Don’t forget Gaza

Two years have just passed since Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which aimed to stop rocket fire from Gaza and arms imports into the territory. Since then, only the efforts of international activists to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in 2010, most famously the Turkish boat Mavi Marmara in May 2010, created any urgency to ...

SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images
SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images
SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images

Two years have just passed since Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which aimed to stop rocket fire from Gaza and arms imports into the territory. Since then, only the efforts of international activists to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in 2010, most famously the Turkish boat Mavi Marmara in May 2010, created any urgency to address the plight of the impoverished Palestinian territory. Those events did lead Israel’s security cabinet, under concerted international pressure, to announce a set of measures to ease its land blockade, though a coalition of international humanitarian NGOs has criticized the move as inadequate. Rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel and its communities has also risen alarmingly over the past few weeks. Faced with banner headlines about the “Palestine Papers,” the people’s uprising in Tunisia, protests in Egypt, and escalating political tensions in Lebanon, Western observers are hardly focused on Gaza under Hamas rule. But the recent rise in hostilities between the Israeli military and Gaza’s militants as well as the plight of Gazans themselves should be a timely reminder of the danger of ignoring the Gaza situation for too long.

Before Hamas forcefully took over the territory in June 2007, I had lived and worked in Gaza as an official for the United Nations. On my recent trip there to assess current socioeconomic conditions and Hamas’s efforts at governance and institution-building, I found that Gaza had changed dramatically in the intervening years, and not necessarily for the better.

Read more.

<p> Salman Shaikh is director of the Brookings Doha Center and fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He previously served as the special assistant to the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. </p>

More from Foreign Policy

Keri Russell as Kate Wyler walks by a State Department Seal from a scene in The Diplomat, a new Netflix show about the foreign service.
Keri Russell as Kate Wyler walks by a State Department Seal from a scene in The Diplomat, a new Netflix show about the foreign service.

At Long Last, the Foreign Service Gets the Netflix Treatment

Keri Russell gets Drexel furniture but no Senate confirmation hearing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron speak in the garden of the governor of Guangdong's residence in Guangzhou, China, on April 7.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron speak in the garden of the governor of Guangdong's residence in Guangzhou, China, on April 7.

How Macron Is Blocking EU Strategy on Russia and China

As a strategic consensus emerges in Europe, France is in the way.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin greets U.S. President George W. Bush prior to a meeting of APEC leaders in 2001.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin greets U.S. President George W. Bush prior to a meeting of APEC leaders in 2001.

What the Bush-Obama China Memos Reveal

Newly declassified documents contain important lessons for U.S. China policy.

A girl stands atop a destroyed Russian tank.
A girl stands atop a destroyed Russian tank.

Russia’s Boom Business Goes Bust

Moscow’s arms exports have fallen to levels not seen since the Soviet Union’s collapse.