Ha'aretz - 22 January 2024 by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib
“Opinion |I Grew Up in Gaza. This Is What I Hope for Its Future”
<big>The senseless killing of 30 of my own relatives in Gaza forces me to seek a fundamentally different future. Palestinians must assert their agency to reject Hamas' suicidal adventures, with the destructive rampages by Israel that inevitably follow, in favor of non-violent resistance and a just peace.</big>
I left the Gaza Strip one month before the withdrawal of Israeli settlements in 2005 and was supposed to return a year later upon completing a cultural exchange program in the U.S. While there was an enormous uncertainty about the future, there was palpable optimism that vacating Israeli settlements would open vast territories in Gaza to Palestinians and ultimately usher in a new era in its complicated, troubled history.
The late 1990s were the height of Palestinian optimism for a better future that would have led to a sovereign state. Gaza had an industrial zone near the Erez crossing, widespread economic development, a brand new airport that I had flown into twice, plans for a seaport, and easier access to the West Bank and Israeli territories.
This was all reversed by Yasser Arafat's decision to launch the Second Intifada in 2000, which was later militarized and provided a unique opening for Hamas and its violence. By 2006, Hamas won parliamentary elections in Gaza, turning it into an isolated citadel, its people hostage to a futile armed resistance project….
Those initial 3 paragraphs are all that can be replicated in a DK post under the doctrine of fair-use. Ha’aretz may allow some free-reads (I subscribe so I can’t tell). If it does, you’ll know when you click on the top link. For readers who’ve used up all their free reads there or in case there aren’t any, I’ll try to condense the rest of the fairly long article, hopefully without any editorializing of my own, since that would defeat the purpose of this post. Readers who access the original perhaps will serve as a cross-check: if they’d like to comment with alternative interpretations, or blockquotes of their own, their doing so may help us all gain the best possible understanding of this op ed and the perspective it comes from.