https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2023/05/jordans-unemployment-rate-is-much-worse.html
In addition to the colossal corruption in Gaza, there are the choices Hamas makes on what to spend the money that remains after the high-ranked crooks have all taken their share. Hamas does not spend much money on agriculture, nor on importing more foodstuffs. Instead the terror group uses hundreds of millions of dollars to build up armories of weapons. Between them, the terror groups Hamas and PIJ have about 12,000 rockets in Gaza, ready to be launched against Israel, and include the M-302 long-range rocket. Almost all of Israel can now be hit by rockets launched from Gaza. Hamas has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a vast underground network of tunnels, that allowed it to move both fighters and weapons throughout the Strip without being detected — or did allow it, until Israel managed nonetheless to detect, and then to destroy, almost all of those tunnels. How many hundreds of millions of dollars invested in those terror tunnels went up in smoke? How much food would that money lavished on tunnels bought for the people of Gaza?
The Palestinians have been living off the international dole their entire lives. Every year about $1.6 billion are provided to UNRWA for the care and feeding — housing, medical care, education, food — of Palestinians in camps across the Middle East, including some in Gaza and the West Bank. More billions have been given by foreign donors directly to the PA and to Hamas. No Palestinians seem to think this state of affairs is to be deplored because it has created a permanent state of dependence. But they may have no choice but to learn to fend for themselves. They can no longer count on the largesse from the rich Arab states, whose leaders — with the Saudi Crown Prince in the lead — have expressed exasperation with Mahmoud Abbas, and are tired of endlessly supporting the Palestinians whose cause is no longer at the center of Arab concerns. They have already greatly decreased their aid, almost to zero, both to UNRWA and to the PA. Hamas continues to receive payments from the Gulf Arabs’ odd-man out — the one Arab state that supports the Muslim Brotherhood and its Gazan branch, Hamas — Qatar.
First, for the Palestinians there is no possibility of democracy. Hamas rules with an iron fist in Gaza, and the PA rules despotically in the West Bank. If anyone dares to criticize the rulers, that person will be threatened, beaten, possibly imprisoned, or even, in some cases, killed. When Mahmoud Abbas, President-for-Life of the PA, realized that one of his critics, Nizar Banat, was becoming too effective in his criticism of Abbas’ corruption on social media, he had his goons beat Banat to death. That has, for now, muted the criticism of the thin-skinned rais in Ramallah. In Gaza, critics of Hamas are equally threatened. Few have forgotten how a well-known critic of Hamas, Osama Atallah, was tortured and then strangled by agents of the terror group.
The second is colossal corruption. Billions of dollars have been taken by just two Hamas leaders in Gaza. in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons Tarek and Yasser, have built a business empire worth $400 million. And tens of millions of dollars have been shared by leaders in Hamas and Fatah leaders lower down on their respective totem poles. Anyone daring to speak out about corruption will threatened, imprisoned, or killed.
The third is the prioritizing of spending on the military and security services in both Gaza and in the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank. In Gaza, it is estimated that Hamas spends one-quarter of the budget on arming the group with advanced weapons, digging tunnels, training, and salaries for Hamas fighters. Imagine how much good that money could do if instead it were used to lessen food insecurity, beginning by improving crop yields and subsidizing staples, including bread, milk, chickpeas, and olive oil. And the same applies to the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank, where the staples could be subsidized by a government less corrupt, and determined to no longer support various overlapping security services which have a total of 42,000 men under arms in a population of 2.7 million. If the US, with a population of 335 million, had the same proportion of security forces to the general population as the PA, it would have six million men in uniform. Clearly, the PA could decrease the number of men in its security services, and spend the money saved on alleviating food insecurity, by transferring the amount saved on those salaries both to support Palestinian farmers, and to pay for food imports.
None of these – the despotism, the corruption, the misallocation of resources in both Gaza and the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank – have anything to do with Israel. Remember that, the next time you have to endure a world-of-woe lament from Mahmoud Abbas as to all the terrible things those Israelis are doing to make the lives of Palestinians so miserable.
The Gazan Arabs may be “food insecure” compared to their neighbors in Israel, but not compared to the Arabs in Egypt, who have less than the Gazans to spend on food, and less choice in what is available. The Israelis are constantly accused of instituting a devastating “blockade” of Gaza (“an open-air prison”), and we are supposed to believe that this includes foodstuffs. But the only materials the Israelis keep from entering Gaza are “dual-use” items – that is, such goods as steel pipes that can have both a civilian and a military use, in building weapons, rocket launch pads, and terror tunnels. Israel places no limits on food or medicine or other humanitarian aid from entering the Strip. If some Gazans do not have enough money for food, that is the fault of the Hamas despots who run Gaza. They have managed to divert much of the foreign aid meant for ordinary people into their own pockets. Just two Hamas leaders, Khaled Meshaal and Moussa abu Marzouk, have each managed to accumulate fortunes of $2.5 billion. Below the top rank, hundreds of lesser Hamas apparatchiks – reportedly, 600 — have been allowed to skim between one and three million dollars apiece for their own benefit. This is how the terror group buys loyalty. Thus does money that might have gone to subsidizing food staples – milk, bread, chickpeas — for those who are now “food insecure,” instead enriches thousand or two of the 2.2 million people in Gaza.
In addition to the colossal corruption in Gaza, there are the choices Hamas makes on what to spend the money that remains after the high-ranked crooks have all taken their share. Hamas does not spend much money on agriculture, nor on importing more foodstuffs. Instead the terror group uses hundreds of millions of dollars to build up armories of weapons. Between them, the terror groups Hamas and PIJ have about 12,000 rockets in Gaza, ready to be launched against Israel, and include the M-302 long-range rocket. Almost all of Israel can now be hit by rockets launched from Gaza. Hamas has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a vast underground network of tunnels, that allowed it to move both fighters and weapons throughout the Strip without being detected — or did allow it, until Israel managed nonetheless to detect, and then to destroy, almost all of those tunnels. How many hundreds of millions of dollars invested in those terror tunnels went up in smoke? How much food would that money lavished on tunnels bought for the people of Gaza?
Again, the Palestinians’ “plight” needs to be compared with the situation of other Arabs nearby. For the Palestinians in the West Bank, the point of comparison is Jordan. Palestinians in the PA have an unemployment rate of 14%. The unemployment rate in Jordan is 50% higher. Doesn’t that make one more inclined to sympathize with the Jordanians than with the Palestinians? But of course, since Israel can’t be blamed for the Jordanian unemployment rate, the Arabs don’t bother discussing it; they concentrate all their indignation on the travails of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The Palestinians, both in the PA-run parts of the West Bank, and in Hamas-run Gaza, have very high rates of unemployment. But that is not Israel’s fault. The Israelis, in fact, are doing everything they can to reduce Palestinian unemployment. They provide work permits for more than 100,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, allowing them to work in both Israel and the settlements, and another 19,000 work permits for Palestinians in Gaza, allowing them to work in Israel. The salaries paid to these workers from the West Bank range anywhere from two to five times as much as what they can earn from jobs in the PA. The difference is even more stark for the Gazan Palestinians; their, Israeli wages are up to ten times higher than what they would be paid in Gaza. And Israel has made clear that if the security situation remains quiet, it is prepared to increase the number of work permits. While several hundred thousand Palestinians have worked for decades in the rich Gulf Arab countries, those countries are not taking in more Palestinians (and Kuwait expelled 400,000 of them after the Gulf War in 1991, when they foolishly supported the Iraqi invasion of the country). The only country that is currently helping to reduce the Palestinian unemployment rate is the country the Palestinians blame for all their misery – Israel.
The Palestinians have been living off the international dole their entire lives. Every year about $1.6 billion are provided to UNRWA for the care and feeding — housing, medical care, education, food — of Palestinians in camps across the Middle East, including some in Gaza and the West Bank. More billions have been given by foreign donors directly to the PA and to Hamas. No Palestinians seem to think this state of affairs is to be deplored because it has created a permanent state of dependence. But they may have no choice but to learn to fend for themselves. They can no longer count on the largesse from the rich Arab states, whose leaders — with the Saudi Crown Prince in the lead — have expressed exasperation with Mahmoud Abbas, and are tired of endlessly supporting the Palestinians whose cause is no longer at the center of Arab concerns. They have already greatly decreased their aid, almost to zero, both to UNRWA and to the PA. Hamas continues to receive payments from the Gulf Arabs’ odd-man out — the one Arab state that supports the Muslim Brotherhood and its Gazan branch, Hamas — Qatar.
The Palestinians have three main problems.
First, for the Palestinians there is no possibility of democracy. Hamas rules with an iron fist in Gaza, and the PA rules despotically in the West Bank. If anyone dares to criticize the rulers, that person will be threatened, beaten, possibly imprisoned, or even, in some cases, killed. When Mahmoud Abbas, President-for-Life of the PA, realized that one of his critics, Nizar Banat, was becoming too effective in his criticism of Abbas’ corruption on social media, he had his goons beat Banat to death. That has, for now, muted the criticism of the thin-skinned rais in Ramallah. In Gaza, critics of Hamas are equally threatened. Few have forgotten how a well-known critic of Hamas, Osama Atallah, was tortured and then strangled by agents of the terror group.
The second is colossal corruption. Billions of dollars have been taken by just two Hamas leaders in Gaza. in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons Tarek and Yasser, have built a business empire worth $400 million. And tens of millions of dollars have been shared by leaders in Hamas and Fatah leaders lower down on their respective totem poles. Anyone daring to speak out about corruption will threatened, imprisoned, or killed.
The third is the prioritizing of spending on the military and security services in both Gaza and in the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank. In Gaza, it is estimated that Hamas spends one-quarter of the budget on arming the group with advanced weapons, digging tunnels, training, and salaries for Hamas fighters. Imagine how much good that money could do if instead it were used to lessen food insecurity, beginning by improving crop yields and subsidizing staples, including bread, milk, chickpeas, and olive oil. And the same applies to the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank, where the staples could be subsidized by a government less corrupt, and determined to no longer support various overlapping security services which have a total of 42,000 men under arms in a population of 2.7 million. If the US, with a population of 335 million, had the same proportion of security forces to the general population as the PA, it would have six million men in uniform. Clearly, the PA could decrease the number of men in its security services, and spend the money saved on alleviating food insecurity, by transferring the amount saved on those salaries both to support Palestinian farmers, and to pay for food imports.
None of these – the despotism, the corruption, the misallocation of resources in both Gaza and the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank – have anything to do with Israel. Remember that, the next time you have to endure a world-of-woe lament from Mahmoud Abbas as to all the terrible things those Israelis are doing to make the lives of Palestinians so miserable.
