A Question About Gaza

by cactus

A Question About Gaza

I’m trying to understand the situation in Gaza. I understand that Israel manages to exert some control over Gaza’s borders and airspace. Israel has also tried to choke off the flow of weapons into Gaza and this embargo is being blamed for much of the hardship that residents of Gaza have suffered over the past few years. Apparently, a significant part of the Gaza population depends on humanitarian aid from the UN, the EU, and even, apparently, Israel. Additionally, part of the hardship is magnified whenever Israel stops supplying electricity or ceases flows of fuel into the region.

I contrast that with the situation in Israel after its independence. While Israel now receives a lot of aid from the US, that state of affairs basically began around the 1967, and was largely a relic of the fact that our arch-enemy was helping its client states wipe out the Israelis, and had been for quite a while. (And yes, wipe out is an accurate choice of words.) From the beginning, the country was embargoed by its neighbors, and they sure as heck weren’t about to provide Israel with electricity or fuel or humanitarian aid. Much of the region’s shipping lanes were essentially closed to Israeli vessels for many years (sometimes off and on), and the country was subjected to a number of wars for its very survival from the beginning. Despite this, it managed to first survive, then succeed, then thrive.

Regardless of one’s views on the conflict, the question does arise – why the difference in outcomes? What would it take for the Palestinians to become the current equivalent of Israel in the mid 1960s, say, given they face a similar, if less daunting, set of circumstances than Israel did? Heck, what would it take for Egypt or Syria or Lebanon or Jordan to produce a similar set of outcomes?
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by cactus