While Palestinian Christians in the West Bank celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem today, Palestinians in Gaza, no matter their religious affiliation or political bent, are suffering in squalor and growing ignorance. Thousands are trying to flee.

Gaza has never been a prosperous enclave; the 140-square-mile territory has always been a poor, dependent state. But for Hamas, the radical Islamic terrorist group that seized control of Gaza in 2007, the long-term pursuit of a political impossibility trumps even the slightest concern for the welfare of the group's 1.5 million "constituents."

Residents of the Palestinian territories have been subjects of foreign states - Turkey, Great Britain, Jordan and then Israel - for half a millennium. But all the while, during both prosperous and desperate times, Palestinians have struggled to ensure that they educate their children.

As a result, Palestinians have been among the best-educated people in the world. Literacy rates among youths, even for girls, have hovered around 99 percent. Even Israel's literacy rate is lower: 97.1 percent. But now, for the first time in the modern era, Gazans as young as 9, 10 and 11 are being put to work in ever larger numbers, forgoing school. "Learning achievement has declined along with primary school enrollment," UNICEF reports.

Much of the world blames Israel. During its invasion of Gaza last January, Israeli troops damaged or destroyed nearly half of the territory's schools along with much of the remaining infrastructure. The point is, a year has passed. What political concessions has Hamas offered that might have enabled it to make repairs, improve the lot of its people? None. The United Nations reported this fall that 1 in 5 Gazans now live in what it called "abject poverty." That is why many parents are no longer sending their children to school. They need the pennies their children can earn at menial jobs to buy food.

Their chieftains don't seem to care. I have interviewed the leaders of Hamas many times over the years, and all of them offered one consistent refrain, time and time again: We are patient. Our resistance will continue as long as it takes - even centuries - until we reach our goal, full control of Palestine. Of course, that includes the state of Israel.

One of them, Ismail Abu Shanab, now deceased, once told me: "There are plenty of open areas in the United States that could absorb the Jews." Even Shanab, zealot that he was, must have known that nothing like that was going to happen even in his grandchildren's lifetimes - if ever. But he and all his colleagues, then and now, pursued that ludicrous goal in exclusion of all else, and now it is leading to the social destruction of their own people.

Israel and Egypt have locked the gates to Gaza. Israel's closure is more understandable than Egypt's, given that Cairo pretends to be the Palestinian's greatest friend and protector. In any case, it's impossible to know just how many Gazans endorse Hamas' chimerical, single-minded objective. The majority of Gazans I have met want to live peaceful lives and provide for their children.

Sure, all of them would love to turn back the clock to 1967, before Israel won control of Gaza. That's why most of them still choose to live in decades-old refugee camps, to show that they refuse to accept the current state of affairs. But now a growing number - half the population, according to recent polls - is trying to get out of Gaza, escape from Hamas' control and the deprivation that comes from its rule.

In one famous case earlier this month, a healthy man joined the thousands who are fleeing to Egypt and Israel with bribes and fake medical reports by pretending to be dying of cancer. He didn't get away with it.
