А здесь и догадываться не надо...

 

August 04, 2010

The sight of a brand new Chevrolet with 2010 plates cruising through down town Gaza City begs the question: how on earth did it get there?
The partial Israeli/Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip saw the importation of vehicles banned until now.

From this month Israel is allowing cars to be brought in, but Gazans will still not be able to buy them legitimately because rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah cannot agree on who should control the business.

So the Chevy and the dozens of other new cars seen around town are making it here via the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza/Egypt border.

A video obtained by Sky News shows a bulldozer pulling a large car through a tunnel.

Another published on the web shows two cars driving through en route to the showrooms of Gaza City.

All this comes at a price, both financial and human.

The human cost is in the dozens of lives lost due to collapsing tunnels.




Demand for new cars is high among the middle and upper classes



The financial cost of paying the tunnel builders, and the smuggler, doubles the price of the car once in Gaza.

For example, a mid-spec Chevrolet Cruze automatic, which sells in the UK for about £15,000, was on sale at around £30,000.

So, who in Gaza can afford that?

Gaza's middle and upper classes do not feature much in news reports - but they do exist.

This explains why there are swimming pools and water parks, boutique hotels, excellent restaurants and a brand new shopping mall.

They are doing well out of the minority of those lucky enough to have jobs.

The UN estimates that 40% of people here are unemployed.

Of those in work, about a third are on the government payroll and the cultural norm here is that wages are used to take care of the extended family.

That spreads available cash thinly, but the well-stocked supermarkets, luxury goods and new cars show that there is a level of society that can afford them.




Smugglers risk their lives to get the cars into Gaza



That stratum is small but it is wrong to depict all Gazans as spending their lives in abject poverty scrabbling through the ruins of buildings bombed by the Israeli Defence Forces.

The poverty levels seen here can be found in many parts of the Middle East.

What is different is how widespread they are, added to the fact that even if you can escape poverty, it is hard to escape from Gaza.

Nor can residents escape the fall-out from the continuing bitterness between Hamas, which rules Gaza, and rivals Fatah, who control the West Bank.

So, the blockade of cars remains, but this time because of internal Palestinian politics, and the cars are still coming into Gaza the dangerous, illegal, and costly way.

Palestinians pay high prices in so many ways.