Finally, Hamas is not getting along with their brethren, the Fatah, either. They refuse to pay the $6.48 per gallon Fatah wants for the Israeli fuel it resells them. They say they won’t pay more than $3.16 per gallon, take it or leave it.
Fatah said, Leave it, and Hamas closed the last operating power plant. Now, that’s defiance.
It’s true that in comparison with Gaza, the PA’s Ramallah looks like a shining star of efficiency and prosperity—if not democracy. But that only works with the comparison thing. Otherwise, you won’t find a single, solitary Israeli Arab citizen willing to switch sides. Ask Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, he proposed it. Why not do a land swap, he asked innocently (OK, not innocently). Let the settlements become part of Israel, and in return the thriving Arab cities of Taibe and Um El Fahem would join the Palestinian State. You should have seen their raging response: they called him a racist and a fascist, for suggesting they become proud, independent Palestinians…
Juan Cole wrote: “Children are risking cholera and worse because they have to walk through raw sewage to get to school. The sewage has flooded the streets in Gaza City because the sewage treatment plant has no electricity. It has no electricity because the Israelis are blockading the strip, including its children (50% of the population). The Israelis are not letting cheap fuel in.”
But none of it is even remotely true, except for the fact that a high percentage of Gazans are children. The Israelis don’t sell fuel to Gaza, cheap or otherwise, the PA does. And Egypt used to.
It’s no fun wading through Gaza’s pools of you know what, and it won’t be any fun reading about the inevitable outbreak of mega diseases there. I also have no idea whether the rainy season, which is upon us, is good or bad for the conditions there. But I do hope that the inevitable mass suffering in Gaza would finally bring about the toppling of the Islamist monsters who are sitting on the necks of the Palestinians.
Gaza first.