Postcards From Gaza. City Life

When the international media focus on the Hamas-run statelet of Gaza, they tend to publish photos of bombed-out buildings, wailing burqa-shroud women and sad-eyed children sitting in the rubble. The impression one gets is of an utterly ruined place inhospitable to human life -- thanks in large part to the Israeli "blockade".

But as you'll see from the images below, the pictures of Gaza we're used to seeing don't tell the whole story. Indeed, one gets the impression that this place has a far higher living standard than in other crumbling parts of the Arab Middle East -- and it's a whole universe away from places like Sudan, Somalia, northwest Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.