The Economist UK - 28.03.2020

52 Middle East & Africa The EconomistMarch 28th 2020

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s borders close, businesses shut and

much of the world adjusts to being

locked down, residents of Gaza can only

look on with grim amusement. Isolation is

nothing new for the territory’s 2m Palestin-

ians. They have been under blockade since

2007, when Hamas, a militant group,

seized power after winning a majority in

legislative elections. Israel and Egypt have

largely cut off the movement of goods and

people in and out of Gaza.

It is not a total lockdown: Gazans are

free to move about their sliver of land,

which measures 365 square kilometres (140

square miles). But few can venture any far-

ther. Last year, on average, just 740 people

were able to leave Gaza each day.

“Fourteen days of isolation? Welcome

to our last 14 years,” goes one joke making

the rounds on messaging apps. An unem-

ployed graduate, desperate to emigrate,

quips that his Palestinian passport is at last

worth the same as a European one. Another

laughs at videos of Westerners panic-buy-

ing the wrong goods—perishable food, in-

comprehensible amounts of toilet roll—

and jokes about starting an online course

to teach proper stockpiling.

As the virus swept through Israel and

the occupied West Bank, though, the re-

strictions turned Gaza into a reverse cordon

sanitaire. Residents wondered, with a sort

of bitter optimism, whether their plight

would spare them from a crisis that has

paralysed much of the world.

No longer. On March 21st the health

ministry announced the territory’s first

two cases of covid-19. The patients had re-

turned two days earlier from Pakistan, via

the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Days later

another seven cases were confirmed, all

members of the security forces who had

met the returnees. Officials said all the pa-

tients were isolated. Still, they took no

chances. Restaurants and cafés have been

closed and Friday prayers cancelled.

An outbreak would be catastrophic.

Gaza is one of the world’s most densely

populated places. The health-care system,

shattered by the long blockade, would be

unable to cope. Even in normal times, basic

items like antibiotics are often in short

supply. The territory has just 62 ventilators,

or three for every 100,000 people. At least a

quarter of them are already in use. Beds in

intensive-care wards are similarly scarce.

So are doctors, because scores of them have

emigrated recently.

The virus has begun to pop up in other

ravaged corners of the Middle East as well.

For weeks Syria insisted that it had been

spared the scourge of covid-19. Few Syrians

believed this, given the number of people

travelling back and forth to Iran, home to

one of the world’s worst outbreaks. But on

March 22nd the government logged the

country’s first official case. It stopped pub-

lic transport and imposed a curfew. Worse

still would be an epidemic in Idlib, the last

big rebel-held pocket, where 3m people live

in dire conditions. Libya announced its

first case of covid-19 on March 24th.

These countries may never know the

full extent of their outbreaks. Doctors in

Gaza say they received only about 200 kits

to test for the virus. Most have already been

used. They are pleading with Israel and the

whoto send more, but it is unclear when,

or if, they will. More than 1,400 people,

many of them recently returned from

abroad, have been crammed into schools

turned makeshift isolation centres, sleep-

ing six or eight to a classroom—a quaran-

tine within an open-air jail. 7

BEIRUT

The residents of Gaza respond with

dark humour

Covid-19 reaches Gaza

Quarantine while

under siege

Stealing a peek at the pandemic

Abdelmadjid Tebboune, Algeria’s presid-

ent. Jordan limited the number of journal-

ists allowed to report outside, even before

it recorded any deaths from the virus. Egypt

banned a correspondent from theGuard-

ian, a British newspaper, after she cited Ca-

nadian epidemiologists who think the out-

break in Egypt is worse than the

government says. Arabs increasingly rely

on state broadcasters, which deliver slant-

ed news and questionable data alongside

public-health announcements.

Even in the region’s freest country, Isra-

el, there is concern that the government is

overstepping. Binyamin Netanyahu, the

prime minister, has ordered his spooks to

use phone surveillance technology to track

Israeli citizens in an effort to curb the

spread of the virus. Some Israelis worry

that this power will be abused. Mr Netanya-

hu and his allies are also accused of using

the outbreak to delay his trial on corrup-

tion charges and keep him in office, as ne-

gotiations over a new government contin-

ue. “He is doing his utmost to exploit the

opportunity the coronavirus introduced,”

says Yohanan Plesner of the Israel Democ-

racy Institute, a think-tank.

Elsewhere, though, draconian meas-

ures have been greeted with praise. As the

virus spread, the hashtag “declare a state of

emergency” trended on Twitter in the re-

gion. According to Ipsos, a pollster, 98% of

Jordanians think their government is do-

ing a “good” or “very good” job. They are

seemingly happy with a new law that al-

lows the king to seize private property, de-

tain anyone who threatens public order

and screen all media before publication.

Even anti-government activists are sound-

ing supportive. “Sometimes human rights

and public-health needs clash,” says one in

Morocco, which is under lockdown.

Social distancing has meant that the

large anti-government protests rocking

countries such as Algeria, Lebanon and

Iraq have fizzled away for now. Opponents

in the region are getting along better, too.

Israel and the Palestinians are co-operat-

ing, to an extent, in the face of a common

enemy. The United Arab Emirates and Ku-

wait have offered aid to Iran.

The calm may not last, though. The pan-

demic has hit the region’s economic main-

stays, such as tourism and remittances,

while a collapse in the price of oil has cut

into government revenues, putting public-

sector jobs at risk. Meanwhile, the whois

casting doubt on the outbreak data coming

from governments in the region. Insuffi-

cient testing means the number of infected

people is undoubtedly higher than the offi-

cial tallies. Most health systems are not

equipped to deal with a large outbreak. As

more people fall ill, the region’s authoritar-

ians may regret having long spent more on

their armies and security services than on

hospitals and medical supplies. 7