Since Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which controls parts of the West Bank, signed a reconciliation agreement in October, Gazans have indeed benefited. Consumer prices, for instance, have dropped sharply, thanks in part to the fact that imports ceased to be taxed twice—once by Hamas and once by the PA. But Hamas has already begun to undermine its gains, as Evelyn Gordon explains:
Though the PA has yet to fulfill most of its promises to Hamas [under the agreement], the latter has already resumed collecting taxes. . . . The reconciliation was also supposed to bring another benefit: the reopening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which has been closed almost continuously for the last four years. . . . And in fact, it did open for three days two weeks ago, and was supposed to open for another three days this past weekend.
But after Islamic State’s horrific attack on a Sinai mosque, . . . Egypt abruptly announced that Rafah would once again be shut for “security reasons.” As the daily Israel Hayom explained, citing a senior PA official, “Egypt’s security forces suspect that some of the terrorists involved in the attack, as well as other wanted individuals, fled Sinai and entered Gaza via underground smuggling tunnels belonging to Hamas, with the knowledge of senior Hamas officials.” Given Hamas’s track record, that would hardly be surprising.
Incidentally, this track record conclusively disproves the widespread fallacy that Hamas is primarily concerned with the Palestinian cause rather than the cause of global jihad. An organization concerned with Palestinian wellbeing would strive to preserve good relations with Egypt in order to ensure that Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world remained open. Only an organization that prioritized global jihad way above Palestinian wellbeing would offer extensive aid to Islamic State, even at the price of having Rafah almost permanently closed.
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/gazas-latest-lesson-in-self-inflicted-misery/