Gaza again

The Economist says that the Crazy Water park in Gaza has been torched by heavies from the Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas, the regional government in Gaza.

Supposedly to stiffen Gazans’ resolve, the Qassam Brigades have begun to suppress the emerging good life in the strip. A squad of heavies torched Crazy Water, a new resort, in which Mr Haniyeh’s economics adviser has a stake. Mr Meshal was said to have fumed at the sight of a video that showed girls and boys cavorting in the resort’s pools, a far cry from the “resistance culture” he would like to foster.

The Beach restaurant, a favourite for secular types, including foreign aid workers, was closed for three days after police nabbed a woman smoking a water-pipe.

As I reported, Gaza has a higher literacy rate and a lower infant mortality rate than Turkey, with a similar GDP per head. Now the lunatics who run it are determined to reduce everyone to penury and hunger, to make their political point.

The EU is a massive 'aid' donor to Gaza, which receives far more per head than is given to Africa. It ought to stop.

Gaza

I don't often read Melanie Phillips, not because I think she is wrong, but because she is obsessive and I tend to mistrust obsessives. But in the Spectator she quotes the excellent Tom Gross:

... In Turkey, life expectancy is 72.23 and infant mortality is 24.84 per 1,000 births. In Gaza, life expectancy is 73.68 and infant mortality is 17.71 per 1,000 births. Turkey has a literacy rate of 88.7% while in Gaza it is 91.9%. (It is much lower in Egypt and other Arab countries where Israel did not establish colleges and universities in the 1970s and 1980s.)

Gaza’s GDP is almost as high as Turkey’s and much, much higher than most of Africa that gets 1,000th of the aid per capita that Gaza gets from the West

He suggests that perhaps the Turkish aid convoy was going in the wrong direction.

Gross' article is written as the EU approves massive new funds for Gaza, much of which, he says, goes towards armaments. He has photos of a new shopping centre in Gaza. This is not the sort of stuff you see on the BBC, which continually refers to Gazans as 'refugees'.

Israel and Gaza 2

We seem to have learned a little more since Monday morning but not everything.

1. It seems clear that the principal aim of the 'peace flotilla' was publicity, not delivering aid.

2. The Israelis were clearly wrong to make the interception in international waters.

3. There is no dispute that Israel has the right to ensure that goods coming in to Gaza are not weapons.

4. The Israeli restrictions seem to include building materials, which seems harsh.

After that, the debate descends to discussion of 'proportionality': that they shouldn't have used so much force. I don't know about you, but if someone, Iceland, say, decides to invade Britain, I want the **** kicked out of them. I don't want us to send the Women's Army Band, armed only with blanks in case someone is hurt. The full caboodle, if you please.

No, what does it for me with this convoy business is the fact that it took place in international waters. I don't know if it was a cock-up by the Israelis, but these people, ghastly though they may be, have every right to protest outside Israel.

Israel and Gaza

Strange. I never agreed with my late father about Israel. By my early teens I had a large number of Jewish friends and I suppose had absorbed their views. I still harbour a strong sympathy for Israel now.

My father by contrast had been in Palestine after the war and was vehemently anti-Israeli. He even regarded the Balfour Declaration, that there should be a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, as a stitch up.

I asked him once how they had permitted the young state to establish itself. He said that after the war there was no taste for killing innocent people, women and children, particularly those who had been persecuted. They arrived in small boats and were let in.

When I heard of the flotilla of small boats arriving from Turkey I wondered whether the wheel was turning a full circle. I don't know. It appears they were warned not to enter the exclusion zone, that Israel had identified known gunrunners amongst them. Israel says it promised to deliver the aid via the usual channels from Ashdod.

Anyway the Israeli army boarded the ships and several people are dead. The BBC carried a report that some Israeli soldiers had been killed or wounded, but said this was from weapons taken from them. I should like to know more about this: what you have to do to take a weapon from an Israeli commando I'm not sure.

I think we need some independent report on this. I don't buy the business about this being just a humanitarian mission - there are better ways to go about that, which would have assured the aid got through. Aid doesn't seem to have been their principal goal. And we must remember that Hamas is a terrorist group, not a political party.

At the same time this hasn't done Israel any favours. We should let some light into the matter.