Lawrence Wright joins the party:
Netanyahu said, if we open up the blockade, Gaza will become a port for Iran. But it’s completely possible to maintain a ban on weapons just by inspecting what’s coming into the country without shutting out everything. Unfortunately, among the materials they consider dangerous are building supplies, which might be used, the Israeli authorities say, for constructing weapons. For instance, in the handmade missiles that were such a feature of the Hamas artillery, cement was used as ballast. On the other hand, people’s homes are destroyed, they are living in tents or under cardboard shelters, there’s a desperate humanitarian need to provide shelter, which is why cement and other building supplies are so urgently needed. As long as people are forced to live outside in handmade shelters with minimum daily calories and no work to do, radicalism will flourish.