The Palestinian economy is being wrecked by the Gaza war. But good luck finding any articles about it in Palestinian media.
Western observers simply cannot fathom how much self-censorship exists among Palestinians, both in its media and among its people talking to the media. The honor/shame dynamic ensures that no one will say anything to outsiders that make them look vulnerable or weak. Palestinians tell themselves that they are strong, that they have "sumud" (steadfastness). Reality itself must be denied to maintain that fiction.
Obviously Gaza's economy is in shambles. Before the war, the unemployment rate was slowly going down, some 19,000 Gazans had obtained permission to work in Israel at much higher wages than they could get inside Gaza, the number of imports and exports from Gaza had risen to higher than the levels before Hamas' takeover and Israel's restrictions on the sector. Hamas chose to throw all Gazans under the bus in their zeal to murder Jews, and most Gazans still support that goal.
The International Labour Organization estimated in early November that Gaza lost 182,000 jobs from the war so far, and that additionally some 208,000 West Bank Palestinians have lost their jobs as well, most of them from losing their jobs in Israel - which pay more than double the average local wages. Others have lost because tourism has gone down to almost zero.
Yet you will not find any of the hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed West Bank Palestinians complaining in the media about their loss of livelihood because of Hamas. That stoicness is their idea of sumud - supporting even the most heinous acts against Israel in the interest of appearing unified to the world.
And even if they do complain, the Palestinian media will not report it.
Outside the Palestinian areas, however, you will find articles about the impact to their economy - in places like Sky News Arabia or China's Arabic News.
And in English, the UN Development Program warned about the economic impact of the war last month:
The rapid assessment of economic consequences of the Gaza war released Thursday by the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for West Asia was the first U.N. report showing the devastating impact of the conflict especially on the Palestinians.If the war continues for a second month, the U.N. projects that the Palestinian GDP, which was $20.4 billion before the war began, will drop by 8.4% — a loss of $1.7 billion. And if the conflict lasts a third month, Palestinian GDP will drop by 12%, with losses of $2.5 billion and more than 660,000 people pushed into poverty, it projects.U.N. Development Program Assistant Secretary-General Abdallah Al Dardari told a news conference that a 12% GDP loss at the end of the year would be “massive and unprecedented.” By comparison, he said, the Syrian economy used to lose 1% of its GDP per month at the height of its conflict, and it took Ukraine a year and a half of fighting to lose 30% of its GDP, an average of about 1.6% a month.
If the local media is not reporting on these issues of supreme concern to local residents, then what purpose does it serve?
Propaganda.
While Palestinian media isn't mentioning the economic losses to their own people, they are gleefully reporting on the war's economic impact to Israel.
Palestinian media wants to give the impression to its customers that it is winning. This is the message that their leaders insist the media pushes, but they don't need incentive - it is now baked in to how they think. And every time a foreign reporter or NGO speaks to a Palestinian, they don't realize that nearly every answer they get is tainted by this refusal to discuss reality in front of outsiders.
This twists world coverage of the conflict.
But it is the rare reporter who bothers to go beyond the sloganeering and self-deception to report the real story of how Palestinians truly feel about Hamas destroying their livelihoods and their lives. And when they do, they won't blame Hamas - but Israel.
