If anyone wants the facts on what is happening in Gaza, then one simply
cannot go past Dr Sara Roy’s devastating account of how Israel’s brutal
siege affects every single aspect of Palestinian life. With Christmas
almost upon us, thoughts will most likely be more on food and gift shopping
than on keeping up with the developments in Gaza, but in a quiet moment,
please take advantage and read this compelling case for why we have a duty
as human beings to speak up unequivocally for the Palestinians. - SK
If Gaza falls . . .
by Sara Roy
London Review of Books
1 January 2009
______________________________
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. This in turn
caused the two turbine batteries to run down, and they failed to start up
again when fuel was received some ten days later. About a hundred spare
parts ordered for the turbines have been sitting in the port of Ashdod in
Israel for the last eight months, waiting for the Israeli authorities to let
them through customs. Now Israel has started to auction these parts because
they have been in customs for more than 45 days. The proceeds are being held
in Israeli accounts.
During the week of 30 November, 394,000 litres of industrial diesel were
allowed in for the power plant: approximately 18 per cent of the weekly
minimum that Israel is legally obliged to allow in. It was enough for one
turbine to run for two days before the plant was shut down again. The Gaza
Electricity Distribution Company said that most of the Gaza Strip will be
without electricity for between four and 12 hours a day. At any given time
during these outages, over 65,000 people have no electricity.
No other diesel fuel (for standby generators and transport) was delivered
during that week, no petrol (which has been kept out since early November)
or cooking gas. Gaza's hospitals are apparently relying on diesel and gas
smuggled from Egypt via the tunnels; these supplies are said to be
administered and taxed by Hamas. Even so, two of Gaza's hospitals have been
out of cooking gas since the week of 23 November.
Adding to the problems caused by the siege are those created by the
political divisions between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and
the Hamas Authority in Gaza. For example, Gaza's Coastal Municipalities
Water Utility (CMWU), which is not controlled by Hamas, is supposed to
receive funds from the World Bank via the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA)
in Ramallah to pay for fuel to run the pumps for Gaza's sewage system. Since
June, the PWA has refused to hand over those funds, perhaps because it feels
that a functioning sewage system would benefit Hamas. I don't know whether
the World Bank has attempted to intervene, but meanwhile UNRWA is providing
the fuel, although they have no budget for it. The CMWU has also asked
Israel's permission to import 200 tons of chlorine, but by the end of
November it had received only 18 tons – enough for one week of chlorinated
water. By mid-December Gaza City and the north of Gaza had access to water
only six hours every three days.
According to the World Health Organisation, the political divisions between
Gaza and the West Bank are also having a serious impact on drug stocks in
Gaza. The West Bank Ministry of Health (MOH) is responsible for procuring
and delivering most of the pharmaceuticals and medical disposables used in
Gaza. But stocks are at dangerously low levels. Throughout November the MOH
West Bank was turning shipments away because it had no warehouse space, yet
it wasn't sending supplies on to Gaza in adequate quantities. During the
week of 30 November, one truck carrying drugs and medical supplies from the
MOH in Ramallah entered Gaza, the first delivery since early September.
The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is
little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The
European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its
relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a
large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic
stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support
of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – which has been co-operating with
Israel on a number of measures. On 19 December Hamas officially ended its
truce with Israel, which Israel said it wanted to renew, because of Israel's
failure to ease the blockade.
How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people
of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza's children –
more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone? International law
as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West
Bank will be next.
Sara Roy teaches at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and is the
author of Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
Website link:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/
