Gaza and the Jewish State: A Record
[Note: I’ve not been able to keep up with all the info. Time. Will come at this again.]
I’ll build this one over time from most recent. It is obviously a small selection but will grow. My aim is to focus on the general picture - the situation in Gaza and its causes. The daily killings are not included nor the frequent articles reporting accusations of tunnel building nor even the reports of the acquisition of arms by Hamas. Most of those killed are Palestinian. This is clearly documented. Hamas would be foolish to not try and procure arms just as I suppose Israel would be foolish to not try and stop it. At any rate, the means to procuring arms seems incidental in the sense that since Hamas must arm against Israel, how it goes about doing this is part of the nature of resisting a brutal occupation. What will be included then are articles focusing on living/economic conditions, the strategies and tactics of oppression as well as Human Rights reports at a minimum.
Here’s the links to articles or alerts (mainly - one original post) that are elsewhere on the blog:
Gaza, Hamas, Egypt and the Great Israeli Blunder? - 01/27/08
Israel is Demented. Gaza is the Evidence. - 01/21/08
Blackout in Besieged Gaza City - 01/21/08
Israel Seals Gaza Borders. Continues Attacks on Trapped Population.
Israel’s Supreme Court rejects rights groups’ appeal against Gaza fuel cuts - Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal by human rights groups on Thursday for an injunction against fuel cuts to the Gaza Strip, rejecting their argument that the cuts cause humanitarian harm. - 01/03/08 - International Herald Tribune
B’Tselem Press Release - According to B’Tselem, two themes clearly emerge from examination of the spectrum of human rights concerns in 2007. The first is the use of security justifications for virtually every Israeli action in the Occupied Territories . There is no doubt that Israel faces serious security threats, and is entitled and even obligated to do its utmost to protect its population. However, far too often, Israel fails to appropriately balance its security needs with equally important values, including protecting the rights of Palestinians under its control. In addition, Israeli authorities often exploit security threats in order to advance prohibited political interests, such as perpetuating settlements and effectively annexing them to Israel . — The second theme arising from the report is the lack of accountability of Israeli security forces, in all matters relating to human rights. This can be seen clearly in the reluctance of the state to thoroughly investigate violations and to prosecute those responsible for them. The lack of accountability can also be seen in the denial of most Palestinians’ right to compensation when they are injured through no fault of their own by Israeli forces. - 12/31/07 - B’Tselem
Strangling Gaza - It could, rightfully, be a cause of shame to the world. But the world, besieged by violence and injustice, hardly notices it. The people of Gaza, 1.4 million of them, are slowly and purposely being deprived of basic foods and medicines by the so called civilized countries in the West and there is hardly a protest. - by César Chelala - 12/16/07 - Information Clearing House
Despite Isolation, Gazans Show Allegiance for Hamas - About 200,000 Gazans rallied in support of Hamas on Saturday, the 20th anniversary of its founding. - by Steven Erlanger and Taghreed El-Khodary - 12/16/07 - New York Times
$4 million-valued drugs seized by Hamas police forces in Gaza - Palestinian police forces of the Hamas-dominated government in Gaza seized and burned on Sunday $4 million-valued plumes of marijuana, in what the Hamas’s interior ministry says a two-week-long chase of drug dealers in the coastal region. - by Rami Almeghari - 12/09/07 - IMEMC
Gaza’s medical sector feeling impact of Israeli sanctions, restrictions - At least 13 people who completed the permit application process died in the past two months waiting for treatment, according to health organisations. Another 15 or so died while still applying, according to the Gaza ministry of health. - 12/05/07 - irinnews.org
Only 41 percent of Gaza’s food import needs being met - Food imports into the Gaza Strip are only enough to meet 41 percent of demand, the World Food Programme (WFP) has said, though critical UN humanitarian food supplies are being allowed in. - 12/08/07 - irinnews.org
Christians And Muslims Coexist In Gaza - by Mohammed Omer - 11/27/07 - IPS
As the world forgets Gaza - Yet the worst for Palestinians in Gaza is yet to come. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has approved a series of collective punishments, ostensibly to force Palestinian resistance movements to stop firing homemade missiles on Israeli settlements surrounding the Strip. Israeli Deputy Minister of Defence Matan Vilnai, who headed the security committee that recommended the imposition of collective punishment, told Israeli television Channel One last Friday that this internationally outlawed form of state behaviour is a “legitimate means of placing pressure on Palestinian civilians to move against the factions that are targeting Israel.” The Israeli government has approved the Vilnai recommendations, meaning that the humanitarian situation in Gaza will again and imminently be purposely worsened by Israel. - by Saleh Al-Naami - Nov 1-7, 2007 - Al Ahram
More UN officials voice concern at Israel’s declaration of Gaza as ‘hostile territory’ - “We consider this decision to be a violation of international law, including international humanitarian law, and yet another form of collective punishment of the Palestinian people, which, if implemented, is bound to substantially worsen the already deplorable living conditions of the civilian population in the occupied Gaza Strip,” it said in a statement. - 09/22/07 - un.org
UN moves to counter deteriorating Gaza education levels - “School attendance has been seriously disrupted due to inter-factional fighting, repeated military raids and unprecedented poverty, where children come to school hungry and unable to concentrate,” said Ging. “If the present situation continues, poverty among Palestinian refugees in Gaza will soon reach ‘unconscionable levels’,” Karen AbuZayd, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, recently said in Cairo. - 09/22/07 - irinnews.org
UN chief: Cutting off fuel to Gaza is violation of international law - In one of his toughest statements aimed at Israel since taking the reins of the UN on January 1, Ban said he was very concerned at the Israeli government’s declaration earlier Wednesday and its announced intent to interrupt essential services such as electricity and fuel to the civilian population. “Such a step would be contrary to Israel’s obligations towards the civilian population under international humanitarian and human rights law,” he said. - by Barak Ravid - 09/20/07 - Haaretz
Israel labels Gaza ‘enemy entity’ - Israel’s security cabinet has declared the Gaza Strip an “enemy entity”, opening the way for cuts in fuel and other vital supplies to the territory. Hamas issued a statement in response, saying that the security cabinet’s announcement on Wednesday amounted to a “declaration of war”. - 09/19/07 - Al Jazeera
UN: Gaza economy may crash soon unless Israel reopens borders - More than 68,000 workers have lost their jobs since Gaza’s borders were closed in mid-June, following fierce factional battles in which Hamas expelled the forces of the rival Fatah faction, said Nasser el-Helou, a prominent Gaza businessman. The closings added to the already high unemployment rate in the narrow coastal strip, bringing it up to about 75 percent, according to the MAS Institute for Economic Studies. - 07/18/07 - Haaretz
A Deepening Humanitarian Crisis: Making Gaza Scream - Here’s how several concerned NGOs headline Gaza’s deepening crisis. It won’t improve as long as Israel, the US and West continue their war against the democratically elected Hamas government most Palestinians still strongly support. - by Stephen Lendman - 07/09/07 - Counter Punch
Shortage of building supplies halts UN construction in Gaza - The United Nations agency tasked with helping Palestinian refugees has announced that it has halted construction on all of its building projects in the Gaza Strip because restrictions at the crossing points with Israel have led to a shortage of basic building supplies. - John Ging, the Gaza Director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said about $93 million worth of projects are on hold because of the lack of cement and other building materials. - Mr. Ging said it was vital that the crossings between Israel and Gaza resume full operation, rather than just for food aid and medicines, warning that Gaza – which is home to more than 1.4 million people within its 360-square-kilometre area – faces the prospect of a humanitarian and
public health crisis. - 07/09/07 - un.org
Can the Arab world be turned into Gaza’s jailers? - The problem with Levy’s analysis is that it assumes that Israel and the US wanted sanctions to bring about the fall of Hamas, either by giving Fatah the upper hand so that it could deal a knockout blow to the Palestinian government, or by inciting ordinary Palestinians to rise up and demand that their earlier electoral decision be reversed and Fatah reinstalled. In short, Levy, like most observers, assumes that the policy was designed to enforce regime change. - But what if that was not the point of the sanctions? And if so, what goals were Israel and the US pursuing? - by Jonathan Cook in Nazareth - 06/26/07 - ICH
Let Gaza live - Here is a success story: Israel and the West imposed a boycott on the Palestinian Authority with the aim of weakening Hamas, and a year and a half later this brilliant policy has yielded its fruits: Hamas has become stronger. If there is a lesson from the fiasco in Gaza, here it is: Starving, drying up and blocking aid do not sear the consciousness and do not weaken political movements. On the contrary. - by Gideon Levy - 06/26/07 - Haaretz
Snatching power: Hamas seizes control - By Friday, June 15th, the Islamists of Hamas had largely wrested control of the Gaza Strip from their secularist rivals, Fatah. - 06/15/07 - Economist
International aid agency: 80 percent of Gazans now rely on food aid - Eighty percent of Gazans receive food aid from the World Food Program or from UNRWA, WFP spokesperson Kirstie Campbell says, “and without it they are liable to starve.” The dozens of laborers who used to cross into Israel every day to work also found themselves unemployed as a result of laws prohibiting them from working and the construction of the separation barrier. - by Avi Issacharoff - 03/04/07 - Haaretz
Pollution adding to Gaza’s woes - Sewage runs through the streets of Gaza. The Gaza Strip is the most densely populated piece of land in the world but it has had little or no investment in infrastructure for years, and the situation has worsened since sanctions were imposed last year. With no sewage plant, Gaza’s waste is dumped into the sea, making it unsafe for fishing or swimming according to a recent report. - by Nour Odeh in Gaza - 03/01/07 - Al Jazeera.net
Report: Israel Navy harassing and humiliating Gaza fisherman - An Israeli human rights group has charged that the Israel Navy is harassing and humiliating Gaza fishermen, who said they cannot make a living because of restrictions. - According to a report published by B’Tselem, a group that examines Israeli human rights violations in the West Bank in Gaza, at least 10 Gaza fisherman have been stopped by Israeli navy vessels in recent months. -
The fishermen said they were forced to undress, leaving only their underwear, and made to swim to the Israeli ships, and then they were taken to the nearby Israeli port of Ashdod for questioning. Some said Israeli forces fired at them. - 02/25/07 - Haaretz
Occupied Gaza like apartheid South Africa, says UN report - A UN human rights investigator has likened Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to apartheid South Africa and says there should be “serious consideration” over bringing the occupation to the international court of justice. - The report by John Dugard, a South African law professor who is the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, represents some of the most forceful criticism yet of Israel’s 40-year occupation. - by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem - 02/23/07 - Guardian
It’s Time to Visit Gaza - Glass reveals that 56.6 percent of the 1.4 million people living in Gaza (if you can call it living) are under the age of 18. That means 792,400 children; Gaza has no cinemas, no theatres, no concert halls, and no space for entertainment or amusement. Where then do these children play? Israel controls all access to, from and within Gaza, never allowing these children to see the world outside this tiny crowded strip of sand they call home. If this, Madam Speaker, is not ethnically based oppression, what is? - by Miko Peled - 02/13/07 - Electronic Intifada
UN Agencies in occupied Palestinian territory “extremely alarmed” by security situation in Gaza
We call for an immediate end to the violence, respect by all parties for the human rights of the population in Gaza and we condemn in the strongest possible terms the killing of women, children and other unarmed civilians. We appeal to the parties to refrain from any action which endangers civilian life and which prevents us from fulfilling our humanitarian responsibilities.
U.N. - 02/05/07 - electronicintifada.net
The most recent fighting in the Gaza Strip, which has left many people dead, confirms that the internal strife plaguing the Occupied Territories since the advent of Hamas to power in January 2006 was not entirely the outcome of outside meddling in Palestinian affairs.
It is, in most part a violent expression of the already existing weaknesses and disunity that has sadly defined the Palestinian political milieu for generations.
by Ramzy Baroud - 01/31/07 - Global Research
