Since Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, critics have accused it of blockading and immiserating the territory – turning it, as Israel’s inveterate critics say, into an “open-air prison”.

The charge was always preposterous. Gaza shares a border with Egypt. The people of Gaza were often treated in Israeli hospitals for cancer and other life-threatening conditions. Israel provided Gaza with much of its electricity and other critical goods even after Hamas came to power in 2007.