Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · World Politics Review · 2014
A 2014 World Politics Review analysis of growing popular discontent in Gaza following the closure of the tunnels after Morsi's overthrow. Shaban examines civil servant protests, business frustration, and the atmosphere of resignation, while noting that Hamas and the international community both misread the situation — Hamas as a governance problem, the world as a security management challenge rather than a development crisis requiring political solutions.
A 2014 World Politics Review analysis of growing popular discontent in Gaza following the closure of the tunnels after Morsi's overthrow. Shaban examines…
By late 2013 and into 2014, Gaza was experiencing the cumulative effects of six years of blockade combined with the sharp deterioration caused by Egypt's closure of the tunnels after Morsi's overthrow in July 2013. The tunnel economy, which had provided Hamas with significant tax revenue and Gaza's population with smuggled goods at manageable prices, had effectively ended. Hamas's fiscal situation was critical — civil servant salaries were months in arrears, and public services were deteriorating visibly.
This analysis for World Politics Review examines the growing signs of popular discontent within Gaza — protests by unpaid civil servants, frustration among business communities unable to import or export, and a general atmosphere of resignation that was replacing the resilience that had characterized earlier years of the blockade.
The discontent did not necessarily translate into organized political opposition to Hamas. The political space in Gaza did not allow for formal opposition activity, and the deep awareness of the alternatives — the chaos of post-withdrawal Iraq, the collapse of Libya, the violence of Syria — produced a population that was angry but not revolutionary. Gazans were deeply frustrated with their political leaders but fearful of the consequences of instability.
For Hamas, the economic pressure created both governance challenges and strategic opportunities. The challenge was maintaining public services and civil servant pay without revenue. The opportunity was using economic distress to justify continued pressure on Israel and on the international community, framing Gaza's humanitarian crisis as evidence of Israeli collective punishment and international abandonment.
The analysis notes that Israel and the international community interpreted Gaza's economic crisis primarily as a security management problem — how to prevent the crisis from producing military escalation — rather than as a governance and development problem requiring political solutions. This framing produced the same inadequate responses that had characterized international engagement with Gaza throughout the blockade period.
Topic: Gaza Economy — Hamas finances · tunnel closures · public discontent — Text © World Politics Review — archived here with attribution to the source. — Original source