NOVANEWS
No humanitarian crisis means no crisis. No crisis means no problem. No problem means no siege. No siege means no occupation. No occupation means Hamas is the main obstacle preventing the transmutation of Gaza into Dubai.
I don’t know if I can start dissecting this kind of “thinking,” because there’s no thought involved, just a series of stylized images standing in for thought and analysis, based on pre-rational instincts: “Defend Israel! Palestinians Aren’t People!” The images go in a rough sequence, kind of like this. The first replaces the phrase “humanitarian crisis” with protruding ribcages in Haiti. The second says that if people aren’t at the level of absolute destitution, then their crises are irrelevant and should be invisible—let’s place a screen in front of them.
The third is a resolute denial of thinking: who cares what the ICRC, the World Bank, the UN, and the Lancet have to say about the humanitarian situation in Gaza: the incidence of stunting, malnutrition, hundreds dead because they can’t access medical care, a barely-functional economy reliant on the service sector, the tunnel trade, and charity. And the fourth is total racism: Israel imposes this economy and this “crisis” on Gaza, and if it were the reverse, no one would tolerate it for a moment.
Gaza does not have to be as bad as Burundi or Iraq or Haiti to be in intolerable crisis. Yes, there is a mall in Gaza full of stuff. But. Unemployment is at 40 percent using conventional measures that considerably underestimate effective unemployment. At last check, the consumer price index was at 131, whereas in the West Bank it is at 125. The average daily income in Gaza is 71.5 shekelim in the public sector, 43.7 in the private sector. The shekel trades at about 3.87 to the dollar. There are about 180,000 people employed in Gaza.
The numbers can’t be interpreted without the correct frame: each worker supports about ~8, perhaps a little more, other people—the numbers probably don’t include those receiving money from the PA in Ramallah. Average household income in the Gaza Strip is 1,567 shekelim, a little less than 400 dollars, or about one dollar a day.
The World Health Organization comments:
There is also evidence of a health and environmental disaster in the Gaza Strip due to the destruction of infrastructure and sewage systems: the pathogen content of drinking-water samples is 16% (the universal water safety norm recommended by international standards is 1%). … It has been estimated that the health status of nearly 40% of those suffering from chronic diseases has deteriorated as a result of the reduction in health-care services.
Hamas isn’t exactly soundly managing the Gazan economy, but that’s because there is barely any Gazan economy to manage. Agricultural exports–all exports are effectively banned, the seaport is unusable. Remember that. Write down the facts above and repeat and repeat and repeat them. Gaza is not Haiti and doesn’t have to be Haiti to be unacceptable. It is unacceptable because it’s gratuitous, it’s self-conscious state-terrorism, and because it’s intolerable. Full stop.
Technorati Tags: Dubai, economics, Gaza, Gazan economy, humanitarian crisis, Israel, Palestine, Zionism
Related posts:
- is there a humanitarian crisis in Gaza? not the point Israeli hasbara and the nincompoops who repeat it in the…
- Nakba Day in Gaza Commemorating Nakba Day in Occupied Gaza felt somewhat like…
- hurrah for John Ging I tutor a girl at the headquarters of the United…
- the blackouts in Gaza are over, for the moment I didn’t know before I came to Gaza how laptop…
- “I think this is the beginning of the end of the siege” I think a number of people are starting to…
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
