On September 11 2005, Israel left the Gaza Strip. The next day, four synagogues went up in flames. A cheering alliance of young men from Hamas and Fatah hailed these desecrations as bonfires celebrating the future of an independent Palestine.
Eighteen months later, fighters from the two organisations were still co-operating in attacks on their hated neighbour. By June 2007 their Kassam missiles had killed 11 Israelis. In that same period, some 600 Palestinians became victims of internecine warfare. Thousands more were wounded and half the population traumatised by a relentless chain of revenge slayings. Hidden behind masks, even brothers were at each other's throats.
Who is to blame for all this violence and conflict? There are many answers to that, but it is interesting to note that Ahmed Youssef, a top Hamas man and political adviser to Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, does not blame Gaza's troubles on either "the Jews" or the lack of religious faith among his secular opponents in Fatah. In May 2007 he told Cairo's Al Ahram newspaper that the main problem was the inability of both Fatah and Hamas "to control their men in the streets".
But why has violence exploded out of control in a culture where obedience is an uncontested virtue? The answer lies in a different kind of explosion.
Gaza has been overwhelmed by a demographic boom that shows no sign of abating. Between 1950 and 2007, its population has jumped from 240,000 to nearly 1.5m. How was such rapid growth possible in a small territory that has no economy to speak of?
This extraordinary achievement was accomplished by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. UNRWA - in accordance with international law - treats every resident of Gaza as a refugee. It provides housing, schooling and medication for every newborn - whether a first child or a 10th sibling.
The same organization that allowed the Rwanda massacres to take place, and subsidizes inter-generational terrorism in Pakistan refugee camps.
| Actually, no. Paleostine has its very own separate UN refugee agency, answerable to no one, apparently. |
| They prefer it that way, too. |
As a result of UNRWA's policies and programmes, a Jewish majority in Israel and the territories has been turned into a minority. In the over-60 age bracket, Jews enjoy a three to one lead in population. But they lose ground in the younger generations that will wage the wars of the coming decades. In 2005 there were 640,000 Jewish boys under 15, against 1.1m in the Arab sector. Many young Jews are their families' only sons, who concentrate on future vocations. However, more than two-thirds of the Arab boys are second, third and even fourth brothers. Neither their fathers nor UNRWA will leave them any property or prepare them for a decent place in life.
| It's not just the numbers. Look at how the Israeli kids are raised and educated. Then compare to the Paleo kids. See a difference? |
Mr Haniya, for example, was born in 1962 and brought up by western aid money. He is the father of 13 children. In Mr Haniya's age bracket of 45 to 59 years, Gaza, in 2007, has 46,000 men. In the age bracket 0 to 14 years, there are 343,000 boys. In the US, every 1,000 men in the age bracket 45 to 49 are followed by only 945 boys in the age bracket 0 to 4. For Israeli Jews, the ratio is about 1,000 to 1,500. In Gaza, however, every 1,000 men from 45 to 49 are followed by nearly 6,200 boys from 0 to 4.
Had the people of the US multiplied at the same rate as the people of Gaza, the US would have gone from a population of 152m in 1950 to 945m in 2007, more than triple the size of its current population of 301m. It would be home not to 31m males between the traditional fighting age of 15 and 29, but to 120m. Faced with such a population explosion, would America's politicians and cultural organisations be able "to control their men in the streets"?
Would we have a need to? We might -- maybe -- have a little more crime, but our young men (and women) have futures. They go to college, they drink, they get jobs, they party, they have fun, they get on with life. Some of the really good ones join our military. Even if our population exploded in numbers like this, we wouldn't have the problems the Paleos have.
And further, we'd never let this happen. Long before we got to 945m people, we would have been talking about it and figuring out what to do.
One of the problems the young Paleo men have is that they can't do what our young men do: college, drink, jobs, party, fun, life, etc. They can seethe and they can procreate, and so that's what they do. |
Over the next 15 years many more angry young males will roam the streets of Palestine, because of a birth defect of the Arafat-Rabin peace process. A western promise to support all children already born but to cut from international welfare Palestinian children born after 1992, and, simultaneously, to stop new Israeli settlements, should have been the first step of the Oslo process. As in Algeria or Tunisia, where total fertility fell from 7 to below 2 and where terror has ceased, Gaza, in 2007, would have seen nearly all of its boys turning 15 as only sons. They would have had little incentive to kill their own people or Israelis. Yet today Gaza's total fertility is still close to 6. This demographic armament will continue to provide large numbers of young men who have no prospects for employment and no place in society, and whose only hope is to fight for one.
Feed a terrorist; jeopardize yourself.
| Societies traditionally have had a solution to excess young men. |
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