Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

The settlers did leave hundreds of greenhouses in Gaza in 2005 prior to being evacuated.

When relating this story, many will say or imply that the settlers gave their greenhouses to the Gazans out of generosity—as a sort of good-will parting gift. The reality is that the settlers had planned to destroy (or take with them) all the greenhouses so that Arabs could not profit from them unless they were paid to leave them intact. Fed up with waiting for compensation, settlers destroyed or dismantled about half of the greenhouses two months before the withdrawal deadline.

At the last minute, a few wealthy donors (including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) stepped in and forked over US$14M to the settlers to leave the remaining greenhouses and equipment in place.

After the settlers evacuated, some Palestinians did loot the greenhouses—taking hoses, tarps, and other equipment to use on their own farms or for other purposes—but did not destroy the greenhouses. The stolen and destroyed/dismantled equipment was then repaired or replaced by the PA’s Palestine Economic Development Company at the cost of about $5M.

The greenhouse project then went ahead and the first crops—strawberries, cherry tomatoes, flowers, and so on—arrived in December 2005, ready for export.

In order to succeed, the greenhouse producers needed to get 25 truckloads of their produce per day through the Karni crossing. But this crossing, which was supposed to be open all the time (as per an international agreement signed by Israel), was instead only opened sporadically. Israel cited alleged “security issues” as the reason they couldn’t let most of the truckloads of fruits and veggies into Israel. Thus the greenhouse producers were only able to get an average of 3 of 25 truckloads through per day, generating massive daily losses. The greenhouse project therefore ended up an economic failure.