To the editor:
The key to understanding Gaza, along with the distorted analysis in Gideon Levy's op-ed "The lesser child of Israel's occupation," is his accusation that "two decades later, Gaza is even worse off."
It's actually nearly a quarter century since Israel turned over governance of the Arabs in the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority and well over a decade since Israel completely left Gaza.
When Israel administered Gaza, it built schools and hospitals, roads and water infrastructure. Living conditions for the people in Gaza improved dramatically.
Today, instead, missiles and tunnels are built and the basements of hospitals are used as military/terrorist command bases.
Hamas calls its planned six weeks of violent riots the "March of Return." Its moniker illustrates the riots have nothing to do with improving the lives of the people in Gaza; Hamas doesn't care about the people. Rather, they're about having millions of descendants of refugees "returning" to a country, one in which they never lived and which they hate, in order to destroy it.
Technically, Israel never "occupied" Gaza and is never going to take responsibility for Gaza again, but the people in Gaza would clearly be far better off if we did.
Levy is correct that Gaza is "a disaster zone," but he's totally wrong when he calls it "one of Zionism’s greatest victims." It's a victim of a Palestinian leadership that doesn't care how much it hurts its own people in its fanatical vendetta against the world's only Jewish state.
Sincerely,
Alan Stein