How did things get this way? Is it time for soul-searching among the Western countries—including an important part of the Israeli body politic—that long regarded “Israeli occupation” as the ultimate evil, to be ended at all costs without checking too closely how it was done or the consequences?
Although statistics specifically for Gaza are hard to come by, an important 2002 Commentary article by Efraim Karsh noted that under the Israeli “occupation”—more fairly termed administration—that began in 1967, Gaza and the West Bank in fact made “astounding social and economic progress”:
In the economic sphere, most of this . . . was the result of access to the . . . Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.
During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world—ahead of such "wonders"as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. . . . GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, [but] expand[ed] tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715. . . . By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's. . . . Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.
If the Left-dominated Western media largely “missed” this story, it was because it was too sold on the idea of the Palestinians as victims of Israel to even inquire if that was really the case. Within Israel, more legitimately, the Zionist ethos of Jewish self-sufficiency seemed challenged by an influx of Third World menial workers who lived under Israeli rule but lacked citizenship rights.