Large-Scale Economic Projects Won’t Save Gaza

For some time, Israeli and foreign analysts have suggested various schemes to ameliorate the Gaza Strip’s deteriorating economic situation, including, for instance, the construction of an offshore port that could be used for exports and imports without compromising Israel’s ability to keep the Hamas government from importing arms. Mohammed Samhouri, drawing on his own experience as a leading Palestinian economic adviser in the wake of the 2005 Israeli withdrawal, doubts such plans can work:

[The evacuation of] Gaza—which took all [parties] by surprise when first announced in December 2003 by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—was largely motivated by Israel’s own strategic interests [and] was all but inevitable: a point often neglected in writings on the subject. Unlike the occupation of the West Bank, the prospect of a long-term Israeli occupation of Gaza had never existed or made strategic sense. Neither the geography nor the demography of the place would have allowed for a prolonged Israeli presence. . . . It was only a matter of time.

By contrast, Hamas presented the disengagement as a victory that proved the effectiveness of its armed resistance. . . . In the rush to capitalize on its self-proclaimed victory, . . . Hamas competed against the secular Fatah party in the Palestinian legislative elections of January 2006, which—contrary to predictions—it ultimately won. And so, as the last Israeli soldier left Gaza in the early morning hours of September 12, 2005, Gaza was in effect sealed and delivered to Hamas. . . .

The disengagement plan has failed to alter Gaza’s prolonged misfortune. One can list many reasons for this outcome. But one lesson is clear: technical solutions to Gaza’s complex problems, absent a supportive political and security setting, are not likely to work. . . . Yet this lesson and its policy implications don’t seem to be well understood today. For instance, despite the growing realization that deterioration in Gaza’s living conditions is fast approaching a breaking point, and may have even passed it, the proposed solutions to the crisis, whether from the Israeli military establishment or from the current U.S. administration, are all in the form of a list of [large-scale economic and infrastructure] projects to save Gaza’s collapsing economy.

Vital as such undertaking may be for addressing Gaza’s mounting socioeconomic difficulties and the chronic shortages in its basic public services, these projects . . . can only be implemented if Gaza’s political and security situation is stabilized first.

Read more at Washington Institute for Near East Policy

More about: Ariel Sharon, Gaza Strip, Gaza withdrawal, Hamas, Palestinian economy, Politics & Current Affairs

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society