Quote Originally Posted by Balanbam00 View Post
So leaving Gaza is made difficult by Hamas no less than by other bodies. But the real OP question is WHY?

A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip between June 29 and July 1, 2017 reported that 47% of the residents of the Gaza Strip would emigrate were they given the chance. [Face-to-face interviews were conducted with a random sample of 1,200 adults in 120 residential locations with an error rate of 3%.] Here are just some of the consequences of significant emigration of Palestinians out of the Strip:

Such extreme lack of support for Hamas leadership and management would be devastatingly embarrassing.
The loss of the lucrative businesses of taxes on smuggled merchandise from the illegal tunnels into Egypt, along with the present, ongoing Hamas exit permits (for round-trips) would be a heavy financial blow.
The heavy taxes all the people are required to pay the government is very much needed, especially since Abbas (the Palestinian Authority) has increasingly been cutting off funds to Gaza.
The purpose of Hamas is to the ‘reclaim’ land allegedly belonging to Gazan inhabitants. If the people choose to move away to live in other countries, Hamas loses its reason for being.
Hamas needs its people to supply its fighters. It needs its civilians to shield its fighters.
Hamas needs people to stay in its Gazan refugee camps (even though they are already in their Palestinian homeland!) in order to keep up the flow of money from international organizations for ‘refugees’.
A significant exodus would make it much more difficult to maintain that Palestinians are united behind the inflexible Hamas goal of replacing Israel with an all-Arab country.
A 14 year old Palestinian kid uses a sling-hot to chuck a stone at the IDF and this is the usual type of Israeli "justified reprisal"...

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