All eyes are focused on US Secretary of State John Kerry's peripatetic efforts to bring Israel and the PLO to an agreement. Less well-considered is the US view on Gaza, and the ill-placed, subordinate position it occupies in the US effort.
US officials claim to be "watching closely" the engineered penury that Gaza is suffering — initially at the hands of Israel, which has kept the 2 million Gazans “on a diet” for years, and joined more recently by the new regime in Cairo, which has all but shut down the tunnel economy created to accommodate Israel's and Egypt's lack of interest in Gaza's economic rehabilitation. Even mother nature is conspiring against those seeking relief from the strip's man-made miseries, bringing unprecedented winter rain and snow to Gaza's already overburdened, underperforming public infrastructure.
