How the Palestinian Authority Is Contributing to Gaza’s Immiseration https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/israel-zionism/2021/02/how-the-palestinian-authority-is-contributing-to-gazas-immiseration/

February 3, 2021 | Gidon Ben-Zvi
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While one might conclude from Western media that widespread poverty in the Gaza Strip is the result of the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt to stop Hamas, which rules the area, from smuggling weapons, in fact a massive two-way traffic in goods passes through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing every day. Moreover, Israel allows Qatar to supply Hamas with billions of dollars in cash, not to mention United Nations aid. A far greater contribution to Gaza’s woes comes from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has imposed a blockade of its own—a result of the feud between Hamas and the PA’s ruling Fatah party. Gidon Ben-Zvi writes, that the PA president Mahmoud Abbas has cut welfare payments in Gaza (which still run through Ramallah) and slashed funding for electricity. And that’s not all:

[N]early two million Palestinians have been paying the price for the political rivalry between his ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank and the Hamas Islamist terrorist group in Gaza.

[After the Hamas takeover of the Strip in 2007], the Palestinian Authority began ratcheting up economic pressure on Hamas by making life more difficult for Gazans, including, for example, by banning banks in the West Bank from transferring money to residents in the Strip. Indeed, human-rights groups have documented arrests [for this crime]. Abbas has similarly refused to deliver international aid intended for Gaza.

All the while the PA kept paying tens of thousands of its Gaza-based employees, despite most of them not having worked since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. Then, these salaries were suddenly cut in 2018. Around the same time, Abbas also slashed the salaries of thousands of Gaza’s civil servants and required many others to leave their jobs. This has, as a corollary, contributed to the high unemployment and poverty rates in Gaza.

Read more on Honest Reporting: https://honestreporting.com/invisible-blockade-media-silent-on-palestinian-authoritys-gaza-sanctions/