Maghazi Refugee Camp. Stephen McCloskey. All rights reserved.The tenth
anniversary of Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip has been marked by a
glut of new reports from human rights organisations alerting the world to a
deepening humanitarian crisis in the territory. Perhaps the
starkest warning has come from the International
Committee of the Red Cross in suggesting that "a systemic collapse of an
already battered infrastructure and economy is impending."
What
distinguishes this crisis from the disasters and emergencies that normally push
civilian populations to the edge of catastrophe is that it is not the result of
a hurricane, flood, tsunami, drought or famine but the calculated policy of the
Israeli government.
this crisis is the result of the calculated policy of the Israeli government
As Harvard
scholar Sara Roy, who has meticulously researched the
impact of Israel’s policy-making on Gaza for thirty years suggests, “What is
happening to Gaza is catastrophic; it is also deliberate, considered and
purposeful.” Roy argues that Gaza has been subjected to ‘de-development’
meaning that it has been "dispossessed of its capacity for rational and
sustainable economic growth and development, coupled with a growing inability
to effect social change". So, what we are witnessing in Gaza today is the
‘logical endpoint’ of this policy; "a Gaza that is functionally unviable".
In its public
pronouncements on Gaza, Israel insists that the blockade is a security matter
designed to keep Hamas, the Palestinian political group with a militant wing,
at arm’s length. In its more off-guard moments, however, Israel has revealed
its true hand in Gaza.
United States government cables
leaked to Wikileaks show that the Israeli government kept the US embassy in Tel
Aviv briefed on the blockade and on "multiple occasions" said their policy
aimed "to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing
it over the edge."
This appears
to have been Israel’s blockade policy from the outset as the BBC reported an Israeli
government adviser, Dov Weisglass, as having said in 2006:
“The idea is to put
the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” And, in 2012,
an Israeli court forced the release of a government ‘red lines’ document which detailed “the number of
calories Palestinians in Gaza need to consume to avoid malnutrition.”
The Israeli
human rights organisation Gisha,
which won the legal battle to have the red lines document published, argues
that “the research contradicts Israel's assertions that the blockade is needed
for security reasons.”
The chilling
calculation behind the ‘red lines’ policy underlines the extent of Israel’s
deception in publicly suggesting that the blockade is a security measure while
privately, and quite methodically, inflicting collective punishment on an
already desperately poor population, mostly comprising refugees.
On visits to
Gaza’s eight refugee camps, I’ve seen stunted children clearly undernourished
and underweight, living in desolate, concrete environments devoid of any greenery
or safe spaces to play. The camps are concrete blocks heaped upon each other
constrained in their expansion on the ground by Gaza’s tiny area of 360 square
kilometres which is home to 1.8 million people; a population density akin to
that of Manhattan or Tokyo.
Around 70
percent of Gazans are refugees and, according to the Euro-Med
Monitor for Human Rights, food insecurity in the territory is at 72
percent and unemployment at 43.2 percent.
This economic
crisis has created serious mental health problems in Gaza. Sara Roy quotes the
Gaza Community Mental Health Program which has found that “forty percent of
Palestinians are clinically depressed, a rate unmatched anywhere in the world”
with Gaza’s Shifa Hospital receiving “up to 30 patients every month who have attempted
suicide.”
Israel
imposed the blockade on Gaza in 2007 following the return of a Hamas government
in elections in 2006. The US and EU followed Israel’s lead in refusing to
accept the legitimacy of the election result. International pressure
contributed to an internal Palestinian power struggle which resulted in Hamas
assuming control of Gaza and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority
governing the West Bank.
While Israel
had withdrawn its settlements from Gaza in 2005, it remained the territory’s occupying
power under international law by controlling its borders, airspace and coastline.
As Sara Roy suggests, the 2005 withdrawal reflected “Israel’s desire to rid
itself of any responsibility for Gaza while retaining control of it.” She regards the core goals of Israel’s
disengagement as seeking:
“to internally divide, separate, and isolate the
Palestinians – demographically, economically, and politically – so as to ensure
Israel’s full control both direct (West Bank) and indirect (Gaza Strip) – over all Palestinian lands and resources”.
The imposition
of strict border controls tightly limiting the movement of goods and people
across Gaza’s borders by Israel has been compounded by the closure of smuggling
tunnels into Gaza by General Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who seized power in Egypt
through a military coup in 2013.
The tunnels
were an economic lifeline for Gaza and the passenger terminal at Rafah into
Egypt, which became the only means for most Palestinians of leaving Gaza, has
opened only intermittently under Sisi.
Euro-Med
Monitor for Human Rights found that less than 50 percent of requests to exit
Gaza for medical treatment through Israel’s Erez Crossing were approved in 2016
and 43 cancer patients were refused permission to cross to seek treatment in
the first half of 2016.
With only a
trickle of Palestinians securing passage through the Rafah crossing, these
closures can be a death sentence for patients in need of medical assistance. They
also deny opportunities for employment and study overseas which, for the
majority, are the only escape routes from poverty.
The compounding pressures of war
The social
pressures of poverty, isolation and economic inertia caused by the blockade
have been compounded and exacerbated by three Israeli military operations in
Gaza since 2008, which have collectively claimed the lives of 3,745
Palestinians and wounded 17,441.
Zeitoun School. Stephen McCloskey. All rights reserved.The most
recent operation, ‘Protective Edge’, was a 51-day onslaught in July and August
2014 that killed 2,131 Palestinians, of whom 1,473 were civilians, 501 were
children and 257 women. There were 71 Israeli casualties; 66 soldiers and five
civilians.
The
infrastructural damage caused by ‘Protective Edge’ was devastating with: 78
hospitals and clinics damaged; 7 schools destroyed and 252 damaged; 17,800
homes damaged or completed destroyed; and half of the open-field crop areas damaged
or destroyed. Just 46 percent of the $1.59 billion pledged by donors for
reconstruction in Gaza has been received and a constant source of crisis is the
greatly reduced electricity supply which impacts on all aspects of daily life
in Gaza.
wreckless and petty politicking by the PA will add to the bitterness of internal relations in Palestine
The World Health Organisation (2017) has
said that the worsening electricity outages are “threatening the closure of essential health services which would
leave thousands of people without access to life-saving health care.”
This crisis
has been compounded by the Palestinian Authority’s decision
this summer not to pay the full fuel bill to Israel for Gaza’s electricity
supply in an attempt to weaken Hamas and wrest back control of the territory.
This
wreckless and petty politicking by the PA will add to the bitterness of
internal relations in Palestine and further delay overdue elections in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories. It leaves the prospects for much needed Palestinian
unity and strategy at a low ebb.
Unhappy anniversaries
This has been
a year of significant and painful anniversaries for Palestine. It is the
centenary of the Balfour
Declaration in which the British Foreign Secretary in 1917, Arthur James
Balfour, declared “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish people.” Theresa May has celebrated the centenary with
‘pride’ and seems unconcerned with the continued marginal existence of Palestinians
on their own land.
Robert Fisk
was closer to the mark when he described
the Balfour Declaration as the “most mendacious, deceitful and hypocritical
document in modern British history.”
2017 is also
the 50th anniversary of the six
day war in 1967 when Israel seized control of the West Bank, East
Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, as well as the Syrian Golan
Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. This annexation has
continued apace since then with the settlement of 600,000 colonists in
settlements across the West Bank that Amnesty
International describes as illegal under Article 49 of the Geneva
Convention.
These unhappy
anniversaries are as much a result of the collusion and mendacity of western
powers as they are of the relentless colonialism of Palestinian land by Israel
which should compel us all to take action and oppose the siege and construction
of settlements.
Jabalia Refugee Camp. Stephen McCloskey. All rights reserved.Gaza’s
creaking infrastructure and impoverished population cannot countenance another
decade of siege and war, and Israel has shown itself unwilling to respect its
human rights obligations as the territory’s occupying power.
Only external
pressure will change Israel’s policy toward Gaza which is why Palestinian civil
society has reluctantly called for international support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)
movement. This is a non-violent, vibrant and truly global movement for freedom,
justice and equality in Palestine inspired by the South African anti-apartheid
movement.
BDS urges
action to pressure Israel to respect international law and is supported by
trade unions, churches, academics and grassroots movements across the world. Supporting
BDS will hasten an end to the siege and help lance a running sore in the Middle
East and international relations. It deserves your support.