Currently Gaza is viewed as an economic and political wreck. Many blame the 38-year Israeli occupation after Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War. But do certain unpleasant facts reveal another side to the story?

Smuggling weapons (more recently even short-range missiles) through an intricate network of tunnels has been commonplace for at least 10 years—ever since the Oslo Accords of 1994-1995 apparently granted the Palestinian Authority (PA) control over most of the Gaza strip. Terrorists have used Palestinian civilians to do the dirty work. Recent border control breakdowns have not helped the situation.

To help Palestinians build their economy in Gaza after the Israeli pullout, American Jewish donors purchased some 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers on the Gaza strip, leaving them in place as a gift for the Palestinians.

One former World Bank president personally contributed half a million dollars. Yet gangs of Palestinian thugs looted dozens of these greenhouses in Neve Dekalim, rendering them useless.

The International Herald Tribune, in a feature article, assessed the strength of the Palestinian security, saying they are "divided, weak, overstaffed, badly motivated and underarmed." In reality, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is rather powerless to exert effective control over Hamas and other armed factions.

What do all these factors say about the practice of conceding to repeated demands that Israelis give up even more land in exchange for peace? In the minds of some Israelis, Gaza once represented the dream of a "Greater Israel," part of the Promised Land of the Bible and the very area where the ancient judge Samson pulled down the pagan temple onto the Philistines.

Where are such recent events ultimately going to take the nations of the Middle East? To understand more, request or download our free booklet The Middle East in Bible Prophecy. (Sources: International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, MSNBC, WorldNetDaily.)