Beach Dreams Shattered in Gaza as Recurring War Besieges It
This article is for subscribers only.
Restaurant owner Salah Abu Hasira used to imagine his Gaza Strip homeland as a tourism destination with suntanned bathers lounging on its beach and visitors retracing the steps of biblical body-builder Samson.
Nine years after Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from the coastal enclave, entire neighborhoods lay in ruins, leveled during a month of fighting between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces. More than 70 percent of the 1.8 million people living in the sliver of territory sandwiched between Israel and Egypt rely on United Nations handouts to survive. And the world’s most powerful nations shun its Islamist Hamas rulers as terrorists.