A 2012 UN REPORT POSED the poignant question, Will Gaza be a “liveable place” in 2020? Its response, based on current trends, was just barely, while it would require “herculean efforts” to reverse these trends.1 The prognosis appeared yet bleaker a few years later. “Three Israeli military operations in the past six years, in addition to eight years of economic blockade,” a 2015 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report found, “have ravaged the already debilitated infrastructure of Gaza, shattered its productive base, left no time for meaningful reconstruction or economic recovery and impoverished the Palestinian population in Gaza.” At the time of writing, some 50 percent of Gaza’s population is unemployed, while 70 percent is food-insecure and dependent on humanitarian aid; 70 percent of the nearly 20,000 homes destroyed during Protective Edge have still not been rebuilt; 70 percent of Gazans have piped water supplies for only 6–8 hours every two to four days, while nearly all Gazans suffer from power outages lasting 16–18 hours each day. For the first time in a half century, a team of health researchers found, “mortality rates have increased among Palestine refugee newborns in Gaza.” In answer to the question posed by the 2012 UN report, the 2015 UNCTAD report forecast that on the present trajectory, “Gaza will be unliveable” in 2020.2 It’s possible that this projection, which gave Gaza a five-year window of opportunity, was too sanguine. Another war with Gaza was “inevitable,” senior Israeli officials ominously observed in 2016. “We cannot conduct a constant war of attrition. Therefore, the next conflict has to be the last conflict.”
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