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The tragedy of Gaza

Summary:
Dear friends, I said I wouldn't post any more on this site. But Elon Musk doesn't like me posting Substack links on Twitter. And Substack itself is a mess. The home page looks amateurish, and new posts don't even appear on it until they've amassed enough views to push down previous posts. It's an absurd way of organising a site. So I have decided in future to post links to my Substack posts here. Hopefully this will mean you can find them more easily, both on Google and Twitter. Some of my Substack posts have paywalls, but you will have the option to subscribe or opt for a free trial. Here's the introduction to my latest Substack post, The Tragedy of Gaza. Click the link to read all of it. It is free to read.The Palestinian economy is enduring a fiscal crisis and the economic outlook is

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Dear friends, I said I wouldn't post any more on this site. But Elon Musk doesn't like me posting Substack links on Twitter. And Substack itself is a mess. The home page looks amateurish, and new posts don't even appear on it until they've amassed enough views to push down previous posts. It's an absurd way of organising a site. 

So I have decided in future to post links to my Substack posts here. Hopefully this will mean you can find them more easily, both on Google and Twitter. Some of my Substack posts have paywalls, but you will have the option to subscribe or opt for a free trial. 

Here's the introduction to my latest Substack post, The Tragedy of Gaza. Click the link to read all of it. It is free to read.



The Palestinian economy is enduring a fiscal crisis and the economic outlook is dire.” - IMF, 26th April 2022.
I’m sure everyone realises by now that Gaza’s economy has fallen off a cliff. There is almost no productive activity, so GDP has collapsed and nearly everyone is unemployed. The UN estimates that Gaza’s GDP fell by 24% in 2023. It is of course still falling - rapidly.

Massive GDP falls are common in wars: for example, Ukraine’s economy shrank by 30% in 2022, equivalent to the US Great Depression. But what people perhaps don’t realise is how bad things were before the current crisis.


In the rest of this post, I examine: 
  • the large growing divergence between the economies of Gaza and the West Bank, using data from the IMF 
  • the economic cost to both Gaza and the West Bank of Israel's fifteen-year blockade of Gaza and repeated military actions
  • how disastrous internal politics in Palestine and malicious meddling by external powers, notably the US, tipped Gaza into long-term decline 
  • how wars and protests fatally weakened the Gaza economy
  • why the October 7th attacks were inevitable 
  • why Israel's end game is the total destruction of Gaza, and why we are powerless to prevent it. 
Read my full analysis here

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Image: Theatre mask mosaic, Naples National Archaeological Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Frances Coppola
I’m Frances Coppola, writer, singer and twitterer extraordinaire. I am politically non-aligned and economically neutral (I do not regard myself as “belonging” to any particular school of economics). I do not give investment advice and I have no investments.Coppola Comment is my main blog. I am also the author of the Singing is Easy blog, where I write about singing, teaching and muscial expression, and Still Life With Paradox, which contains personal reflections on life, faith and morality.

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