GAZA — The bank executive sits in a suit and tie behind his broad empty desk with plenty of time to talk. Almost no loans are being issued or corporate plans made. The Texas-trained engineer closed his firm because nothing is being built. The business student who dreamed of attending an American university — filling a computer file with meticulous hopes and plans — has stopped dreaming. He goes from school to a part-time job to home, where he joins his merchant father who sits unemployed.
Ten months after the Israeli military said it invaded this Palestinian coastal strip to stop the daily rocket fire of its Islamist rulers, there are many ways to measure the misery of Gaza.
Bits of rubble are being cleared, but nothing is going up. Several thousand homes remain destroyed. Several dozen families still live in United Nations tents strung amid their ruined houses. A three-year-old embargo on Hamas imposed by Israel and Egypt keeps nearly all factories shut and supplies away. Eighty percent of the population gets some form of assistance.
But the misery of the educated and professional class has a particular poignancy. Many abroad view Gaza as a large slum, yet there is near universal literacy here and infant mortality is low by regional standards. Midsize glass towers gleam. Many thousands have advanced degrees. Half a dozen stylish restaurants fill each day with young women — a few with heads uncovered — carrying laptop computers, and with the underemployed, who smoke hookahs and lament their future.
“We are entering very dark years,” remarked Slama Bissiso, vice chairman of the Palestinian Bar Association, slowly exhaling scented tobacco smoke on the balcony of the Deira Hotel overlooking the Mediterranean. He said that the embargo on Gaza and the divide between the Hamas government here and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank were driving Gaza into deeper isolation every month.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, announced on Friday that elections would be held in January. But it was effectively an announcement that Fatah and Hamas had failed to reconcile their differences despite Egyptian mediation. There will be no election here without the agreement of Hamas, and it has no intention of granting it now. If that means a vote will be held in the West Bank only, the horizons of Gaza will retreat even further.
Hamas’s control of Gaza feels solidly unchallenged. Its security forces patrol the streets. Pictures of President Abbas with big X’s across his face line the main avenue, sadly known as Unity Street. A new sign on the Gaza side of the Israeli border bars even foreigners from bringing in alcohol.
Left out of the banking system, Hamas affiliates opened their own bank recently. In keeping with Muslim strictures, it does not charge interest or offer loans, making money by buying cars or homes the customer wants, then reselling them at a higher price.
Israel allows about 100 trucks a day to pass into Gaza bearing food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. But it has closed off commerce in the hope of alienating the population here from their rulers. That seems to be happening. Yet if no election occurs, it is hard to see how the alienation can be expressed or government changed.
Israel wants to isolate Hamas because the group rejects Israel’s existence. As Ayman Taha, a Hamas movement spokesman, said in an interview, “Our long-term strategy is the liberation of all of Palestine, but we would agree to a temporary solution involving a state in the 1967 borders with a truce of about 10 years, depending on the conditions of the truce.”
Egypt rejects Hamas because of its affiliation with the Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood. Both Egypt and Israel worry about Iranian arming of the group as well.
The increasing isolation of Gaza is taking its toll. Opportunities for training and education abroad or for outsiders to come here, for example, are scarce. The children’s library in the center of the city could not persuade either Israeli or Egyptian officials to let anyone in to help set up new programs or carry out quality control.
Executives at Jawwal, the Palestinian cellphone company, sat last week at their work stations in blue jeans — as at the end of every work week it was Casual Thursday — and said their jobs were getting harder because spare parts and training were unavailable. Their senior managers, who used to travel abroad once a month, now cannot travel at all.
While 1,100 students admitted to programs abroad did get through the crossing into Egypt over the past few months — and another 50 were granted permission through Israel — more than 800 others who had spots waiting for them were unable to leave, according to Gisha, an Israeli human rights group.
Many of the professionals here reject Hamas’s ideology, although some voted for the party in 2006 out of rage over the corruption in Fatah.
“Hamas won by a slim margin, and it was because of people like me,” said Mohamed, who comes from a Fatah family and works for a charity. “I regret voting for them. I wanted to punish Fatah.”
Like nearly all in Gaza who spoke about politics, he asked that his identity be hidden for fear of what the government might do. The rules of political dissent remain fuzzy.
The Texas-trained engineer also voted for Hamas in 2006 and wishes he had not.
“Israel is saying, ‘Because you elected Hamas, you should have no life,’ ” he said. “Yet people elected Hamas because of Fatah corruption. I believe in peace with Israel, but I wanted desperately to get away from the corruption. I didn’t expect Hamas to win. Next time, I won’t vote at all.”
While the legitimate economy here depends on foreign aid that provides salaries for tens of thousands to do little, the black market for high-priced goods smuggled in from Egypt through hundreds of tunnels is thriving, leading to the growth of a tunnel mafia.
Professionals here are frustrated that their political options are Fatah, which they still consider corrupt, and Hamas, whose ideology poses problems for them and for many foreign governments.
Some said the rejection of Hamas by the world meant it made no sense for it to stay in power, but they had no idea how to effect a change.
“I’d like to see the creation of a political alternative with businesspeople instead of Hamas and Fatah,” said Rami Alagha, 39, manager of the Jawwal cellphone company. “The United States and the Europeans could get behind such a program. Otherwise we have no future.”
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