Tom Palmer has an excellent post on why it’s important to let people in Gaza engage in free trade. Currently, the Israeli and Egyptian governments have extreme restrictions on trade, something I posted on recently. Palmer writes:

The trade embargo against the people of Gaza is itself a crime, and the incompetence and avoidable deadly violence of the Israeli authorities in dealing with the aid flotilla are further arguments that it should be lifted.

Searching for weapons is one thing, but embargoing trade and aid altogether is another. How can the Israeli authorities expect peace from people who, in the end, feel that they have nothing to lose? Free the trade with Gaza and let the people there work, produce, and flourish. Let them trade with Israelis. Search for weapons, but do so with intelligence, not rank incompetence that results in the spilling of blood.

Note also his links to Dan Griswold’s article and the short interview with free trade doyen, Jagdish Bhagwati.