians Ruined Gaza

[scribblet]

Gaza is a poverty-stricken, Islamist terror state, yet under the Israeli ‘occupation’, the Palestinians did make vast progress in social welfare etc. I wonder if there was a vote, would they opt to return to that situation.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read....4E-E0D0E927074F

How the Palestinians Ruined Gaza By P. David Hornik

FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, June 22, 2007

Gaza has now reached its nadir as a poverty-stricken, Islamist terror state. Michael Medved quotes Gazan poet Bassem al-Nabris as writing that, if there were now to be a referendum in Gaza on whether the Israeli “occupation” should return, “half the population would vote yes. But in practice, I believe the number of those in favor is at least 70%.”

How did things get this way? Is it time for soul-searching among the Western countries—including an important part of the Israeli body politic—that long regarded “Israeli occupation” as the ultimate evil, to be ended at all costs without checking too closely how it was done or the consequences?

Although statistics specifically for Gaza are hard to come by, an important 2002 Commentary article by Efraim Karsh noted that under the Israeli “occupation”—more fairly termed administration—that began in 1967, Gaza and the West Bank in fact made “astounding social and economic progress”:

In the economic sphere, most of this . . . was the result of access to the . . . Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.

During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world—ahead of such "wonders"as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. . . . GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, [but] expand[ed] tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715. . . . By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's. . . . Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

If the Left-dominated Western media largely “missed” this story, it was because it was too sold on the idea of the Palestinians as victims of Israel to even inquire if that was really the case. Within Israel, more legitimately, the Zionist ethos of Jewish self-sufficiency seemed challenged by an influx of Third World menial workers who lived under Israeli rule but lacked citizenship rights.

cont...

[AngusThermopyle]

Ah, those evil Israeli's. How dare they assist the Palestinians with creating one of the fastest growing economies in the world!

Things sure are a hell of a lot better in Palestine now that its not under Israeli administration. Things are so damn good that they now have an endless supply of suicide murderers in Palestine. Good thing the evil Israeli hospitals treat them, evil though they are.

[Borg]

Come, come - how can one speak as such?

We all know the Palestinian troubles are caused by the Jews.

The media certainly has most here believing it.

And after all, Reuters promotes it - along with the good old cbc - so it must be true.

Let's have peace - Israelis - put down those nasty guns so we can sit around the table and maybe we can all all sing a song or two.

Borg