With the war and the israelian embargo I think that now nobody can send money to Gaza in a traditional way.
Bitcoin could cross the borders with no problem, in gaza PC and mobile-phone are used.
I love the potential of Bitcoin to circumnavigate governments' restrictions on what you can and can't do with your money. However, right now in instances such as the Palestinian situation I'm far from convinced it's a good idea.
I'm not telling anybody not to do it but I think the following considerations should be taken very seriously:
i) The history of militant/terrorist/liberation movements tells us corruption is likely to be the modus operandi in such circumstances. I can't comment about the particular Gaza situation but tools such as protection rackets and the commandeering of private property and assets are the kind of things I would expect to see. There is more than a small chance that any Bitcoin contributed would end in the hands of those who would use it for arms etc. If that's your intention that's one thing. But unless you're really confident in the person/organisation to which you're contributing (i.e. have verified their integrity by trusted third parties) I'd be very wary of the likelihood of your contribution not serving the well-meaning purpose you'd intended.
ii) Israel and its powerful allies, not least the US, aren't particularly fond of people attempting to circumnavigate the decisions they have made - such as the embago - which they believe to be in the best interest of their people. To do this is I believe painting a massive target on Bitcoin WAAAY too early. Bitcoin may well be much more distributed, used and secure than it was this time last year but on the big scale of things it's tiny and still in my opinion vulnerable to having much of its life blood squished out of it should the powers that be decide it's not in their interest to let the experiment continue.
Whether and when an attempt is made to criminalise Bitcoin or to put such obstacles in place to make widespread use very unlikely one thing that will count for a lot is how it is viewed in the public eye. The WordPress thing helps enormously as would things like seeing its use in bringing communities out of poverty by facilitating trading (
see my charity proposal thread). A lot of this is just going to keep happening with time with Bitcoin getting more resilient to a large attack the whole while.
But for now my preference, despite the plight of those currently suffering in situations such as Gaza, is that we each of us hold back from using Bitcoin for such controversial uses unless we absolutely feel it would be wrong to withhold our assistance
and we have a realistic idea of its chances of getting to its intended beneficiaries.
