10. TRAPPED IN GAZA

This chapter draws on the author’s report for the International Crisis Group, “No Exit? Gaza and Israel Between Wars,” Middle East Report, no. 162, August 26, 2015. The chapter was updated in September 2016.

0.     For the Gaza crossings, see “Gaza Economy on the Verge of Collapse, Youth Unemployment Highest in the Region at 60 Percent,” World Bank, May 21, 2015. After the closure of three Gaza crossings—Karni (2007), Sufa (2008), and Nahal Oz (2010)—Gaza had three functioning ones: Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt (primarily for people, used for goods only exceptionally); Erez, on the northern border with Israel (for people); and Kerem Shalom, on the eastern border with Israel (solely for goods). For per capita income in 2015, which was 31 percent lower than in 1994, see “Gaza Economy on the Verge of Collapse, Youth Unemployment Highest in the Region at 60 Percent.”

0.     For the arrangements regulating the PA’s economic relations with Israel, see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Gaza-Jericho Agreement Annex IV: Protocol on Economic Relations Between the Government of the State of Israel and the P.L.O., Representing the Palestinian People,” April 29, 1994. For details on increased PA tax revenues (no amount of which came from the materials brought in by the UN and other donors, which were tax-exempt), see International Crisis Group, “No Exit? Gaza & Israel Between Wars,” Middle East Report, no. 162, August 26, 2015.

0.     For an insightful overview of the separation policy, see Gisha—Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, “Separating Land, Separating People: Legal Analysis of Access Restrictions between Gaza and the West Bank,” June 2015.

0.     For the 100,000 people still homeless in August 2015, see “Shelter Cluster Factsheet,” Shelter Cluster Palestine, August 2015. Details on the disputes over how much construction material was needed for each square meter are taken from email correspondence between the author and Gisha executive director (at the time deputy director) Tania Hary, August 13, 2015.

0.     For the number living in temporary shelters, see “Report to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee,” Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, May 27, 2015. For the less than 6 percent of needed construction materials that arrived, see “The Gaza Cheat Sheet”; see also Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism website: http://grm.report.

0.     For Gaza’s 2015 unemployment rates (41.5 percent overall and over 58 percent for youths), see “Labor Force Survey, Q2—2015,” Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, August 6, 2015. Previous figures were slightly higher: overall unemployment, 43 percent; youth unemployment, over 60 percent. “Economic Monitoring Report.” For food insecurity (defined as lacking reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food, including the inability to access such food due to poverty, even when there are no food shortages), see “The Gaza Cheat Sheet”; see also UNRWA, “Food Insecurity in Palestine Remains High,” June 3, 2014. For the shrunken manufacturing sector, see “Gaza Economy on the Verge of Collapse, Youth Unemployment Highest in the Region at 60 Percent.” For the amount of agricultural land and livestock destroyed, see “The National Early Recovery and Reconstruction Plan for Gaza, Submitted to the International Conference in Support of the Reconstruction of Gaza,” State of Palestine, October 2014, p. 38.

0.     For Gaza’s exports (approximately 5 percent of GDP, consisting mainly of furniture, textiles, and agricultural products), see Gisha, “Economic Monitoring Report”; “A Costly Divide: Economic Repercussions of Separating Gaza and the West Bank,” February 2015. For figures on truckloads, see UN OCHA, “Gaza Crossings Activities Database,” 2015.

0.     For a summary of the deteriorating conditions and the humanitarian repercussions of electricity shortages, see Association of International Development Agencies, “Charting A New Course: Overcoming the Stalemate in Gaza,” April 13, 2015; UN OCHA, “The Humanitarian Impact of Gaza’s Electricity and Fuel Crisis,” July 2015. From 2013 to 2015, electricity was typically on only half the time (eight hours on, eight hours off) and was occasionally on for only six hours per day in certain areas and periods. By 2016, it was common for electricity to be on for just eight hours per day (six hours on, twelve hours off) throughout Gaza. For injuries from use of generators, see Dr. Mads Gilbert, “Brief Report to UNRWA: The Gaza Health Sector as of June 2014,” UNRWA, July 3, 2014, p. 8.

0.     For the effect of electricity shortages on water desalination, agriculture, and hospitals, see “The Humanitarian Impact.” For access to water and the destruction of the aquifer, see “Economic Monitoring Report”; “Gaza 2020: A Liveable Place?,” UN Country Team, occupied Palestinian territory, 2012. For polluted drinking water (related to almost 40 percent of disease in Gaza) and increased infant mortality (12 percent of infant and young child deaths were caused by diarrhea), see UNICEF, “Protecting Children from Unsafe Water in Gaza: Strategy, Action Plan, and Project Resources,” March 2011; B’Tselem, “Water Supplied in Gaza Unfit for Drinking; Israel Prevents Entry of Materials Needed to Repair System,” August 23, 2010; “Protecting Children”; UNRWA, “Infant Mortality Rate Rises in Gaza for First Time in Fifty Years,” August 8, 2015.

0.   For details on bombings and clashes, see “No Exit?”

0.   Interviews by the author with Beit Hanoun, Shujaiya, and Rafah residents, Beit Hanoun, Shujaiya, Rafah, March 2015.

0.   For a detailed report on Salafi-jihadi groups in Gaza, see International Crisis Group, “Radical Islam in Gaza,” Middle East Report, no. 104, March 29, 2011. For the attack on Hamas military personnel, see “Hamas Security HQ in Gaza Bombed After Threat,” AFP, May 4, 2015. The dozens of checkpoints and four in an area of several blocks are from personal observations, Gaza City, Beit Lahiya, Nusseirat, Deir el-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, May 2015. For the July 2015 bombings, see “Car Bombs Target Hamas, Islamic Jihad Armed Wings in Gaza,” Ma’an News Agency, July 19, 2015.

0.   For more on Palestinian rocket fire, Israeli strikes, strafing at individuals approaching the land and sea buffer areas, and the 25 Palestinian deaths and 1,375 injuries caused by Israeli forces in 2015, see UN OCHA, “Protection of Civilians 15–21 March 2015,” March 24, 2016; “Israel Strikes Gaza After Rocket Fire,” Associated Press, July 16, 2015; “IDF Strikes Hamas Target in Gaza After Rocket Attack,” The Times of Israel, August 7, 2015. For clashes between Hamas and Salafi-jihadi groups and rockets fired by the latter, see “Gunman Killed in Clashes with Hamas Security in Gaza City,” Ma’an News Agency, June 2, 2014; “Israeli Jets Strike 4 Targets in the Gaza Strip,” Ma’an News Agency, June 4, 2015.

0.   The quote from a Hamas leader (“why they should hold their fire”) comes from an interview with the author, Gaza City, July 2015.

0.   For data on crossings through Rafah (including the total closure of the crossing in four months of 2015 and three of the first four months of 2016, see UN OCHA, “Rafah Crossing: Movement of People into and out of Gaza,” accessed May 31, 2016. After two attacks on Egyptian security forces in Sinai on October 24, 2014, Rafah was open for only fifteen days in the next seven months, and on several of those only for entrance into Gaza, not exit. “Report to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee.” The statement from the Egyptian official comes from an interview with the author, Tel Aviv, August 3, 2015.

0.   For Egypt’s operations against the tunnels, which began before President Sisi but did not make most of the tunnels inoperative until Sisi came to power, see “The Next Round in Gaza”; “Toward a Lasting Ceasefire.” For Hamas taxes and partial salary payments to government employees and members of the military wing, see “No Exit?”; “Hamas Imposes New Taxes to Meet Payroll Dues,” Al-Monitor, April 29, 2015.

0.   For Israel’s partial relaxation of some aspects of the closure regime (more imports, exports, and exit permits, but still far less than permitted ten or fifteen years earlier), see Gisha, “Entrance of Goods to Gaza from Israel,” accessed May 31, 2016, http://www.gisha.org/graph/2387?datares=monthly. In the first half of 2015, 13,826 Gazans, most of them merchants (58 percent) and medical patients (18 percent), exited to Israel each month; in 2000, when Israel was in full control of Gaza, the number exiting to Israel per month was 780,000, more than fifty-six times greater than 2015 levels. For statements from Israeli security officials on the need to improve economic conditions in order to avoid a new conflagration, see “Toward a Lasting Ceasefire”; “No Exit?” For the payment by Qatar of $1,200 to each of the roughly 23,000 employees in all ministries, except the Interior Ministry’s nonadministrative employees, see “Qatar Offers Cash to Pay Some Staff in Gaza Strip,” The New York Times, October 28, 2014. In July 2016, Qatar pledged to make another payment covering salaries for one month. “Qatar Says Gives $30 Million to Pay Gaza Public Sector Workers,” Reuters, July 22, 2016.

0.   For figures on the number of deaths, see chapter 9, nn. 16, 18. The sixty-six soldiers include two initially declared dead and later reclassified as missing; after the war, three additional Israeli citizens (a Jew of Ethiopian origin and two Bedouin) entered Gaza and did not return. See “Arab Israeli Jumps Security Fence, Enters Gaza Strip,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 12, 2016.

0.   For the statement from the head of the Shin Bet, see “Shin Bet Chief: Hamas Gearing Up for Next Round with Israel,” The Times of Israel, July 1, 2015. The same day, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Hamas was stronger than in 2014. “Hamas Chief Says Armed Wing ‘Stronger’ Now than During Gaza War,” The Times of Israel, July 1, 2015. For Hamas’s rebuilding and test-fire of rockets, see “No Exit?”

0.   For statements by Israeli officials on the country’s goals in Gaza, the unlikelihood of reoccupation unless there were a mass casualty attack, and the inability of the PA, Fatah, or international forces to take over, see “No Exit?” For the quote from the head of IDF southern command (“no substitute for Hamas as sovereign”), see “Israeli General Sees Common Interests with Hamas,” Reuters, May 12, 2015.

0.   For the minority opinion in the government, the statement from the security official, and the calls to overthrow Hamas by Avigdor Lieberman, who was then foreign minister and became defense minister in May 2016, see “No Exit?”; interviews by the author with Israeli security officials, Tel Aviv, April–May 2015; “Liberman: Topple Hamas and Give UN Control over Gaza,” The Times of Israel, August 4, 2014.

0.   For Israel’s plans to evacuate border communities within 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) of Gaza in a future war, see “How Israel Plans to Evacuate Gaza Border Towns During Next War with Hamas,” The Jerusalem Post, May 23, 2015. For the public opinion poll conducted three weeks into the war, see Ephraim Yaar and Tamar Hermann, “85% of the Public Supports Continuing Limited Ground Operations,” Walla! News [Hebrew], July 29, 2014, http://news.walla.co.il/item/2770297.

0.   The statements by residents of Gaza are taken from interviews by the author with Gaza residents, workers, and merchants, Gaza City, Beit Hanoun, and Shujaiya, March–April 2015. For Hamas proposals for a cease-fire, see “Abu Marzouk: No Truce Before Israel Lifts Siege on Gaza,” Palestinian Information Center, September 6, 2015; interviews by the author with Hamas senior officials, Beit Lahiya, Gaza City, December 2014–May 2015. For statements by the head of Israeli military intelligence to the Knesset, see Barak Ravid, “IDF Intelligence Chief: Despite Hamas’ Efforts to Ensure Calm, Suffering in Gaza May Lead to Violence Against Israel,” Haaretz, February 23, 2016.

0.   On Israel’s sense of reduced pressure, a security official said: “that there is no smuggling now gives us freedom to do more for Gaza with relatively little risk. If Hamas were smuggling a great deal … we would have to go to war much sooner to raze their capabilities.” Interview by the author with Israeli security official, Jerusalem, May 2015. For similar statements, see “No Exit?”

0.   For assessments by Hamas and Israel that a new war would not have a different outcome, Egyptian statements on hostility to Hamas and willingness to have Israel topple it, PA opposition to Israeli moves that would bolster Hamas, and Israeli and international opposition to direct relations with Hamas, see “No Exit?”; interviews by the author with Egyptian, PA, Israeli, Hamas, and international officials, Cairo, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Gaza City, March 2015, May 2015, April 2016.

0.   For the 2015 arrest campaign (in mid-July, Hamas published the names of 250 members who were arrested by the PA in the West Bank in one of the largest PA operations against Hamas in eight years), see “Hamas Takes Hit After Latest PA Crackdown,” Al-Monitor, July 16, 2015. For Islamic Jihad’s threats over two different Palestinian prisoners, see “Islamic Jihad Threatens to End Truce if Adnan Dies,” al-Araby al-Jadeed, June 22, 2015. “Islamic Jihad: If Hunger-Striker Dies, the Cease-Fire with Israel Is Over,” The Jerusalem Post, August 14, 2015. For the flare-up in May 2016, see William Booth, “Israel and Hamas Using ‘Rocket Language’ Again in New Escalation,” The Washington Post, May 6, 2016. For the incident months after the 2014 cease-fire in which a Hamas commander was killed, see “Israeli Forces Shoot Dead Hamas Militant after Gaza Border Firelight,” The Guardian, December 24, 2014. The quote from a Hamas political committee member (“could have found ourselves in a new war”) comes from an interview with the author, Gaza City, December 2014.

0.   See interviews cited above; “No Exit?” For the Halevy quote (“What incentive will we have”), see Dalia Karpel, “A Former Spy Chief Is Calling on Israelis to Revolt,” Haaretz, October 1, 2016.

0.   For the State Comptroller’s Report, see Amos Harel, “Bleak Gaza War Report Shows How Next Conflict Will Begin,” Haaretz, May 10, 2016. For a list of Israel’s shifts in policy after the war, see “Toward a Lasting Ceasefire.”