Comparing Gaza And Egypt Shows The Failure Of Embracing Hamas

To listen to the media, would would imagine that Gaza is the worst place to live, much worse than neighboring Egypt for example, which controlled the Strip from 1949 to 1967.

Here are the statistics as reported by the World Bank.

Table 1: Life statistics in Gaza and Egypt

The average life expectancy in Gaza is 74 years, about 1.5 years longer than in Egypt. There are roughly 2.5 fewer deaths per 1,000 people in Gaza than in Egypt, with death rates of 3.8 and 6.3, respectively.

The medical care in Gaza is quite good and has extended the lives of Gazans beyond those found in neighboring Arab Egypt. The United Nations providing healthcare to its adopted wards similarly helped the young Gazans.

Table 2: Infant mortality rates per 1,000 live births in Gaza and Egypt

As seen in Table 2, babies born in Palestinian territories do significantly better than they do in Egypt. This is primarily driven by free healthcare services provided by the United Nations to Palestinian Arabs but not to Egyptians.

The United Nations also provides free education to Palestinian Arabs but not to Egyptians.

Table 3: Literacy rates for Palestinian Arabs and Egyptians

The gap in literacy scores between Palestinian Arabs and Egyptians is staggering. According to the World Bank, Palestinian literacy rate is 96.2%, while it is a terrible 67.4% for Egyptians. The Palestinian literacy rate is slightly higher than Saudi Arabia and is only surpassed by Jordan among Arab countries in the region.

Despite the better education and healthcare, Palestinian Arabs have a weaker economy, especially in Gaza.

Table 4: Wealth and poverty in Gaza and Egypt

Gaza is much poorer than the West Bank or Egypt. Until roughly 2017, the poverty rate between the two Palestinian territories were somewhat in line. Those trends broke and now the poverty rate for Arabs in the West Bank was 13.9% while it was 53% in Gaza in 2019. This can be seen in the workforce rate where unemployment in Gaza in 2023 was 45.3% and 13.1% in the West Bank. The unemployment rate in Egypt is much better at 6.96%, while GDP per capita is much higher than in Gaza. The latest poverty rates for Egypt are 27.3%, close to that in the West Bank.

Gaza’s economy is much weaker than in Egypt or the West Bank as the territory is ruled by the Hamas political-terrorist group. Israel and Egypt have a blockade around the area to stop the flow of weapons into the strip which has launched five wars against Israel since it seized the area. Many countries won’t trade with the region because of its violent jihadi leadership which pours its resources into waging war rather than to develop society.

Local Gazans often incorrectly attribute “social services” to Hamas, when the healthcare and education are principally provided by the United Nations. The similarity in healthcare and educational statistics in Gaza and the West Bank prove this out.

Despite Hamas failing Gazans, it remains extremely popular. According to a September 2023 poll, Palestinians would elect the leader of Hamas (58%) over Fatah (37%) to the presidency. Much of that is because 53% of Palestinian believe that the pathway to end the “struggle” against Israel is via violence (as pushed by Hamas), while only 20% support negotiations (as voiced by Fatah).

The United Nations has given Gazans the very best healthcare and education among the region’s Arab nations, all for free. Despite the better education and physical health, Gazans focus their efforts on destroying Israel and in the process, their own economy, and now, their infrastructure.