With Gaza in Financial Crisis, Fears That ‘an Explosion’s Coming’<br />As moribund as the reconciliation process has become, General Fox said, Hamas<br />and the Palestinian Authority were keeping it alive because “no one wants to be blamed for destroying it.” If it does fail, Hamas will likely deflect Gazans’ anger: “They’ll say Israel is the problem — ‘Let’s go to jihad and start a war.’”<br />Climbing back into an armored vehicle, the general drove past an Iron Dome antimissile battery to a park where hundreds of picnickers<br />and mountain bikers — Jews and Arabs alike — had flocked to see meadows blooming with scarlet anemones.<br />While thousands of Palestinian Authority workers in Gaza like Mr. Abu Shaaban were forced into early retirement,<br />and those who remained saw their pay cut 40 percent, some 40,000 Hamas workers — many of them police officers — have not been paid in months, officials say.<br />Hamas, eager to rid itself of the burdens of governing — though unwilling to disarm its military wing — showed flexibility at the talks, quickly ceding control over border crossings like the one with Israel at Kerem Shalom,<br />and the tax collections there that had provided it with some $20 million a month.<br />The one it has resorted to three times — going to war with Israel, in hopes of generating international sympathy<br />and relief in the aftermath — suddenly seems least attractive.
