Life in Gaza steadily worsens
Economic woes, violence after Israeli withdrawal

By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff  |  October 22, 2006

GAZA CITY -- A little more than a year after Israeli troops pulled out of the Gaza Strip, nearly everything that was expected to improve for the 1.4 million Palestinians here has instead gotten worse.

Instead of new prosperity from burgeoning trade with Israel and the world, Gazans face a tighter Israeli security cordon that has sharply restricted exports. Tons of fruit and vegetables have rotted before reaching markets, small factories have ground to a halt, and in recent months, Israel has barred Gazans from fishing off their coast or entering Israel to work.

Instead of enjoying new civic pride, Gazans fear leaving their homes because of internal fighting that has killed more than 100 people this year and worsening street crime that plagues ordinary people in a climate of lawlessness.

And instead of seeing progress toward a Palestinian state and peace with Israel, Gazans are suffering from an international aid boycott against their new Hamas-led government over its refusal to recognize Israel or renounce violence.

The Palestinian Authority, Gaza's largest employer, hasn't paid salaries for seven months. Gaza is cut off physically, economically, and socially from the 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The World Bank predicts the Palestinian economy will shrink a catastrophic 25 percent this year.

Not even the land once reserved for 9,000 Israeli settlers -- the most tangible gain from Israel's pullout -- has been put to public use. Chunks of concrete and steel still litter the demolished settlements, where Palestinian leaders had promised to build houses and schools. Much of the one-third of Gaza that was controlled by settlers and Israeli troops has been seized by powerful families or militant groups.

"Everything got worse," said Khaled Abdel Shafi, head of the Gaza office of the United Nations Development Program, which holds the $26 million contract to remove the 1.2 million tons of rubble -- a job that was supposed to be done by now but is only just beginning because of squatters and threats against workers.

Israel pulled the settlers out of Gaza last summer and unilaterally ended its military presence inside Gaza on Sept. 12, 2005, after occupying the 28-mile-long, 5-mile-wide strip since the 1967 war.

One benefit most Gazans name is that they can now move freely within Gaza -- most of the time. Before, Israeli troops controlled checkpoints that divided Gaza into three sections, sometimes forcing Palestinians to wait hours to make the half-hour drive between Gaza City and Gaza's second-largest city, Khan Yunis.

But Gaza is still encircled by a fence Israel built during the bloody Palestinian uprising that began in 2001. Israel controls the crossing points between Gaza and Israel, and can force the closure of the single crossing into Egypt.

So economic progress for Gaza after Israel's departure depended on Israel's cooperation. That required a precarious balance: Israel wouldn't open its gates unless it felt safe from attack; Palestinian leaders wouldn't crack down on armed groups unless they could show their people hope for progress.

From the beginning, that balance failed, and each side blames the other.

After Israel withdrew, Gaza militants continued to fire Qassam rockets nearly daily into Israel. At the same time, citing security problems, Israel kept Gaza locked down tight instead of increasing the flow of goods.

Things got worse when Hamas won a surprise election victory in January that placed the party, whose charter calls for absorbing Israel into an Islamist Palestinian state, at the helm of the Palestinian government. Israel and the United States consider Hamas, the pioneer of ѕυιcιdє bombings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a terrorist organization.

Israel cut off more than $50 million in taxes it collects each month for Palestinians. The United States, Europe, and other countries cut off tens of millions more in aid to the Palestinian Authority.

Gaza's third stage of misery began June 25, when militants, including some from Hamas, tunneled under the fence, captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and killed two others. Israel called it an act of war, bombed Gaza's only power station, and sent troops back into Gaza.

Shalit is still missing. Militants have since fired hundreds of homemade rockets into Israel; Israel has launched 300 missile strikes and fired hundreds more artillery shells. Israeli troops periodically take over parts of Gaza.

"They are living a failure," said John Ging, director of the UN agency that provides education and food rations for the majority of Gazans whose families fled what is now Israel in the 1948 and 1967 wars.

Israel has failed to balance legitimate security needs with allowing a viable Gazan economy, Ging said. Moderate Palestinians like President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party failed early on to make Gaza a prototype for a Palestinian state.

The Hamas-led government -- the first Islamist government popularly elected in the Arab world -- failed to deliver the better life it had promised would come with its anti corruption stand and toughness on Israel.

An agreement hammered out by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last November to ensure the movement of goods and workers is widely seen as a failure. It called for the main freight terminal to allow 150 truckloads a day from Gaza into Israel by December 2005, and 400 a day by the end of this year.

Instead, exports averaged 56 trucks a day last December, and from March to September the average hovered around 20 trucks a day, according to PalTrade, an organization that promotes investment in Palestinian areas.

Greenhouses bought from the settlers and handed over to Palestinians with $14 million donated by US philanthropists had produced 12,400 tons of produce by April. But only 1,600 tons were exported because of the closure, and the project went out of business.

Meanwhile, a political crisis festers. Hamas and its secular rival, Fatah, cannot agree on a way out of the international boycott. Hamas has so far refused to recognize Israel or step down to make way for a new Cabinet that would.

With tension rising among 70,000 unpaid members of the security forces, factional tension has erupted in violence. Internal fighting has killed at least 119 Palestinians, already more than the 101 killed in all of 2005.

For Abdel Shafi, the UN official, the depth of the crisis hit home this month when a beggar approached him as he left a grocery store. The UN insignia on his car signaled that Abdel Shafi, 46, was among the few people in Gaza still earning money.

Sitting on the near-empty terrace of the Deira Hotel, where he is part owner, he lamented that business is bad. Few Gazans can now afford a coffee and water pipe at the cafe, which looks out over the sea; those who can afford them are afraid to flaunt their money.

He said the Gaza withdrawal aimed to serve Israeli interests, to escape the military drain of holding Gaza and instead strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank.

"However," he said, "Palestinians should have used the opportunity, at least . . . to prove to the whole world that they can make something out of it."
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