Humanitarian Tragedy Unfolding in Gaza: Israel Punishes 1.4 Million Palestinians Under Tight Blockade

The US government finally admitted there was a slim chance for a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel, as promised by President Bush by the end of his term in office. At a press conference during her 8th visit to the region this year, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice could only offer what the US felt was its only “achievement” so far: “the improving environment for Palestinians,” as reported in The New York Times November 7, 2008.

This “improving environment” is, in fact, a humanitarian tragedy unfolding in the Gaza Strip while the world's news media is busy reporting job losses, bankruptcies, and financial rescue packages. “Palestinians in Gaza were being 'starved to death', receiving fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa,” US President Jimmy Carter told Reuters April 18, 2008.

The History

The Palestinian Islamic party Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006. Because the democratically-elected Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist -and also refuses to renounce violence, Israel and the US have dismissed the results of the elections. Ensuing internal Palestinian political struggle between Hamas and the “moderate” Fatah faction led to the ousting of Hamas to the Gaza Strip in June 2007. Fatah controls the rest of Palestinian territories.

Since then, Israel has imposed a tight blockade of the Gaza Strip, with little aid allowed in intermittently.

The Situation on the Ground

In a letter posted on the Jordanian news site ammonnews, a Palestinian mother describes the agony of living in darkness, deprived of even the very basic of amenities. The blockade, imposed for many months now, is holding around 750,000 Palestinian children hostage with no food, running water, or electricity.

Describing the blockade as “ethnic cleansing,” the General Commissioner of the Palestinian Commission for Human Rights (previously the Palestinian Commission for Citizens' Rights) Dr. Mamdouh Acker said that this is having detrimental repercussions on Gazans today. “They are hungry, poor, and sick.”

Who is Accountable?

Israel says it has tightened its blockade of Gaza in response to recent Palestinian militant rocket attacks, which have caused minor damage but no casualties.

"Babies should not be punished by being deprived of milk. I am not aware of babies firing rockets or baby milk being used to power rockets," UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman Chris Gunness told AFP November 13, 2008.

Israel's Kadima leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni blames the Palestinians for the misery they suffering. “Hamas...alone was responsible for the fate of the residents of the Gaza Strip,” reports The Jerusalem Post, November 16, 2008.

International Response

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed deep concern about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, urging Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to allow UN aid workers into the territory, according to Reuters November 19, 2008.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told AFP November 18, 2008, that the blockade contravenes international human rights and humanitarian law. AFP said Pillay's call was described by the Israel mission in Geneva as "utterly short-sighted".

On May 29, 2008, the BBC reported that Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu called Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip an "abomination". “My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all. It is almost like the behavior of the military junta in Burma.”

Around 3,000 demonstrators marched in Amman, Jordan, on November 19, 2008, to express solidarity with the people of Gaza. A statement issued by the Islamic Action Front said that Palestinians in Gaza were undergoing the worst form of human persecution in the modern age.

"It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It's a crime... I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on," Carter told Reuters back in April of 2008. Seven months later, the international community is still deafeningly quiet, and the atrocities are ongoing at full speed.

Update

To date (December 29, 2008), the Israeli army has killed over 300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in what it calls a final attempt to wipe out the Islamic movement Hamas and end the rocket attacks against Israel. The massacre has caused wide international condemnation, with many demonstrations calling for an end to the three-day airstrikes against Gaza. The US and Canadian governments will not condemn Israel, blaming Hamas instead for the tragedy.

Nov 19, 2008 2:49 PM

Guest :

The Others

But Khadija, those are the others, those people are a different breed. They are the others!

History repeats itself equipped with the same set of tools to achieve the same set of targets, disguised under seemingly different values using terms such as democracy, humanity, justice, but to actually plant fear, hunger, disease, death and ultimately targeting to break the will of those others into total submission…

Any group of people we tend to disagree with, are simply categorizes as the others, those who are different from us, those who are remote and simply are stereotyped characters we see on television. Why should we care!? They are not us! They are the others…

“The Others” concept has been used in social science to understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude 'Others' who they want to subordinate or who do not fit into their society.

For example, Edward Said's book “Orientalism” demonstrates how this was done by western societies particularly England and France to 'other' those people in the 'Orient' who they wanted to control.
So, those ‘others’ in Gaza with their women, children old people, young people are just another different group, they are simply 1.4 million others… so who cares!!!

Nasib Bitar

Jan 8, 2009 1:00 PM

Guest :

Every war is at first a propaganda war; its words are the weapons. This also applies to the word “war” when it is used to refer to the Israeli military campaign against Gaza. This concept is not adequate when we speak about a confrontation between one of the most powerful armies in the world in one side, and a million and a half of civilian men, women, children, and elderly in the other side.
“Exchange of fire”? We have in one side an air force that is equipped with the latest edition of American military aircrafts throwing tons of bombs on Gaza, one of the most densely populated cities per square mile , in the other hand we have some rocket fire with no aim and unable to do any substantial damage. This is not a war, it is a massacre. Casualties in both sides? Absolutely, but it is not of the same proportionality to have almost seven hundred casualties from the Palestinian side compared to ten casualties from the Israeli side.
The media of course play an essential role in the propaganda war, especially in presenting the events of the last few weeks. It is on purpose that they broadcast repeatedly the pictures of a few homes damaged in southern Israel before they show the image of the debris of a mosque or a school that fell on top of women and children due to an Israeli bomb.
Yesterday at least forty civilians were killed and many more were injured when “shells from tanks returning fire hit near the united nations school that was serving as shelter for thousands of civilians”. This was claimed on CNN and other cable news to justify this war crime. The truth is that the Israeli army fired directly at the school and killed all these people according to the director of the UN school.
In general, military officials do not like to be accompanied by journalists when they start executing their campaigns. That is normal, and the Israeli officials are no exception. Politicians also prefer to sift what should reach the public, either locally or internationally, because they have calculations they have to be accountable for in the case of failure.
Despite the effort of the pro Israeli American cable channels, and the rhetoric of the Bush administration, we now have a very good idea at what is going on, thanks to the work of courageous local journalists armed with small cameras and cellular phones. We know enough to conclude without a doubt that is what is going on in Gaza is not a war but rather massacre with premeditation against the Palestinian people that took months of planning and preparation. When the United States talks about weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to go to war against some other countries. What should we call the weapons given to the Israelis by the Americans thanks to citizens’ tax dollars to wipe out the Palestinian people in Gaza?