I am sure that your correspondent, Mary Brooks is sincere in her defence of Gaza and condemnation of Israel but I suspect her facts come from very biased propaganda. Gaza city contains an elite shopping mall, luxury hotels and beauty spas, an olympic -sized swimming pool, beautiful beaches and bustling, heavily laden food markets. You can go to Honestreporting.com to see the photos or The Palestine Times.
Hamas are deliberately leaving some Gazans in plastic tents in order to fool guilible Western journalist who are brought to Gaza to witness a staged 'humanitarian crisis”.
No one is denying that there are poor areas ( as there are in most cities of the world) but if they had not spent the many millions of aid money they have been receiving for many years on terrorism they would have a much higher standard of living.
Turkey is sending boats full of aid to Gaza and yet life expectancy in Gaza is higher and the infant mortality rate is lower than in Turkey. The literacy rate in Turkey is 88.7 and in Gaza 91.9, much higher than many other Arab countries. The GDP in Gaza is not as high as Turkey but higher than some other Arab countries and much much higher than most of Africa which gets a 1000th of the aid per capita than Gaza gets from the West.(CIA World Factbook)
Hamas has been playing the victim card for too long. Its time the Palestinians started using all the aid they get to create a life for themselves instead of spending their time, money and effort trying to destroy Israel.
S Raymond, Tauranga.