Palestine

 

“HALHUL, West Bank — Kalila was 14 years old when she married her 32-year-old second cousin. She was also 14 when she became pregnant. Neither her marriage nor her pregnancy were her decision; ashamed and embarrassed, as well as afraid of giving birth, she decided to get an abortion. It was a harrowing decision, and one she told no one about. At five months pregnant, Kalila — whose name has been changed — climbed atop a 9-foot stone wall in this Palestinian city and tossed herself off of it, belly first.” 1

Kalila survived, the fetus did not. At the time this article was published, she was 40-years old with six children. “With her achy joints and wrinkled face…she looks more like 60.” Abortions are illegal under Palestinian law, contraceptives are not.2

I hope it will serve a purpose for me to illustrate some facts I dug up about the Palestinian territories. I will compare Gaza and the West Bank separately where I can. I apologize for the teacher-thing; it’s a genetic defect.

Almost every evening TV news brings more death and destruction in Gaza to our family rooms, but what often gets my attention is the number of young men and boys crowded around pancaked Hamas hideouts, gawking at the damage. No doubt some of them are Hamas fighters, or soon will be. A February 2, 2000, article in the New York Times claimed the “high fertility rate of seven children per woman (Gaza) is comparable to Somalia’s or Uganda’s”.  But the survival rate is high, and adults lead a reasonably long life. A Palestinian paper, published in the well-respected English medical journal, The Lancet, found most women employ contraceptives, but don’t really know how to use them. The consequence of this is a population with more than 50% under the age of 20. Depending upon the source, fertility rates vary all over the lot, from 8.12 in 2000, to 4.06 today, with Gaza currently at 4.5 and the West Bank at 3.6. Several U.S. organizations have weighed in on this subject, including previously published data aggregated by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. I remain suspect of the truth of this trend in just over 20 years.3,4

 Before this war the life expectancy of a 20-year-old, according to our own National Institutes of Health figures from 2010, was age 73. That is no great shakes; Gaza ranks #121 in the world by this measure. However, if a person can escape chronic disease – not to mention war, he or she can live well into their 80s. A slowly rising rate in life expectancy in Gaza has experienced significant dips during wars with Israel.  After this one, unfortunately, it’s likely to bottom out.

 In Gaza, as of 2022, less than one in five people of working age were in the labor force, and the unemployment rate was 45.3%. Compare that to the West Bank: the unemployment rate was 13.1%.5 If that is not enough to get your attention, in Israel for 2022, the unemployment rate was 3.8%,6 A factoid, UNRWA is the second largest employer in Gaza with more than 13,000 Palestinian employees in Gaza.7 It is compelling to compare that figure to reports that Israel was working toward allowing 20,000 Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank into Israel for work before October 7.

Over 96% of Palestinians are literate as of 2020, and 20% of the combined population have a college degree. Enrollment in tertiary education (universities, colleges of education or technical schools) in 2020 was 45%.8 The education figures represent Gaza and the West Bank together. These percentages are among the highest in the world. Finally, there is a staggering disparity in economic output. Palestinians with a population of 5.88 million produced a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in 2021 was estimated at $US27.8 billion.9 Israel, a country of 9.6 million, recorded GDP of $US488 billion.10

Unemployment and restricted movement obviously help explain how radicalization takes hold among young men. However, putting the politics of the region aside, it is bewildering how Israel was able to make an arid land bloom and create a modern economy when a population next door, with remarkable literacy and education rates, is still mired in disarray and poverty, under the thumb of terrorists. Why? It can be summarized in one phrase: lack of good governance, manufacturing, and service sector investment in their economy. (Of course, the siege of Gaza is to prevent the flow of material to be stolen by Hamas.) Then it becomes a web of interrelated reasons, all of which point back to the ‘why’: a fragile, feckless Palestinian Authority.

Palestinians have been receiving humanitarian aid every year since 1948. However, for the period 1994 – 2020 they received $40 billion, mostly from the U.S. the EU, UNRWA, and a host of other acronyms, as well as Japan, Canada, and individual Western European countries.11 The White House even announced a $100 million aid package to Gaza on October 18, 2023.12 Not once did I find a penny directly contributed by Russia, or China.

 Class dismissed.

 If you are interested, here is a short sketch of the recent history of the region.

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/gaza-strip/

 

Sources

1 Foreign Policy from December 4, 2015.

2 Shahawy, S. in Health and Human Rights Journal, December 2019, appearing in National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

3 Pell, Stephanie, Global Public Health November 2017, appearing in National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

4 CIA World Factbook

5 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IRBD) –       World Bank

6 Central Bureau of Statistics Israel

7 United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

8 World Bank

9 CIA World Fact Book

10 World Bank

11 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

12 United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

 

Of Old Books and Dead Authors

 

Charing Cross Road in London is famous as the street of booksellers. It is also celebrated in the title of Helene Hampf’s wonderful little book, 84 Charing Cross Road. I bought John LeCarré’s A Perfect Spy on its first day of issue in a store there. Keepers among this writer’s novels are The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the Smiley trilogy, and that one. LeCarré’s early spy novels are usually free of violence and gratuitous sex scenes. I think Hemingway did the most tasteful job describing sex between his protagonist, Robert Jordan, and Pilar’s daughter, Maria, in For Whom the Bell Tolls, with the simple phrase ‘he feels the earth move out and away from under them’. Let me add that was probably Hemingway’s most elegant description of the subject among many.

On the subject of American authors, I have recently been reading East of Eden. I’m about halfway through, about 300 pages. I will grind on through the book in time, but for now I have laid it down. I don’t care for Steinbeck’s style in this book, and many of his metaphors are clunky. None of his books have a ‘happily ever after’ ending, and I don’t expect this one to. For example: Rose of Sharon Joad nurses the starving boy at her breast in a barn in the pouring rain to end The Grapes of Wrath. George has to shoot Lennie in the head so he will not be arrested for accidently killing Curly in Of Mice and Men.  Kino throws his precious find back into the ocean in The Pearl, and in The Winter of our Discontent, Ethan takes razorblades on his walk, following his betrayal of a friend and his own principles. Morality and poverty are common themes for Steinbeck.

Instead, I picked up Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. I have had a paperback of this classic for probably 50 years and never read it. I am grateful to have been born in an era without TV or, God forbid, social media.  Reading became a natural part of my life from the earliest book I remember, Johnny’s Machines.  I read avidly until I reached puberty, and then I finally rediscovered them in college. When I was about 12, we were assigned to read The Green Pastures, a parody of Heaven’s characters in the Black dialect. (Imagine that in today’s middle schools!) It was written for the stage by Marc Connelly in 1930. I came across a copy in the Strand Bookstore in 1984 for $5.00. I still have it, of course.

I marvel at the ability of some authors to write in the vernacular, whether it is Mark Twain, in Huckleberry Finn, William Faulkner in his Mississippi novels, James Baldwin in Go Tell it on the Mountain, or Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus. They are all classics; they have stood tall over many decades, they are still read, and they will NOT be banned for presenting America as it once was. And if you care, Johnny’s Machines (1949) is still available.