"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Thursday, January 01, 2009

WHY ISN'T GAZA RICH AS WELL AS FAMOUS?

Tim Blair notes a typical complaint from a jihadist propagandist in of all places, "The Age":
The Gaza Strip is the most crowded area in the world today, with 1.5 million Palestinians — most of whom are refugees banned from returning to their homes in Israel — eking out an existence in a walled-in holding pen on the edge of the Mediterranean.
Tim notes that the claim of "most crowded" is false -- Hong Kong has a far denser population than Gaza. But why must the Gazans eke out a bare existence on the "edge of the Mediterranean?"

(Incidentally, the claim that most Gazans are refugees is also false. Most of them are the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of actual refugees. Only with respect to the Arabs who were ordered by their leaders to make way for the Arab armies that were going to massacre the Jews, does the U.N. count the descendants of refugees as refugees. In every other refugee situation in the entire world, only those who actually fled are counted as refugees; their children are counted as citizens of the countries in which they were born. Only the vicious, cynical brutality of Arab politicians condemned their Arab brothers to generations of a refugee identity, and did so in a deliberate attempt to foster the sort of dysfunctional, suicidal, violent hellhole that Gaza then became, as a breeding ground for future foot soldiers of the jihad.)

The subject of Gaza's poverty is one that I covered in January 2007, and re-posted in March 2008. I am going to repost that entry yet again, because it highlights why jihadism has failed to do the smallest, most tattered, most miserable scrap of a shred of a bit of any good for the population of Gaza.

GAZA & SINGAPORE: TAB, January 2007
I am re-publishing this post from January 2007, because it amplifies the points made by Reliapundit today [March 6, 2008] regarding the horrible conditions in Gaza, that are the direct result of the thuggery of the jihadists. The original post -- with a few additional comments added on January 1, 2008, in red -- follows:

The Belmont Club describes the nascent Palestinian State this way:
Statesmen all over the world have paid homage to it. It's leadership has been praised and defended by Jimmy Carter. Charities have been established to support it. Fund raising in its name takes place every day. It has been provided with security training and weaponry by the International Community. If any country deserves to be called the proud creation of enlightened diplomacy and peacemaking, this is is it.
And then he points to Caroline Glick's thoughtful and heart-rending essay, "Welcome to Palestine." This is part of what she has to say:

And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.

In the State of Palestine 88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.

In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.

In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines.

In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition's television stations.

Read.The.Whole.Thing.


Wretchard also links to a 2006 essay by Spengler, in the Asia Times, who argues that the Palestinian State has no possible economic basis, other than extortion:
No peace agreement ever will emerge between Israel and the Palestinians, I believe, because economics should have dispersed the Palestinian population more than half a century ago. Mechanization of agriculture, rather than Zionist political aims, began displacing the rural Arab population in the 1930s, I observed in another location. The Zionist agency bought farms from absentee landlords, displaced the fellaheen engaged in near-subsistence agriculture, and made the land profitable and productive. From an economic standpoint, that is, the Palestinians were Okies, but with no California to go to. This led to the 1936-39 Arab uprising against the British Mandate and Jewish settlement.

Rather than disperse gradually like other agrarian populations, the Palestinian Arabs became wards of the United Nations after the 1947-48 War of Independence. Their numbers surged because of better medical care and nutrition than they previously enjoyed as well as child subsidies. That is why the 700,000 Arabs who fled or were driven from Israel grew into the 4 million "refugees" registered with the UN in 2002. I place the term "refugees" in quotation marks because in no other case has the third generation following a population transfer retained official refugee status.

Despite the best intentions of Shimon Peres and the Israeli socialists, it seems delusional to imagine that any combination of light industry and tourism will provide a livelihood for a Palestine with 5 million inhabitants (including the non-refugee West Bank population). The Palestinian entity cannot exist without subsidies, and it cannot extract subsidies from the West or from the Muslim world without constituting a military threat. The existential choices for Palestinians come down to dispersal or perpetual war.
Spengler is always interesting, but I think he is wrong to think that the West Bank and Gaza are not capable of providing a living to millions of people.

In fact, I think that the territory of Gaza alone would make a handsome state if its inhabitants would pull up their socks and devote themselves to building it up. Since I think most people think of Singapore as a thriving, prosperous, small city-state. Let's just compare Gaza and Singapore, and see if that isn't the case.

When the predominantly Chinese population of Singapore seceded from the Malaysian Federation in 1963, many voices predicted that the tiny island nation would never make it. How could it?

It was too densely populated, had too few resources, and would not be able to survive without the Malaysian hinterland to support it.

But the Singaporeans showed that they could make it, becoming one of the great Asian economic tigers. The citizens of Gaza could do the same thing.


Let's use the data in the CIA's World Fact Book to make a comparison.

The land area of The Gaza Strip is 360 square kilometers; Singapore's land area is 683 square kilometers. So Singapore is bigger.

But the population of Singapore ( 4,492,150) is also bigger than the population of Gaza (1,428,757), so that the population densities of Gaza and Singapore are similar. The median age in Singapore is 37, however, while the median age in Gaza is only 15. That does mean more children, who are less able to contribute economically.

Interestingly enough, the economies of Gaza and Singapore have similar overall structures. Singapore's economy is 34% industrial, and 66% service; Gaza's economy is 8% agricultural, 18% industrial, and 74% service.

Of course, Singapore's economy is larger, with a per capita income of $30,900, while Gaza's per capita income is only $1,500.

That's quite a difference. The unemployment rate in Gaza is 31%, ten times as high as in Singapore, and 80% of Gazans are in poverty.

The population of Singapore exhibits much more ethnic and cultural diversity ( Chinese 76.8%, Malay 13.9%, Indian 7.9%, other 1.4%) than the population of Gaza (Arab 99.4%), but both populations are literate: the literacy rate in Singapore is 92.5% (96.6% male, 88.6% female) whereas in Gaza, the literacy rate is 91.9% (96.3% male, 87.4% female),

And with 349,000 land lines and 1,095,000 cell phones, it seems that everyone in Gaza is connected. In Singapore, the numbers are equivalent, with 1,848,000 land lines and 4,385,000 cell phones.

The big difference seems to be that Singaporeans do not expect the rest of the world to support them, but actually do economic work.

But Gaza has enough population and enough resources to make an economic go of it - if they really wanted to. For example, the $15,000,000 worth of high-tech agricultural greenhouses that Bill Gates paid for, so that the Israelis who built them and ran them would leave them behind when they were expelled from Gaza, would have provided jobs and income -- if the Palestinians had not looted and trashed them as soon as they could.

Gaza also has Mediterranean beaches. With some investment and a lot of sweat equity, they could probably form the basis for a lovely and competitive resort. There are surely archaeological sites that could be developed as tourist attractions. Hotels and other tourist attractions would provide the cash flow needed to make investments in light industry, and a seaport might enable Gaza to serve as a transit hub for, among other things, oil that could be piped in from Arabia.

A desalination plant would enable a wide variety of agricultural businesses to thrive. High profit crops such as cut flowers and exotic fruits would surely be welcomed in the world market.

The greenhouses that were left behind when the Israeli government made the Gaza Strip "judenrein" were in fact profitable and sustainable businesses before the Arabs looted and destroyed them.

Light manufacturing might include clothing, books and magazines, electronics, and a wide variety of household goods.

And that's only Gaza. The resources of Judea and Samaria are much greater, particularly in terms of archaeological and historic sites that should be able to attract vast numbers of Christian tourists, in particular.

It is thus a great misfortune for the Arab people of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, that the world has allowed gangsters and terrorists to declare themselves their leaders, spokesmen, and governors. That is what is keeping the Palestinians in poverty.

The Jordanian administration in the West Bank (1948-1967) allowed the economy to stagnate, and did not build a single university. During the pre-Oslo Israeli administration (1967-1990), the per capita income of the West Bank doubled and it was higher than per capita income in Jordan or Egypt (the West Bank had one of the fastest growing economies in the world) -- and several universities were founded.

During the period of Israeli administration (pre-Oslo) the economy of the West Bank was one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

With an honest, non-gangster, non-terrorist, non-jihadist administration, that would give up its cherished dream of massacring all the Jews in Israel, either the Gaza Strip alone or the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could become a thriving economy.

It's as simple as that.

What the residents of Gaza need is not "humanitarian aid," but a decent government and a way of life and world view that are based on something other than fanaticism and dreams of carrying out genocidal massacres.

10 comments:

Reliapundit said...

SINGAPORE AIN'T MUSLIM. THAT'S A BIG DIFF.

Reliapundit said...

CUBA BLAMES THEIR POVERTY ON THE USA EMBARGO.

GAZA ON ISRAEL.

BOTH ARE LIES.

Unknown said...

Culture is a very important to economic achievement the Multicultural 'celebrate diversity' crowd ignores.

Singapore is full of rabid education hogs. They have small families.

The connection between culture and economics is most frightening to US residents in the Southwest. Mexicans have a high birthrate and a high drop out rate. Values vary, diversity is real and important.

It is not racist to point the previous out, it is culturist.

I understand that Palestine used to have an educated class. Until their culture celebrates achievement as much as it celebrates martyrdom, they will never achieve economic independence.

Throw in some cuban style socialism and you've got UN backed terrorists!!!

www.culturism.us

Reliapundit said...

cj - u r correct! thanks for commenting. come back. happy new year.

Unknown said...

The backbone of Singapore's economy is its deep harbour that's located strategically next to the Malaccan Straits besides Malaysia. It's shipyards manages huge amounts of international cargo. It is shielded from virtually all natural disasters. Despite all the misgivings about the Singapore government and human rights etc etc bla bla bla bla bla, it did establish an technocracy which focused on economic growth for its people.

What Singapore did was to capitalise on what it does have, to get income which it otherwise would not have, and built it from there since a long time ago. The Malaysian hinterland is officially cut off along international conventions of country borders, but it does not mean that people, culture, trade did not continue to create interaction and bonding between the two country's peoples, even as their governments have squabbles from time to time. There are many differences between Gaza and Singapore.

A simplistic comparison of land size, components of economy by simple labels and percentages overlooks all of the underlying reasons.

However, it does seem true that Gaza will definitely benefit from more peace and trade if only the deep rooted historial tensions and hatred can subside. Alternatively, these countries that cannot use their weapons responsibly should all be disarmed. Israel, Palestine, all of them. Let them fight, at most with sticks. They probably wont be able to lob missles at each other, creating such suffering and agony it carries on from one generation to the next. Strong pragmatic governments divorced from ideological hatred would help. But how to get all these? I really don't know, they've been fighting forever and doesn't seem to know how to stop.

wyn said...

Go read up the history of Gaza, Israel (the formation of Israel) and also the whole history of the middle east BEFORE even posting something that compares two vastly different areas to each other.

This is a very ignorant post. Period.

cc chia said...

If the Israelis with help of the British had not displaced the Palestinians in the first place, then the problem of Gaza and the Middle East conflicts between Jews and Arabs would not have arisen.

The cause of most of the world's present day problems and conflicts is the colonists' activities of the past century. For example, look at the mess that is still left behind in Africa.

Punditarian said...

WIth thanks to the commenters for their attention, I see no reason to revise the post.

The British did not displace any Arabs, and neither did the Jews. Most of the Arabs in Israel, Judea & Samaria, and Gaza today are descendants of immigrants who moved to the Holy Land to participate in the economic development brought about by the Jewish settlement that began in the 2nd half of the XIXth century. Which settlement was explicitly welcomed by the Emir Feisal of the Hashemite House of Mecca.

The so-called refugees in Gaza were people who were ordered out of the way by the Arab armies, so that those armies could better complete the massacres of the Jews they openly boasted they would perpetrate. But due to many miracles from God, what they hoped would be a brief sojourn out of the firing line, has turned into a multi-generational catastrophe.

But that's mainly because the Arab powers and the UN have prevented the Gazans from doing anything other than receive foreign aid, procreate, and become terrorists.

There's still nothing between Gaza and prosperity buthonest toil.

Anonymous said...

Lacoste polo shirts
north face jackets
cheap handbags
cheap purse
women's nike shoes

Anonymous said...

1)
cheap hair straighteners
chi hair straightener
chi flat iron

new polo shirts
cheap Lacoste polo shirts
cheap Lacoste polo shirts

cheap handbags
cheap bags
puma chaussures
chaussures puma
chaussure puma

Men's North Face
Women's North Face


hair straighteners
sexy lingerie store
cheap ugg boots
tattoo wholesale
men's clothing
women's clothing


2009 nike shoes
new nike shoes
Women's max
Men's max 93
nike shox
Nike air force
Nike air max 2003
nike air max ltd
nike air max tn
Nike air rift
Nike air Yeezy
nike airmax
Nike air max 90
Nike air max 97
nike birds nest shoes
nike dunk
nike RT1 shoes
nike SB
nike shox shoes
Nike shox OZ shoes
Nike shox R2 shoes
Nike shox R3 shoes
Nike shox R4 shoes
Nike shox R5 shoes
Nike shox TL3
nike trainers lovers

tennis rackets
Wilson tennis rackets
HEAD tennis rackets
Babolat tennis rackets