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Gazan's are such an incompetent set of people that when given almost 2 decades of self rule they did absolutely no economic development, no infrastructure construction, etc etc. Instead they dedicated all that time towards scheming up new terrorist attacks.
If Red America was given a similar gift they would be on the moon and the US gov would be afraid to attack the free enclave because they might lose.
Yes Gaza sucks to live in, because it is full of Gazans.
Oh no, you are not fair to them. They built a lot of infrastructure. Every school, hospital or mosque had under it a bunker for storing arms, hiding troops and supplies for Hamas. Every schoolyard and hospital grounds double as missile launching site. Miles of tunnels have been built, and not just some rat holes, but tunnels you can live in for months, with ventilation, facilities, food storage, multiple exits in private houses and businesses all over the place. It's a lot of infrastructural work, and they have been very busy for two decades. It is true that this infrastructure has only one goal - war with Israel - and is completely useless otherwise, but I don't see the citizens of Gaza to mind too much. Surely, when they are losing the war, they don't like it, but the whole concept of being in eternal war with Israel, even if this means living in medieval conditions and spending all the money on building more war infrastructure and sacrificing all their kids to the war effort - they are completely fine with this concept. They actually want this, more than anything. Maybe not 100% of them, but about 90% for sure. Their only problem with the war is that they are currently losing badly.
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Total blockades and a lack of local ressources does tend to hamper economic growth.
I'm not about to defend Hamas, but if you were a Gazan businessman in the 90s, there really isn't a lot you could do when trade is functionally impossible.
Can't buy machines for industry, couldn't even export the production, tourism is a no go, can't even have 3G cell towers or any sort of proper internet so no weird internet business.
It's a prison. The inmates are making shanks and trading cigarettes. As you would expect.
They had tons of resources, and there never had been "total blockades". How do you think they built miles of tunnels and thousands of rockets? Where do you think all their weapons are from? Did they magic it out from sea water and sand? No, they used the materials that came for declared civilian purposes, and money sent by petro-emirates, Iran and other deep-pocketed Muslim sponsors and they used it exactly for what they wanted - preparing for war. And what they coudn't get in openly, they got clandestinely via border tunnels, which were numerous and virtually ignored by Egypt. They had all the industry they wanted - it's just the industry they wanted is making rockets, not tractors or computers. If Hamas wanted to turn Gaza into Taiwan - there would be billions of oil dollars available for them to do that. But the whole point of Gaza is to be a problem for Israel, and the whole point of Hamas is to wage war on Israel, everything else is secondary. And since the population of Gaza does not seem to have any problem with that goal - they have what they have.
It's a weird kind of prison, where offering to leave is called racist and genocide, and asking to at least stop making weapons and lobbing them over the fence is taken as crazy talk. I don't think there's another "prison" like that in the world, where the inmates have full control, regularly try (very often successfully) to murder the guards, and the guards respond with providing them free food and offering them to leave whenever they want, which is always rejected.
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There are hurdles. If Gaza was full of Americans it would be a paradise and Israel would be afraid not of terrorist attacks, but of being surpassed as the local economic power.
How'd that work for Liberia?
Sure, that sunset of Americans might also have trouble.
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