Israel's siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack
inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between
Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the
agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded
by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then.
Israel's siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the
Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who
have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The
second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the
hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but
increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming
majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are
unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly
disappearing for the majority of the population.
On 5 November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of
Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems,
fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even teacups
are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all. According
to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza in November. This
means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered the strip compared to an
average of 123 in October this year and 564 in December 2005. The two main
food providers in Gaza are the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP). UNRWA
alone feeds approximately 750,000 people in Gaza, and requires 15 trucks of
food daily to do so. Between 5 November and 30 November, only 23 trucks
arrived, around 6 per cent of the total needed; during the week of 30
November it received 12 trucks, or 11 per cent of what was required. There
were three days in November when UNRWA ran out of food, with the result that
on each of these days 20,000 people were unable to receive their scheduled
supply. According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the
people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December UNRWA
suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes
because of the blockade.
The WFP has had similar problems, sending only 35 trucks out of the 190 it
had scheduled to cover Gazans' needs until the start of February (six more
were allowed in between 30 November and 6 December). Not only that: the WFP
has to pay to store food that isn't being sent to Gaza. This cost $215,000
in November alone. If the siege continues, the WFP will have to pay an extra
$150,000 for storage in December, money that will be used not to support
Palestinians but to benefit Israeli business.
The majority of commercial bakeries in Gaza - 30 out of 47 - have had to
close because they have run out of cooking gas. People are using any fuel
they can find to cook with. As the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO) has made clear, cooking-gas canisters are necessary for generating the
warmth to incubate broiler chicks. Shortages of gas and animal feed have
forced commercial producers to smother hundreds of thousands of chicks. By
April, according to the FAO, there will be no poultry there at all: 70 per
cent of Gazans rely on chicken as a major source of protein.
Banks, suffering from Israeli restrictions on the transfer of banknotes into
the territory were forced to close on 4 December. A sign on the door of one
read: 'Due to the decision of the Palestinian Finance Authority, the bank
will be closed today Thursday, 4.12.2008, because of the unavailability of
cash money, and the bank will be reopened once the cash money is available.'
The World Bank has warned that Gaza's banking system could collapse if these
restrictions continue. All cash for work programmes has been stopped and on
19 November UNRWA suspended its cash assistance programme to the most needy.
It also ceased production of textbooks because there is no paper, ink or
glue in Gaza. This will affect 200,000 students returning to school in the
new year. On 11 December, the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, sent $25
million following an appeal from the Palestinian prime minister, Salaam
Fayad, the first infusion of its kind since October. It won't even cover a
month's salary for Gaza's 77,000 civil servants.
On 13 November production at Gaza's only power station was suspended and the
turbines shut down because it had run out of industrial diesel. . . .
[Richard Falk was detained at the airport and denied entry to Israel on
December 13, when he arrived in Tel Aviv. The American professor of
international law was traveling to the West Bank and Gaza, to fulfill his
mandate as the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the
Occupied Territories to investigate the human rights conditions affecting
the civilian population. His most urgent task includes monitoring the rising
humanitarian crisis facing the 1.5 million Palestinians, of whom half are
children, living in the besieged Gaza Strip.--Phyllis Bennis, "Detaining the United
Nations," Foreign Policy in Focus, December 23, 2008]
[Each day of electricity cuts increases the prospect that Palestinian Water
Authority engineer Saadi Ali's nightmare will come true. Ali, in charge of
the North Gaza Emergency Sewage Treatment Project, lives in constant fear of
a recurrence of the calamity that took place in March 2007 when the dirt
embankments surrounding a temporary infiltration pond of sewage water
collapsed, and the effluent water that flooded the nearby Bedouin village of
Umm al-Nasser led to the drowning deaths of five people. About 1,000 people
were evacuated from their homes, animals died and considerable damage was
caused to property and crops.--Amira Hass, "The sewage is
about to hit the fan in Gaza," Haaretz, December 25, 2008]
[The dead and wounded lay scattered on the ground following the Israeli
Israeli warplanes pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at
least 229 people in one of the bloodiest days for the Palestinians in 60
years of conflict with the Jewish state. . . . More than 700 Palestinians
were wounded--Nidal al-Mughrabi, "Israel
kills scores in Gaza air strikes," Reuters, December 27, 2008]
[Last week, days after the ceasefire officially ended, 80 rockets were
launched against Israel in just one day. . . . no
Israeli was killed or injured . . .
Yesterday's strikes will have had as much to do with Israeli domestic policy
as military deterrence. The country goes to the polls on February 10. Tzipi
Livni, the foreign minister and the Kadima party candidate for prime
minister, increasingly faced accusations of being soft on defence.--Marie
Colvin, "Gaza raids expose Israeli failure," Sunday Times, December
28, 2008]
[Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death
and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all
their years, and Operation "Cast Lead" is only in its infancy.--Gideon Levy,
"The
Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again," Haaretz, December 29, 2008]
[As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under
cover of which the strong crush the weak--Nir Rosen, "Gaza: the logic of colonial power," Guardian, December 29, 2008]
[Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres said back in the 1990s that they wished
Gaza would just go away, drop into the sea, and you can see why. The
existence of Gaza is a permanent reminder of those hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians who lost their homes to Israel, who fled or were driven out
through fear or Israeli ethnic cleansing 60 years ago, when tidal waves of
refugees had washed over Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and
when a bunch of Arabs kicked out of their property didn't worry the
world. . . .
Yet if more than 300 Israelis had been killed - against two dead
Palestinians - be sure that the "numbers game" and the disproportionate
violence would be all too relevant.--Robert Fisk, "Why bombing
Ashkelon is the most tragic irony," Independent, December 30, 2008]
[The war has, in fact, confirmed what had long been apparent, namely that
Israel has no interest in a negotiated peace. Peace means retraction, it
means ceding territory, whereas Israel is still bent on expansion.--Patrick
Seale, "Israel and
the Fight for Gaza," watan.com, January 3, 2009]
[Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN . . . said that the diplomatic
and political groundwork has been under way for months. . .
Buttu says that from the day the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, they set about
ensuring that it would fail economically. . . . even before Hamas was
elected three years ago, the Israelis were already blockading Gaza.--Chris
McGreal, "Why Israel went to war in Gaza," Observer, January 4,
2009]
[Until mid-2007, there was a serious political obstacle to a massive
conventional war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza: the fact that Hamas had
won free and fair elections for the Palestinian parliament and was still the
leading faction in a fully legitimate government.--Gareth Porter, "Bush plan
beat obstacle to Gaza assault," Inter Press Service, January 7, 2009]
[And so for an 11th day of Israel's war in Gaza, the several hundred
journalists here to cover it waited in clusters away from direct contact
with any fighting or Palestinian suffering, but with full access to Israeli
political and military commentators eager to show them around southern
Israel--Ethan Bronner, "Israel
Puts Media Clamp on Gaza," New York Times, January 7, 2009]
[Israel must show not only that it is too strong to be swept away but also
that it is willing to give up the landÑthe West Bank, not just GazaÑwhere
the promised Palestinian state must stand.--"The
hundred years' war," Economist, January 8, 2009]
[Intelligence gathered with the assistance of the Palestinian Authority in
the West Bank enabled the surprise opening strike on 27 December.--Alon
Ben-David, "Israeli
offensive seeks 'new security reality' in Gaza," Jane's,
January 9, 2009]
[A senior military analyst in London who declined to be named said that,
because of the timing, the shipments could be "irregular" and linked to the
Gaza offensive. . . .
The Jerusalem Post, citing defence officials, reported last week that a
first shipment of the missiles had arrived in early December and they were
used in pentetrating Hamas's underground rocket launcher sites.--Stefano
Ambrogi, "U.S. seeks
ship to move arms to Israel," Reuters, January 9, 2009]
[On Nov. 4, Israel, in clear violation of the ceasefire, went into Gaza and
killed six Palestinians who Israel declared were terrorists. That incident
and an ongoing siege and blockade of Gaza were enough reasons for Hamas to
resume hostilities against Israel.--S. Amjad Hussain, "Why is U.S. foreign policy hostage to Israel?,"
toledoblade.com, January 12, 2009]
[By yesterday, the war in Gaza had left at least 905 Palestinians dead, a
little less than half of whom were civilians.--Craig Nelson, "Israeli
'human shield' claim is full of holes," thenational.ae, January 13, 2009]
[An Israeli missile or shell appeared to have struck the southern side of
the 13th floor of the building, Reuters reported.--"Explosion Blasts
Media Offices in Gaza," Fox News, January 11, 2009]