[News] Everyone Washes Their Hands as Gaza’s Economy Goes into Freefall

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/02/everyone-washes-their-hands-as-gazas-economy-goes-into-freefall/ 



  Everyone Washes Their Hands as Gaza’s Economy Goes into Freefall

by Jonathan Cook <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jonathan-cook/> - 
October 2, 2018
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The moment long feared is fast approaching in Gaza, according to a new 
report by the World Bank. After a decade-long Israeli blockade and a 
series of large-scale military assaults, the economy of the tiny coastal 
enclave is in “freefall”.

At a meeting of international donors in New York on Thursday, coinciding 
with the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, the 
World Bank painted an alarming picture of Gaza’s crisis. Unemployment 
now stands at close to 70 per cent and the economy is contracting at an 
ever faster rate.

While the West Bank’s plight is not yet as severe, it is not far behind, 
countries attending the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee were told. Gaza’s 
collapse could bring down the entire Palestinian banking sector.

In response, Europe hurriedly put together a €40 million aid package, 
but that will chiefly address Gaza’s separate humanitarian crisis – not 
the economic one – by improving supplies of electricity and potable water.

No one doubts the inevitable fallout from the economic and humanitarian 
crises gripping Gaza. The four parties to the Quartet charged with 
overseeing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians – the United 
States, Russia, the European Union and the UN – issued a statement 
warning that it was vital to prevent what they termed “further 
escalation” in Gaza.

The Israeli military shares these concerns. It has reported growing 
unrest among the enclave’s two million inhabitants and believes Hamas 
will be forced into a confrontation to break out of the straightjacket 
imposed by the blockade.

In recent weeks, mass protests along Gaza’s perimeter fence have been 
revived and expanded after a summer lull. On Friday, seven Palestinian 
demonstrators, including two children, were killed by Israeli sniper 
fire. Hundreds more were wounded.

Nonetheless, the political will to remedy the situation looks as 
atrophied as ever. No one is prepared to take meaningful responsibility 
for the time-bomb that is Gaza.

In fact, the main parties that could make a difference appear intent on 
allowing the deterioration to continue.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ignored repeated warnings 
of a threatened explosion in Gaza from his own military.

Instead, Israel is upholding the blockade as tightly as ever, preventing 
the flow of goods in and out of the enclave. Fishing is limited to three 
miles off the coast rather than the 20-mile zone agreed in the Oslo 
accords. Hundreds of companies are reported to have folded over the summer.

Intensifying the enclave’s troubles is the Trump administration’s recent 
decision to cut aid to the Palestinians, including to the United 
Nation’s refugee agency, UNRWA. It plays a critical role in Gaza, 
providing food, education and health services to nearly two-thirds of 
the population.

The food budget is due to run out in December, and the schools budget by 
the end of this month. Hundreds of thousands of hungry children with 
nowhere to spend their days can only fuel the protests – and the deaths.

The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, headquartered in the West 
Bank, has no incentive to help. Gaza’s slowly unfolding catastrophe is 
his leverage to make Hamas submit to his rule. That is why the 
Palestinian Authority has cut transfers to Gaza by $30 million a month.

But even if Abbas wished to help, he largely lacks the means. The US 
cuts were imposed primarily to punish him for refusing to play ball with 
US President Donald Trump’s supposed “deal of the century” peace plan.

Israel, the World Bank notes, has added to Abbas’s difficulties by 
refusing to transfer taxes and customs duties it collects on the PA’s 
behalf.

And the final implicated party, Egypt, is reticent to loosen its own 
chokehold on its short border with Gaza. President Abdel Fattah El Sisi 
opposes giving any succour either to his domestic Islamist opponents or 
to Hamas.

The impasse is possible only because none of the parties is prepared to 
make a priority of Gaza’s welfare.

That was starkly illustrated earlier in the summer when Cairo, supported 
by the UN, opened a back channel between Israel and Hamas in the hope of 
ending their mounting friction.

Hamas wanted the blockade lifted to reverse Gaza’s economic decline, 
while Israel wanted an end to the weekly protests and the damaging 
images of snipers killing unarmed demonstrators.

In addition, Netanyahu has an interest in keeping Hamas in power in 
Gaza, if barely, as a way to cement the geographic split with the West 
Bank and an ideological one with Abbas.

The talks, however, collapsed quietly in early September after Abbas 
objected to the Egyptians. He insisted that the Palestinian Authority be 
the only address for discussions of Gaza’s future. So, Cairo is yet 
again channelling its energies into a futile attempt at reconciling 
Abbas and Hamas.

At the UN General Assembly, Trump promised his peace plan would be 
unveiled in the next two to three months, and made explicit for the 
first time his support for a two-state solution, saying it would “work 
best”.

Netanyahu vaguely concurred, while pointing out: “Everyone defines the 
term ‘state’ differently.” His definition, he added, required that not 
one of the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank be removed and 
that any future Palestinian state be under complete Israeli security 
control.

Abbas is widely reported to have conceded over the summer that a 
Palestinian state – should it ever come into being – would be 
demilitarised. In other words, it would not be recognisable as a 
sovereign state.

Hamas has made notable compromises to its original doctrine of military 
resistance to secure all of historic Palestine. But it is hard to 
imagine it agreeing to peace on those terms. This makes a reconciliation 
between Hamas and Abbas currently inconceivable – and respite for the 
people of Gaza as far off as ever.

/A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi./

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