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The Palestinians' Homemade Misery
(Commentary) Evelyn Gordon - This week Nickolay Mladenov, the UN's special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, publicly called out Hamas for "stealing from their own people and adding to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza" over Hamas confiscating sizable portions of cement shipments to build tunnels with which to attack Israel. As Mladenov pointed out, this cement is critically needed to rebuild the houses damaged or destroyed in the 2014 war and "to enable much-needed infrastructure and development projects" in Gaza. Gaza also faces an ongoing water crisis as 95% of tap water is undrinkable due to over-pumping. As Ha'aretz reporter Amira Hass correctly argues, the quickest and cheapest way to solve Gaza's water shortage would be to buy more water from Israel, but the PA rejects this solution. Yet, as Hass pointed out, the PA "has no problem buying more water from Israel for the West Bank." At the same time, an Israeli-Palestinian business center to facilitate commerce between Israel and the West Bank was shut down because the PA forbade Palestinians to go there. Closing the center primarily hurt the Palestinians, who need the jobs joint Israeli-Palestinian ventures could provide. These examples show that even if Israel left the West Bank tomorrow, it would solve very few of the Palestinians' problems. An Israeli withdrawal wouldn't make Hamas stop stealing cement from its people; it wouldn't end the PA-Hamas feud over who should pay Palestinian water bills; and it wouldn't stop the PA from impeding its people's business activity.