With Gaza in Financial Crisis, Fears That ‘an Explosion’s Coming’
As moribund as the reconciliation process has become, General Fox said, Hamas
and the Palestinian Authority were keeping it alive because “no one wants to be blamed for destroying it.” If it does fail, Hamas will likely deflect Gazans’ anger: “They’ll say Israel is the problem — ‘Let’s go to jihad and start a war.’”
Climbing back into an armored vehicle, the general drove past an Iron Dome antimissile battery to a park where hundreds of picnickers
and mountain bikers — Jews and Arabs alike — had flocked to see meadows blooming with scarlet anemones.
While thousands of Palestinian Authority workers in Gaza like Mr. Abu Shaaban were forced into early retirement,
and those who remained saw their pay cut 40 percent, some 40,000 Hamas workers — many of them police officers — have not been paid in months, officials say.
Hamas, eager to rid itself of the burdens of governing — though unwilling to disarm its military wing — showed flexibility at the talks, quickly ceding control over border crossings like the one with Israel at Kerem Shalom,
and the tax collections there that had provided it with some $20 million a month.
The one it has resorted to three times — going to war with Israel, in hopes of generating international sympathy
and relief in the aftermath — suddenly seems least attractive.
