This is a letter I wrote that was published in the Jerusalem post Magazine Last Friday.
Technical analysis is not a substitute for a real policy. Neither is maintaining a status quo deterrence.
When I first visited the West Bank after the six day war I was surprised to see that the Jordanian government had invested absolutely nothing in maintaining or improving the road network they inherited from the British mandate.
About 20 years later I learned from a chemist analyzing the Gaza sewage system that it, too, had never been improved since the mandate period.
This leads one to wonder how the Palestinian GDP per person (a measure of “quality of life”) can be so much higher than that of Egypt or Syria, But it is. It’s done with blackmail, not mirrors.
Hamas cries about the suffering of the people in Gaza. But when you look at their electricity supply you find that much of it is provided by the Israel Electric Corporation, and that it has never been paid for by Hamas. The PA government of Mahmoud Abbas. who did foot the bill, cut off payment to Israel for Gaza electricity back in 2017.
That horrible sewage network was routed by Hamas to flow into a wadi that flows into Israel. The intent was to keep Gazan beaches clear while Israeli beaches further north, and the aquifers in Israel near them, became polluted. When Israel tried to control it, Hamas built their own little dam which they opened only after there was a great accumulation of stinking sewage that was too much for the Israeli modifications to handle when it came all at once.
The latest round of rockets, and the preceding campaigns of balloon fire bombs, knife attacks, etc. are just another part of the way Hamas conducts “negotiations/extortion”.
What is really needed is a sort of Marshall Plan for the Palestinians, but rebuilding Europe after WWII included a real Occupation including a campaign to educate the populations (on both sides). Israel needs those same nations who chastise her for “disproportionate” actions to Channel their humanitarian aid in a better manner.
The allied powers of 1945 did not go to rebuild the Nazi regime in Germany. Aid to Gaza must not go to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, neither directly or indirectly.
Wetherhorn 