Hamas Cuts Off Nose to Spite Its Face. By Walter Russell Mead.

Palestinians walk on the side of a street flooded with waste water in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2013. A Palestinian official said sewage from a treatment plant overflowed onto streets in the Gaza Strip because of a shortage of electricity needed to process the waste. (Photo credit: AP /Adel Hana).

Hamas Cuts Off Nose to Spite Its Face. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 21, 2013.

A year after Pillar of Defense, it’s all gone dark in Gaza. By Avi Isaacharoff. The Times of Israel, November 16, 2013.

Egypt and Israel spar over Gaza as Sinai crisis escalates. By Geoffrey Aronson. Al-Monitor, November 20, 2013.


Mead:

Punitive measures enforced by Egypt and the incompetence of the ruling Hamas government have combined to make the humanitarian disaster in Gaza one of the most sickening around. The NYT reports that a shortage of electricity and cheap diesel fuel from Egypt has led the Hamas government to shut down Gaza’s lone power plant, causing sewage stations to stop working. So instead of paying a tax to its rival faction in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority, to import fuel, Hamas has chosen to cut power to hospitals, schools and sewer plants. The results are devastating:

Businesses have cut back production, hospitals are rationing electricity to keep dialysis and cardiac support systems running, students are doing Internet research in the middle of the night and battery sales are brisk. Everywhere, the drone of generators mixes with the odor of kerosene lamps. […]

 

And in the Sabra neighborhood, near the Zeitoun pumping station, which has flooded three times since Sunday, the stench of sewage hung over the pools of standing water in the streets. Mosquitoes abounded, and residents said their children were vomiting and had diarrhea.

Note that the situation in Gaza has worsened since Israel has reduced its border controls. Since Morsi’s ouster from Egypt, the delivery of goods from Israel into Gaza has increased nearly twenty percent. The number of Palestinians allowed to leave Gaza through Israel is up thirty percent. At the same time, Egypt’s closure of Gaza’s smuggling tunnels have left thousands unemployed, made food, electronics and other goods scarce and unaffordable, and left the territory dry of much-needed fuel. The government responsible for the people of Gaza has responded not by trying to alleviate their suffering, but is instead squabbling with its enemy political faction. It is the ultimate absurdity of refugee politics: Hamas has essentially taken itself hostage and imposed sanctions on its own people.

 

The global outrage industry, we can be confident, will ignore this. Just last week, the United Nations General Assembly passed nine different resolutions condemning Israel for, among other things, its treatment of the Palestinians. No resolution concerning any other world issue was adopted during the meeting. (See the disapproving reaction of a UN interpreter here, here). If the world were truly concerned with the ongoing human tragedy of the Palestinian people, Arab discrimination and poor policy choices by the Palestinian faction leaders would be called out, mocked, and scorned.