Gaza is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now'..
By Patrick Cockburn in Gaza
Independent. 08 September 2006
Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its
people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a
great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world's
attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.
A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians
imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped
all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade
into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.
Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day by land
and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded, of whom 60
had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr Juma al-Saqa, the director of
the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which is fast running out of medicine. Of
these, 64 were children and 26 women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far
received only a fraction of the attention given by the international media to
the war in Lebanon.
It was on 25 June that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken captive and
two other soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants who used a tunnel to get
out of the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of this, writes Gideon Levy in the daily
Haaretz, the Israeli army "has been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other
word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling,
indiscriminately". Gaza has essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and
tanks come and go at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over
several houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22
Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of olive,
citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed.
Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: "They even
destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep." He pointed sadly to a
field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of bulldozers, where the
stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting leaves lay in heaps. Near by a
yellow car was standing on its nose in the middle of a heap of concrete blocks
that had once been a small house.
His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers confined him
and his relatives to one room in his house where they survived by drinking water
from a fish pond. "Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody
who came near," he said. "They killed one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu
Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water."
Sometimes the Israeli army gives a warning before a house is destroyed. The
sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone
saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or
missiles. There is no appeal.
But it is not the Israeli incursions alone that are destroying Gaza and its
people. In the understated prose of a World Bank report published last month,
the West Bank and Gaza face "a year of unprecedented economic recession. Real
incomes may contract by at least a third in 2006 and poverty to affect close to
two thirds of the population." Poverty in this case means a per capita income of
under $2 (£1.06) a day.
There are signs of desperation everywhere. Crime is increasing. People do
anything to feed their families. Israeli troops entered the Gaza industrial zone
to search for tunnels and kicked out the Palestinian police. When the Israelis
withdrew they were replaced not by the police but by looters. On one day this
week there were three donkey carts removing twisted scrap metal from the remains
of factories that once employed thousands.
"It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first poured
into Gaza]," says Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist who is mayor of
Gaza City. "Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it.
People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few
tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves."
The few ways that Gazans had of making money have disappeared. Dr Abu-Ramadan
says the Israelis "have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange groves in order to
create security zones." Carnations and strawberries, two of Gaza's main exports,
were thrown away or left to rot. An Israeli air strike destroyed the electric
power station so 55 per cent of power was lost. Electricity supply is now
becoming almost as intermittent as in Baghdad.
The Israeli assault over the past two months struck a society already hit by the
withdrawal of EU subsidies after the election of Hamas as the Palestinian
government in March. Israel is withholding taxes owed on goods entering Gaza.
Under US pressure, Arab banks abroad will not transfer funds to the government.
Two thirds of people are unemployed and the remaining third who mostly work for
the state are not being paid. Gaza is now by far the poorest region on the
Mediterranean. Per capita annual income is $700, compared with $20,000 in
Israel. Conditions are much worse than in Lebanon where Hizbollah liberally
compensates war victims for loss of their houses. If Gaza did not have enough
troubles this week there were protest strikes and marches by unpaid soldiers,
police and security men. These were organised by Fatah, the movement of the
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, which lost the
election to Hamas in January. His supporters marched through the streets waving
their Kalashnikovs in the air. "Abu Mazen you are brave," they shouted. "Save us
from this disaster." Sour-looking Hamas gunmen kept a low profile during the
demonstration but the two sides are not far from fighting it out in the streets.
The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment of
everybody in Gaza. The gunmen are unlikely to be deterred. In a bed in Shifa
Hospital was a sturdy young man called Ala Hejairi with wounds to his neck,
legs, chest and stomach. "I was laying an anti-tank mine last week in Shajhayeh
when I was hit by fire from an Israeli drone," he said. "I will return to the
resistance when I am better. Why should I worry? If I die I will die a martyr
and go to paradise."
His father, Adel, said he was proud of what his son had done adding that three
of his nephews were already martyrs. He supported the Hamas government: "Arab
and Western countries want to destroy this government because it is the
government of the resistance."
As the economy collapses there will be many more young men in Gaza willing to
take Ala Hejairi's place. Untrained and ill-armed most will be killed. But the
destruction of Gaza, now under way, will ensure that no peace is possible in the
Middle East for generations to come.
The deadly toll
* After the kidnap of Cpl Gilad Shalit by Palestinians on 25 June, Israel
launched a massive offensive and blockade of Gaza under the operation name
Summer Rains.
* The Gaza Strip's 1.3 million inhabitants, 33 per cent of whom live in refugee
camps, have been under attack for 74 days.
* More than 260 Palestinians, including 64 children and 26 women, have been
killed since 25 June. One in five is a child. One Israeli soldier has been
killed and 26 have been wounded.
* 1,200 Palestinians have been injured, including up to 60 amputations. A third
of victims brought to hospital are children.
* Israeli warplanes have launched more than 250 raids on Gaza, hitting the two
power stations and the foreign and Information ministries.
* At least 120 Palestinian structures including houses, workshops and
greenhouses have been destroyed and 160 damaged by the Israelis.
* The UN has criticised Israel's bombing, which has caused an estimated $1.8bn
in damage to the electricity grid and leaving more than a million people without
regular access to drinking water.
* The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says 76 Palestinians, including 19
children, were killed by Israeli forces in August alone. Evidence shows at least
53 per cent were not participating in hostilities.
* In the latest outbreak of violence, three Palestinians were killed yesterday
when Israeli troops raided a West Bank town in search of a wanted militant. Two
of those killed were unarmed, according to witnesses.
"Action is the life of all and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing."
-Gerrard Winstanley