This past week I was just a few meters from the Gaza border and could see with my own eyes the beautiful villas and high-rises in the Strip. As usual, the media get it all wrong about Gaza - it is not that they are living in rubble, but that they are in a timeout of their own making.
In case you think that I or the majority of Israelis take pleasure in their suffering, you would be wrong. The distance from Tel Aviv to Gaza is 65 kilometers and the the distance between Haifa and Tel Aviv is 88 km. All of us remember visiting Gaza and long for the relative normalcy that existed prior to the ongoing and unremitting disaster that is the Oslo accords.
Sure, we have never had any illusions about Gazan's love for Israel, but from 1967 to 1992, Gaza was the 4th fastest growing economy in the world - with a per capita GDP higher than Egypt, Jordan, or Syria. Life expectancy was also greater than any of its neighbors and continues that way to this day.
Even after all the wars, the thought of them trapped there and mired in their own anger and victimhood saddens me. All that the current situation does is give Hamas more time to poison people's minds with their insidious indoctrination and lies. If the world really cared about Palestinians and their well-being, then they would not tie Israel's hands but rather support a Mosul type assault on the enclave.
Here is an article by someone who actually spent a week there recently (click HERE)
