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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/gaza-is-cut-off-from-the-world-2014-12
Gaza Is Almost Totally Cut Off from the World
(Business Insider) Armin Rosen - Hamas' summer hostilities failed to coerce Israel into lifting its border restrictions and likely convinced Egypt to tighten theirs. Palestinian political gridlock and Hamas' weapons arsenal leave little optimism that the root causes of Gaza's isolation - Hamas' empowerment, the Palestinian Authority's collapse, and the chaos and radicalism that each have given rise to - can be resolved peacefully. And there's almost no possibility of a negotiated resolution to the larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict if Gaza remains outside the full control of the PA, which is the only entity that the peace process empowers to make a deal on the Palestinian people's behalf. Meanwhile, more than 1.6 million people will be caught in a deadening limbo. "Nobody's optimistic," a doctor based in Gaza City told me. "People are very tired and exhausted." In the 1990s, when the PA was in decisive control of Gaza, "the borders were open. Seventy thousand people worked in Israel. Farmers would export products abroad. All they were thinking was how to develop farms and factories and improve their lives." A return to those conditions now seems inconceivable.