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Originally Posted by Brian Swartz
The only other clarification I would make is that the description of the ability of people in Gaza to leave Gaza was not based on this recent attack; it was meant to describe the situation before that. Last year, or 3 years ago, or whenever. They weren't free to go to the West Bank, or anywhere else, then either.
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This is fair. I looked it up and I was not aware. The below link is from 2016 but essentially says movement from Gaza to West Bank has been near impossible since 2009. I've not found any docs that states otherwise.
https://www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/...en_wb_gaza.pdf
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In March 2009, the Israeli military presented a new procedure. This procedure was formulated subsequent to petitions to the HCJ, which concerned women from the Gaza Strip who had married men from the West Bank but could not live with them since Israel refused their entrance to the West Bank.17 The new procedure barred Gaza Strip residents almost entirely from officially relocating to the West Bank, even if they had lived there for years. The procedure allowed for submission of requests only in exceptional cases.
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Egypt was a viable escape hatch back in 2018. Don't know about now.
'I Want To Get The Hell Out Of Here': Thousands Of Palestinians Are Leaving Gaza : NPR
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For over a decade, the Gaza Strip — controlled by the Islamist militant group Hamas, blockaded by its neighbors, difficult to leave — has amounted to an experiment in human isolation.
Now there is a new escape route. Egypt suddenly opened its border with Gaza in May 2018, and, facing increasingly unbearable living conditions, tens of thousands of Gazans are believed to have crossed that border and scattered across the world, in the latest chapter in a mass exodus of migrants out of the troubled Middle East.
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I think you are correct about people trying to do whatever they can to get to safety as best they can, in this moment. I just meant in the longer-term, they are stuck in a situation which they have no realistic means of even trying to improve.
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Yup.
Out of curiosity, looked up GDP and other metrics.
West Bank and Gaza - United States Department of State
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The Palestinian economy is small, just over $18 billion in nominal GDP in 2021
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There is still a wide gap between the unemployment rates in the West Bank and Gaza, as this rate reached 45 percent in Gaza compared to 13 percent in the West Bank.
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Breaking it down by gender, the unemployment rate for females reached 40 percent compared to 20 percent for males. The average daily wage in the West Bank is $37, and the equivalent is $15 in Gaza, compared to $79 in Israel.
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Just think. If Musk had only spent his $40B+ over 2.5 years on Palestine ... assuming under proper governance, the good would have been fantastic.