WHY GAZA CAN NEVER BE ANOTHER SINGAPORE
At first it sounds like pure f antasy, an i mpossible dream from another world, but it’s been alive for so many years that it demands a hearing. The idea is that the poor, woebegone Gaza Strip should recreate itself as an Arab version of rich, dynamic Singapore.
And the same notion goes further. This new Gaza would be good for everyone. The 1.8-million Gaza citizens would have no need to fight Israel — in fact, they would trade with the Israelis, their nearest neighbours. They would stop building tunnels for smugglers below its border to Egypt and do business with that country, too. The economy of the whole Middle East would spring to life under the stimulus of a sovereign state dedicated like Singapore to trade. The people of Gaza would be able to think about their future and answer the question The New York Times mentioned on Wednesday when it reported, “Gaza seems at a loss for what might be next.” Best of all, Gaza would happily face a labour shortage rather than having a quarter of its workers unemployed.
Would it be costly to organize? Yes. It would need a seaport, an airport, a stock exchange and a district full of warehouses. But all that can be managed. At a donor conference in Cairo two years ago, various nations pledged $ 5.4 billion to help rebuild the community.
Over the last three decades many have explored and publicized this bright idea: copy the pattern of a once forlorn little place like Singapore and make it work in a new setting. Thomas Friedman in the Times has written favourably about this possibility so often that it’s beginning to look like his specialty.
The latest advocate is Israel’s defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman. Last week he released a statement on this subject in the Arabic l anguage, to gather followers among Gaza citizens. He offered to help build the seaport, airport, etc., which would create some 40,000 jobs. In return he expects certain concessions from Hamas, which controls Gaza in its totalitarian grip. Hamas should demilitarize the entire enclave and eliminate from the Hamas charter the article that calls for the annihilation of Israel. And return to Israel the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in the last Gaza war.
Lieberman said, “The Gazans must understand that Israel, which withdrew from the Gaza Strip to the last millimetre, is not the source of their suffering — it is the Hamas leadership, which doesn’t take their needs into consideration.” He added, “The moment Hamas gives up its tunnels and rockets, we’ll be the first to invest.”
Lieberman’s statement was clearly intended to suggest that the civilians of Gaza should pressure the leadership to agree with Israel’s demands. He even suggested that the residents should remove the Hamas leadership. But since Hamas has been in control since 2007 and believes its anti- Semitic purposes are expressions of divine will, there’s no reason to expect it will surrender its position in the near future.
In response to Lieberman, Mahmoud al- Zahar, a Hamas founder, said his organization would consider returning the remains of the two soldiers, only in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
War seems to be Gaza’s fate. After the Arab- Israeli War in 1948, Egypt administered the Gaza Strip. Israel captured it in the Six- Day War in 1967. In 2005 Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza and dismantled its military establishment. It still controls Gaza’s borders and airspace.
War is the chief interest of Hamas, in particular war against Israel.
All those good- hearted people who puzzle over a new and vigorous role for Gaza are dreaming about a peaceful future. Hamas shares no such dreams. As Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in the Atlantic a while ago, “Hamas is an organization devoted to ending Jewish history.” That’s its chosen mission.
Hamas exhibits no concern for those anxious to live happy lives in Gaza. Hamas wages an episodic war which comes abruptly to life when it decides to send rockets into Israel and Israel responds by bombing the rocket sites and sometimes the tunnels by which Hamas terrorists may burrow into Israel.
In this war, Gazan civilians are always the losers. They may be killed, their homes or schools may be destroyed and for certain Israel will tighten border controls, preventing farmers from exporting their produce. But the war doesn’t harm Hamas. It sometimes terrifies Israelis or blackens Israel’s reputation by broadcasting news of Gaza casualties. Naive admirers of the Palestinians, in North America and Europe, manage somehow to count all this a crime by Israel. When that happens, everything has worked out to the advantage of a blindly vicious theocratic dictatorship.
A healthy, hard- working and even self- confident Gaza is the last thing Hamas wants. Such a shift will be difficult or impossible to achieve. Still, the plan to make Gaza into a Singapore-like enclave testifies to the heartening fact that many among us, effective or not, can put their intelligence to work conceiving a better way of organizing humanity.
Perhaps this strange idea’s most significant achievement so far is showing us what actually goes on in the Middle East.
HAMAS EXHIBITS NO CONCERN FOR THOSE ANXIOUS TO LIVE HAPPY LIVES IN GAZA.