Lebanon: Pray for the Christians of Lebanon. A senior Christian official was kidnapped and recently found murdered. Now, Hezbollah is breathing threats against them. Again, pray for the Christians of Lebanon.

Lebanon: Pray for the Christians of Lebanon. A senior Christian official was kidnapped and recently found murdered. Now, Hezbollah is breathing threats against them. Again, pray for the Christians of Lebanon.

I met a Palestinian economist from Gaza today who was the head of a technical team tasked with preparing the coastal enclave for the “day after” the Israeli disengagement or withdrawal of settlements in 2005. Despite his harsh stance on Israel, he reached out to me and expressed his gratitude for the work I’ve been doing, urging me to keep going and not to give up on Gaza. Most intriguing was the fact that he was commissioned by the controversial Palestinian political figure whose name is regularly floated as part of Gaza’s post-Hamas governance, Mohammed Dahlan. The economist oversaw a large and sprawling team and interacted with Israeli, Arab, and international teams and figures from the World Bank, especially the then-President James Wolfensohn, to prepare the Strip for a new era. Dahlan accurately and prophetically told the economist that “if we don’t get Gaza right following the Israeli withdrawal [in 2005], there will never be a future for the territory and it will be a complete disaster.” Motivated to serve his people and country, the economist shared with me that the World Bank's James Wolfensohn spent his own money to preserve Gaza’s greenhouses and to implement extensive plans to protect what remained of the infrastructure left behind in the vacated Jewish settlements. He mentioned meeting with Hamas to inform them about what the plans and intentions were, but the terror group was ultimately determined to pursue its own course of action. After years of violent attacks during the Second Intifada, Hamas was determined to promote the armed resistance narrative as the reason why Israel was withdrawing from Gaza. The economist, who again is not exactly a dove on Israel, said repeatedly during our conversations that in his talks with Israelis, he sensed “a sincerity” to see Gaza progress and develop, and that Israelis’ attitude was “we don’t want anything from you Palestinians except for you to succeed.” He spoke of incredible plans to spend billions on reviving Gaza’s economy, connecting the territory with the outside world and Israel, and of endless possibilities that would have “transformed Gaza into something truly remarkable,” as he and Dahlan said and believed. Instead, the very day of the withdrawal, he said numerous militias belonging to Hamas were deployed in a disciplined, pre-determined, and militaristic fashion across all vacated Israeli settlements. Worse, he said that Palestinian Authority security personnel tasked with protecting remnants of Israeli settlements participated in the mass looting and destruction of what remained, ending any hope that these spaces would ever serve as springboards for Gaza’s rejuvenation and renaissance. It was then that he called Mohammed Dahlan and told him: “It’s all over – Gaza’s finished.” The 2005 disengagement experiment was a horrific abdication of Palestinian agency and responsibility and a missed opportunity that cannot be solely blamed on Israel. That’s the painful and uncomfortable lesson.