A Different View of Gaza
Posted on: July 21, 2010

This column is by Lorne Gunter of the National Post:

A shopping mall opened in Gaza City last weekend. It is called, appropriately enough, Gaza Mall and even has a website (gazamall. ps) complete with a catchy logo, and ads for "Israeli men's trousers at an attractive price" and shirts from the United States.

There's nothing remarkable about this, you say. New malls open all the time all around the world.

But think about it: One of the main complaints international organizations have against the Israeli blockade of Gaza is that construction materials, supposedly, are not getting through. Gazans are allegedly forced to live in dilapidated apartments and houses because big, bad Israel will not let cement mix and rebar pass its lines.

So just where did the materials come from to build Gaza Mall?

Admittedly, online descriptions of the mall as a "luxury" shopping centre are a bit over the top, although I suppose such descriptions are relative. (The first suburban shopping centres in Canada in the 1950s, while dwarfed by today's mega-malls, must have seemed like palaces of commerce compared with the downtown department stores of the day.)

You can see photos of the Gaza Mall grand opening at the Palestinian Authority's Safa website (safa.ps) or the website of photojournalist Tom Gross – tomgrossmedia. com. Note the tinsel streamers, balloons and mascots. If you look closely at the photos, you see a simple, two-storey collection of brightly lit but plain shops, apparently run by local merchants rather than the large chain stores that populate North American and European (and Israeli) malls.

There is a single staircase in the centre – no escalator. However, according to the mall's promotional material, there is "air conditioning, a parking lot, security guards, a full-service supermarket and a food court."

Wait a minute, did the mall website say air conditioning!? It did. Somehow, despite the death grip Israel is supposed to have around the throats of poor, vulnerable Palestinians, the grip that we are told leaves Palestinians wanting for food and medicine, the stranglehold that has led to "concentration camp" conditions inside Gaza could not prevent the developers of Gaza Mall from finding commercial air conditioners to cool their building.

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