Whose blockade?

Submitted by Jeff (United States), Aug 12, 2014 at 13:31

No Blockade=Prosperous Gaza=No Hamas support. The equation is clearly simplistic and historically wrong.

Prosperous Gaza=no future hope of Israel annexing that strip. The equation is utterly irrelevant and divorced from reality.

It was less than 10 years ago when Israel pulled itself, and every Jewish person, out of Gaza, thus ending, by its own action, its own decision, any "future hope of Israel annexing that strip." You don't remember that? Maybe that happened before you were born.

There was no blockade. The border was open and Israel encouraged commerce with its new neighbor. Israel left 3000 very productive greenhouses behind and encouraged their continued use to produce crops and flowers for export from Gaza. Arabs ran amok and wrecked all the greenhouses. The UN money that poured into Gaza was spent on weapons and tunnel building. We tried to make Gaza prosperous (its climate and shoreline should have helped, too). We failed because of the people Gazans elected to run the place, who obviously could not care less about prosperity for Gazans. (Having to get reelected doesn't seem to be much of an issue.)

Israel does not occupy Gaza. Hamas does.

Israel controls no part of life in that strip. Hamas controls every part of life in that strip. When was the last witch arrested in Israel? It happens in Gaza.

Egypt also closed its border with Gaza. I don't hear so much about that Egyptian blockade, though. Why isn't Gaza Egypt's "open air prison?"

How many other countries can you name that voluntarily gave back land it won fair and square in a war in which it was attacked? OK, the USA, there's a second one. Can you name some others? Any others in the middle east?

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