Believe it or not, some Palestinians are making some modest progress rebuilding Gaza despite the civil war. But from this NY Times report, you wouldn’t know that the Palestinians, with their own hands, looted greenhouses left behind by Israel.
The Israeli departure raised the prospect of land-hungry Palestinians flooding into the former settlements. But while many Palestinians are impatient for new housing, security guards have kept out would-be squatters in most, but not all, cases. The settlements also came with greenhouses that offered the prospect of thousands of agricultural jobs. Yet the greenhouses sit idle.
The Palestinians invested millions of dollars to repair the greenhouses shortly after the Israelis left, and had an excellent crop in the winter of 2005 and 2006. But they were unable to export their produce to Europe, the main market, because Israel kept Gaza’s main crossing for goods closed for weeks at a time, citing security concerns.
According to the Times, blame Israel for Gaza’s poverty.
