These results are consistent with at least two interpretations. The Fatah view—remember that we obtained the data from an official who almost certainly has links to Fatah—is that Fatah rules better than Hamas. An alternative view though, which some Israelis might support, is that the Israeli withdrawal is harmful for Palestinians. Because Israel is responsible for security and order in some of the populated areas of the West Bank, its presence ensures a more stable environment for economic activity than one would see without Israel, perhaps even in those places where the Palestinian authority does have full responsible for internal security and order. These data cannot adjudicate between these two interpretations. It might be interesting to see if Governorate-level data could do so by differentiating across areas of Israeli security presence.

Something else that might not be so apparent, though, is that Gaza actually fared slightly better relative to the West Bank during the Second Intifada. Here is another simple diff-in-diff analysis.

If you look carefully you can see that the worst of the Intifada (2000-2) saw Gazan GDPPC fall less steeply than in the West Bank, and climb more rapidly in the latter phases. I’m not sure what to make of this, except for to observe that poorer places have less to lose under conditions of political and economic turmoil.