The Boston Gobe reports today that a year after Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip and all Israeli settlers there left, things are worse than ever for the 1.4 million Palestinians who live in the 28-mile long, five-mile wide territory. Gaza relies heavily on trade with Israel, but as The Globe reports today, legitimate Israeli security concerns have tightened border security. Palestine's current leadership furthers the stalemate by continuing to deny Israel's right to exist, discouraging trade and economic growth, and failing to redevelop Gaza.

Not even the land once reserved for 9,000 Israeli settlers -- the most tangible gain from Israel's pullout -- has been put to public use. Chunks of concrete and steel still litter the demolished settlements, where Palestinian leaders had promised to build houses and schools. Much of the one-third of Gaza that was controlled by settlers and Israeli troops has been seized by powerful families or militant groups.......So economic progress for Gaza after Israel's departure depended on Israel's cooperation. That required a precarious balance: Israel wouldn't open its gates unless it felt safe from attack; Palestinian leaders wouldn't crack down on armed groups unless they could show their people hope for progress....After Israel withdrew, Gaza militants continued to fire Qassam rockets nearly daily into Israel. At the same time, citing security problems, Israel kept Gaza locked down tight instead of increasing the flow of goods. Things got worse when Hamas won a surprise election victory in January that placed the party, whose charter calls for absorbing Israel into an Islamist Palestinian state, at the helm of the Palestinian government. Israel and the United States consider Hamas, the pioneer of suicide bombings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a terrorist organization.

Israel cut off more than $50 million in taxes it collects each month for Palestinians. The United States, Europe, and other countries cut off tens of millions more in aid to the Palestinian Authority. Gaza's third stage of misery began June 25, when militants, including some from Hamas, tunneled under the fence, captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and killed two others. Israel called it an act of war, bombed Gaza's only power station, and sent troops back into Gaza. Shalit is still missing. Militants have since fired hundreds of homemade rockets into Israel; Israel has launched 300 missile strikes and fired hundreds more artillery shells. Israeli troops periodically take over parts of Gaza.

.....The Hamas-led government -- the first Islamist government popularly elected in the Arab world -- failed to deliver the better life it had promised would come with its anti corruption stand and toughness on Israel....For Abdel Shafi, the UN official, the depth of the crisis hit home this month when a beggar approached him as he left a grocery store. The UN insignia on his car signaled that Abdel Shafi, 46, was among the few people in Gaza still earning money...He said the Gaza withdrawal aimed to serve Israeli interests, to escape the military drain of holding Gaza and instead strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank. "However," he said, "Palestinians should have used the opportunity, at least . . . to prove to the whole world that they can make something out of it."

The Palestinian economy is in freefall because Palestine insists on being a political pariah. Jihadists clinging to a perverse Bedouin take on Islam currently subjugate the mass of Palestinians to a life of darkness and despair. Scapegoating Israel for the systemic failure of Palestinian society as a whole to face modernityis morally bankrupt.

TECHNORATI TAGS: ISRAEL, GAZA, PALESTINE, HAMAS