Author: Martin Kramer

Gaza buried in flour

On By Martin Kramer

The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline “Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza.” The authors are Eyad al-Sarraj, identified as founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and Sara Roy, identified as senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won’t even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:

Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.

You don’t need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.

A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same “statistic” in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that “the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter.” Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being “a reduction of 99 percent.”

Note how an absurd and impossible “statistic” has made its way up the media food chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard “research scholar,” and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can’t do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that “reduction of 99 percent” becomes a well-attested fact.

What’s the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there’s less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza—maybe it’s those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?—but even if it’s only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn’t anything near a “reduction of 99 percent.” Unfortunately, if readers are going to remember one dramatic “statistic” from this op-ed, this one is it—and it’s a lie.

Sarraj is a psychiatrist, but his co-author, Sara Roy, bills herself in her bio as a “political economist.” Her research, the bio reports, is “primarily on the economic, social and political development of the Gaza Strip.” You would think someone with this claim to expertise would know better than to copy some impossible pseudo-statistic on the consumption of the most basic foodstuff in Gaza. Indeed, in a piece she wrote a decade ago, she herself put Gaza’s daily consumption of flour at 275 tons. Did she even read her own op-ed before she sent it off to Boston’s leading paper? If she did, what we have here is a textbook example of the difference between a “political economist” and an economist.

Update: The Boston Globe, presumably after consulting Sarraj and Roy, has added this correction:

A column on Saturday by Eyad al-Sarraj and Sara Roy incorrectly said that Gaza requires 680,000 tons of flour daily to feed its population. It is 680,000 pounds, which means a reduction of 73 percent, not 99 percent, of flour allowed into Gaza.

What originated as a half-malicious, half-unthinking repetition of a fantastic charge against Israel, is now presented by Sarraj and Roy as somebody’s typo, compounded by a little bad math.

In fact, the “correction” is nearly as pathetic as the “error” it is meant to fix. Measuring the flour needs of Gaza in pounds is like measuring the distance from Boston to New York in yards. The UN, Palestinian ministries, and aid agencies all use tons. The pounds-for-tons “correction” is an attempt to cover up the authors’ original sin: they just copied the figure straight from the Ahram Weekly (which anyway doesn’t use pounds—it uses metric measurements). The Boston Globe should go back to the authors and ask for the precise source of their figures. It’s called fact-checking.

Gaza en Égypte

On By Martin Kramer

“Voilà qui pourrait ressembler à une bénédiction”. C’est par ces mots qu’un responsable israélien anonyme a accueilli la destruction par le Hamas d’un morceau de la barrière frontalière qui sépare Gaza de l’Egypte, et qui a été suivie par un flot incontrôlé de centaines de milliers de Palestiniens de Gaza passant de Gaza en Egypte. “Il y a des gens au Ministère de la Défense, au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et au bureau du Premier Ministre que ça rend très heureux. Ils disent : ‘Enfin, le désengagement commence à fonctionner.'” A l’évidence, une frontière brisée entre l’Egypte et Gaza est un problème sécuritaire majeur pour Israël. Mais le matériel de guerre et l’argent destinés au Hamas passaient la frontière de toutes façons. Une frontière ouverte dédouane effectivement Israël de sa responsabilité sur la population de Gaza et peut le pousser à se séparer de son infrastructure restante et à couper les liaisons de ravitaillement à Gaza. Une grande partie de la responsabilité envers Gaza serait déplacée d’Israël à l’Egypte, ce qui pourrait expliquer les murmures de satisfaction entendus à Jérusalem.

Mais les conséquences de la grande brèche vont au-delà. Etant donné que Gaza et la Cisjordanie ne sont pas près d’être réunies, la question de la viabilité propre de Gaza comme entité séparée est obligée de refaire surface. Dans les années 90, les économistes parlaient des chances de succès de Gaza en fonction des aspects économiques : un investissement massif pourrait la transformer en un Singapour avec de hauts immeubles.

Mais dans un article écrit à l’été 1991, un géographe de pointe a expliqué que ce n’était pas faisable, et qu’il faudrait plus de terre pour rendre Gaza viable. La plupart de cette terre, a-t-il déclaré, devrait venir d’Egypte.

“Viabilité de Gaza : le besoin d’agrandissement de sa base terrestre” – tel était le titre d’un article de Saul B. Cohen, géographe américain distingué et ex-président du Queens College et de l’Association des Géographes américains.

Cohen commence par affirmer : un Gaza aux hauts immeubles “serait un désastre écologique… Pour réussir à devenir un mini-Etat, un qui servirait de “porte d’entrée” (…), Gaza aura besoin de terre supplémentaire.” Cohen a calculé qu’un Gaza viable aurait besoin d’environ 1.000 km² de territoire, ce qui requiert 650 km² supplémentaire.

Voici comment il a cartographié sa proposition :

L’Egypte fournirait une bande côtière sur la Méditerranée de 30 km (200 km²), faisant de Gaza une bande côtière sur la Méditerranée d’environ 75 km. L’Egypte fournirait également une partie de la plaine nord du Sinaï (300 km²), et Israël donnerait un morceau de son côté de la frontière (150 km²). Cela ferait une surface suffisante, écrit Cohen, “pour soulager la surpopulation de Gaza, garantir des réserves de terre agricole et naturelle et déployer des activités urbaines (dont des petites villes et des hôtels) pour fournir un paysage culturel unique d’immeubles peu élevés.” L’Egypte fournirait l’eau (par une extension du canal des eaux du Nil depuis El Arish) et l’énergie (par une conduite de gaz naturel).

Cohen pensait aussi que les colonies israéliennes de Gush Qatif “devraient à long terme être retirées“. Le long terme n’a pas pris tant de temps.

Les Accords d’Oslo ont éclipsé l’idée d’un mini-Etat de Gaza. Gaza était supposé trouver ses débouchés en Cisjordanie, par un couloir sécurisé. L’idée d’un Gaza étendu a été reprise peu de temps après le retrait unilatéral israélien par un géographe israélien (et ancien recteur de l’Université Hébraïque), Yehoshua Ben-Arieh. Il est parti de cette affirmation : un couloir vers la Cisjordanie ne suffirait pas à soulager la pression croissante à Gaza. Gaza ne pourrait être viable que si elle devenait un carrefour ou une porte, ce qui nécessiterait un port en eau profonde, un aéroport et une nouvelle ville.

Ben-Arieh a proposé un échange à trois flux. L’Autorité Palestinienne recevrait de 500 à 1.000 km² du nord Sinaï égyptien. Israël donnerait à l’Egypte 250 à 500 km² le long de leur frontière commune à Paran, et donnerait aussi à l’Egypte une route couloir vers la Jordanie. En Cisjordanie, l’Autorité Palestinienne cèderait à Israël la même superficie de territoire (500 à 1.000 km²) reçue de l’Egypte. C’est ainsi que Ben-Arieh dressait la carte sud de son plan.

Ben-Arieh a présenté son idée et ses cartes au Premier Ministre d’alors Ariel Sharon, qui, selon Ben-Arieh, a qualifié le plan de prématuré, mais ne l’a pas rejeté. “Peut-être qu’un jour ce sera une idée“, aurait-il dit.

Pour quiconque connaît les complexités des politiques, ces plans semblent grotesques. Mais alors que les géographes ratent souvent les détails diaboliques, ils savent ce que comporte de réellement provisoire la carte du Moyen Orient. C’est une représentation schématique d’autres forces, et si la puissance de ces forces change, la carte finira par le montrer. Il y avait 350.000 palestiniens à Gaza en 1967. Ils sont maintenant 1,3 millions, qui poussent le carcan des frontières étroites de Gaza avec une force croissante. Israël a le pouvoir et la détermination de les repousser. L’Egypte ne l’a pas, et c’est pour cette raison que le carcan a explosé à cet endroit là.

Cette pression ne va pas se relâcher, et puisque le Hamas cherche à la canaliser dans un “droit au retour sur les ruines d’Israël”, ce que les Etats-Unis rejettent, la question est : où Washington propose-t-il de dévier cette pression ? Son “processus de paix”, maintenant entièrement focalisé sur la Cisjordanie, peut-il dévier quoique ce soit ? A moins que la Maison Blanche n’arrive à faire changer le cours de l’eau, il est peut-être temps de revisiter les alternatives des géographes, et de demander honnêtement si elles sont plus grotesques que la politique actuelle.

Gaza into Egypt

On By Martin Kramer

“This may be a blessing in disguise.” This is how an unnamed Israeli official greeted the destruction by Hamas of a chunk of the border barrier separating Gaza from Egypt, followed by an unregulated flood of hundreds of thousands of Gazan Palestinians across the border into Egypt. “Some people in the Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and prime minister’s office are very happy with this. They are saying, ‘At last, the disengagement is beginning to work.'” Obviously, a broken border between Egypt and Gaza is a major security problem for Israel. But war matériel and money for Hamas crossed the border anyway. An open border effectively absolves Israel of responsibility for the well-being of Gaza’s population, and may prompt Israel to sever its remaining infrastructure and supply links to Gaza. A large part of the responsibility for Gaza would be shifted from Israel to Egypt, which might explain the satisfied murmurings in Jerusalem.

But the implications of the big breach go further. Given that Gaza and the West Bank are unlikely to be reunited, the question of Gaza’s own viability as a separate entity is bound to resurface. In the 1990s, economists talked about Gaza’s viability as a function of economics: massive investment could turn it into a high-rise Singapore. But in an article written back in the summer of 1991, a leading geographer argued that this wasn’t feasible, and that a viable Gaza would need more land. Most of it, he argued, would have to come from Egypt.

“Gaza Viability: The Need for Enlargement of its Land Base”—that was the title of an article by Saul B. Cohen, a distinguished American geographer and one-time president of Queens College and the Association of American Geographers. Cohen began with this basic assumption: a high-rise Gaza “would be ecologically disastrous… To become a successful mini-state, one that would serve as a ‘gateway’ or exchange-type state, Gaza will need additional land.” Cohen calculated that a viable Gaza would need about 1,000 square kilometers of territory—that is, an additional 650 square kilometers. This is how he mapped his proposal:

Egypt would provide a 30-kilometer stretch of Mediterranean coast (200 square kilometers), giving an expanded Gaza a total Mediterranean coast of about 75 kilometers. Egypt would also provide a stretch of the north Sinai plain (300 square kilometers), and Israel would kick in a parcel on its side of the border (150 square kilometers). This would be sufficient area, Cohen wrote, “to relieve Gaza’s overcrowding, provide for agricultural and natural land reserves, and spread urban activities (including small towns and hotels) to provide a unique, low-rise cultural landscape.” Egypt would provide water (by extending a Nile water canal from El Arish) and power (via a natural gas line). Cohen also believed that Israeli settlements at Gush Qatif “in the long run should be removed.” The long run didn’t take all that long.

The Oslo accords eclipsed the idea of a Gaza mini-state. Gaza was supposed to find its outlet in the West Bank, through a safe-passage corridor. The idea of an expanded Gaza was revived shortly before Israel’s unilateral withdrawal, by an Israeli geographer (and former rector of Hebrew University), Yehoshua Ben-Arieh. He proceeded from this assumption: a corridor to the West Bank would not suffice to relieve the pressure building up in Gaza. Gaza could only be viable if it became a crossroads or gateway, which would require a deep-water port, an airport, and a new city. Ben-Arieh proposed a three-way swap. The Palestinian Authority would be given 500 to 1,000 square kilometers of Egypt’s northern Sinai. Israel would give Egypt 250 to 500 square kilometers along their shared border at Paran, and would also give Egypt a corridor road to Jordan. On the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority would cede to Israel the same amount of territory (500 to 1,000 square kilometers) it received in Egypt. This is how Ben-Arieh mapped the southern part of his plan:

Ben-Arieh presented his idea and maps to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, who (according to Ben-Arieh) described the plan as premature, but didn’t reject it. “Maybe one day it can become an idea,” he reportedly said.

To anyone who knows the complexities of the politics, these plans look fantastic. But while geographers often miss the devilish details, they do have an appreciation of how tentative the map of the Middle East really is. It is a schematic representation of other forces, and if the strength of those forces changes, the map will ultimately show it. There were 350,000 Palestinians in Gaza in 1967. Now there are 1.3 million, who are pushing against the envelope of Gaza’s narrow borders with growing force. Israel has the power and the resolve to push back. Egypt just doesn’t, which is why the envelope burst where it did.

That pressure will not relent, and since Hamas seeks to channel it into a “right of return” on the ruins of Israel, which the United States says it rejects, the question is this: where does Washington propose to divert this pressure? Can its “peace process,” now focused entirely on the West Bank, divert any of it? Unless the White House can make water flow uphill, perhaps now is time to revisit the geographers’ alternatives, and honestly ask whether they’re more fantastic than the present policy.