Western media has often focused on this issue to the detriment of many other conflicts or independence movements throughout the world. The BBC, in particular, has devoted an inordinate amount of its budget and staff to covering the West Bank and Gaza in thousands of reports over the years. But you would be hard pressed to learn from the BBC’s coverage that, despite many difficulties, Gaza’s economy is also thriving in all kinds of ways.
To get a glimpse of that you would have to turn instead to this recent Al-Jazeera
report from Gaza, showing footage of the bustling, well-stocked glitzy shopping malls, the impressive children’s water park (at 5.25 in the video), the fancy restaurants, the nice hotels, the crowded food markets, the toy shops brimming with the latest plush toys (at 8.39 in the video). (This video was translated into English by the excellent
Middle East Media Research Institute).
The West Bank also has good quality shopping malls and other prosperous
aspects to it. And while, of course, there are also many poor people in Gaza – just as there are poor people in London, New York, Washington, Paris and Tel Aviv – this prosperity among Palestinians is not just for the wealthy. Much of the population enjoys the benefits of it in one way or other. None of this is new. I have written about it several times before, for example, here in 2009 for the
Wall Street Journal.
Occasionally, other journalists have too. Peter Hitchens, writing from Gaza for the
Mail on Sunday in 2010, calls it ‘the world’s most misrepresented location’ and talks of ‘enjoying a rather good café latte in an elegant beachfront café’ and visiting a ‘sparkling new Gaza Mall, and … eat(ing) an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant’. Hitchens adds, in reference to the oft stated claim that Gaza is under siege:
(full article online)
The good news about Gaza you won’t hear on the BBC | Coffee House