GAZA:How far can it bend before it snaps?

Stephen McCloskey

GAZA:How far can it bend before it snaps?

Stephen McCloskey

Published by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity CampaignMarch 2014

Gaza: How far can it bend before it snaps?Stephen McCloskey*

March 2014

In December last Amnesty International warned that the Gaza Stripwas ‘in the shadow of a public health catastrophe’ given thedeteriorating living conditions for the region’s 1.7 million people, mostof whom are refugees. Subjected to an Israeli blockade since 2007that has devastated its economy and created soaring unemployment,Gaza has been dealt a series of recent blows that have exacerbated theeffects of the siege.

In July 2013, Egypt’s elected President, Mohammed Morsi, wasoverthrown by a military coup in an increasingly fractured countryattempting the transition to democracy after almost thirty years ofoppressive government rule by military leader Hosni Mubarek. TheHamas government in Gaza benefited from close links with Morsi’sMuslim Brotherhood, particularly through the re-opening of the bordercrossing between Egypt and Gaza and revenues derived from a sharpincrease in black market activity through border tunnels at Rafah onGaza’s Southern border. Since the coup, Egypt’s new military ruler,General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has cooled relations with Hamas,restricted access through the crossing, and ordered the closure of thetunnels to prevent ‘dangerous elements’ from entering the Sinai regionnear Gaza. Cairo has accused Hamas of not doing enough to securethe border between Gaza and Egypt which has been used by Islamicmilitants to launch attacks on Egyptian troops in Sinai.

Open air prison

The border crossing is open on average four hours a day and can beclosed for days on end in the event of a security incident in Sinai.These closures have worsened an already bleak existence for the vast

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majority of Gazans. A recent United Nations’ report shows a 71percent drop on the number of daily travellers through the Rafahcrossing since July 2013 from nearly 1,400 to 398. Behind everycommuter refused entry into Egypt is a narrative of frustration andsometimes tragedy for those trapped in what British Prime MinisterDavid Cameron described as an ‘open air prison’. Families can beseparated, medical treatment denied, students prevented from pursuingacademic pathways, and workers unable to make a living. The Rafahcrossing is in effect a ‘gateway to the outside world’ for Gazans livingin the strangled social and economic conditions imposed by Israel’sblockade.

Gaza’s other main lifeline has been the smuggling tunnels with the‘annual value of the goods smuggled from Egypt to Gaza estimated at$1 billion’. The UN has reported that only 10 of the 300 tunnelsremain partially open which has reduced to a trickle the amount offuel and construction materials going into the stricken territory. Withonly a fraction of Gaza’s fuel needs being imported through Israel’s‘official crossings’, the territory had become heavily reliant on fuelsmuggled through the tunnels to operate schools and hospitals, water

and sanitation facilities, and the only power plant.

Power outages

The knock-on effects of the tunnel closures have included poweroutages of 12-16 hours a day with the UN reporting that the Gazapower plant ‘may shut down if adequate supplies are not urgentlymade available’. Moreover, the construction sector which accountedfor 80 percent of Gaza’s growth in the first quarter of 2013 has beendecimated by the tunnel closures. Nabil Abu Muaileq, the Chairmanof the Palestinian Contractors' Union, has said that ’60% ofconstruction relies on the tunnels’ and 50% of projects hadconsequently ‘stalled’.

‘Gaza’, he said, ‘is on the verge of an economic and social crisisbecause the unemployment rate will increase as a result of the halt inthe work of labourers, technicians, companies and factories’. SinceSeptember 2013, Israel has admitted 50 truckloads of constructionmaterial a day through the Kerem Shalom Crossing in addition to anexisting volume of 20 truckloads but this is woefully short of what isneeded. The Ministry of National Economy in Gaza estimates thatIsrael admits 20 tons of cement and 10 tons of steel bars each day whenit needs 4,000 and 1,500 tons respectively. The price paid for thedwindling supply of construction materials entering Gaza is adesperate shortage of schools, houses, health facilities and basicinfrastructure needed to keep pace with the region’s population.

Floods

Where this not enough to contend with, Gaza was subjected toflooding after four days of torrential rain in December which left manyhomes accessible only by boat. Some 5,000 people in Northern Gazawere displaced in what the UN called a ‘disaster area’. Given the lackof fuel available to Gaza’s only power plant, the territory was leftwithout sewerage and water treatment plants. Children had to navigatelakes of raw sewage on their way to school exacerbating a sanitationcrisis in Gaza caused by 90 percent of water from its underground

aquifer being already unsafe to drink. According to AmnestyInternational ‘Some 65 per cent of Gaza’s population only receivewater once every three or four days given the increasing infiltrationof sewage and sea water into the domestic supply’. Amnesty describesthis deteriorating humanitarian situation as ‘an assault on the dignityof Palestinians in Gaza’.

There is also a scarcity of food in Gaza caused by a flatliningeconomy, spikes in food prices and increasing unemployment.According to the UN mission in Gaza, the number of food insecurehouseholds in the region has risen from 44 percent in 2011 to 57percent in 2012 with 800,000 Gazans dependent on food aid. In April2013, the UN had to suspend operations at all of its food distributionoutlets after one of them was stormed by protestors because of thesuspension of cash payments to some of the poorest Palestinianrefugees. The suspension was caused by a $67million shortfall in theUN’s budget due to reduced contributions from donor states whichreflect an international trend in declining aid spending following the2008 financial crisis. The UN annually launches an emergency appeal

to meet the shortfall in income but this too is coming up short whichraises the prospect of more unrest in Gaza should more core food, cashand jobs programmes become suspended.

In August 2012, the UN warned that by 2020 Gaza would berendered uninhabitable due to the scarcity of water and food, and lackof housing, schools and hospitals. Many firsthand observers of Gaza’srapid social and economic deterioration argue that the territory isalready without a safe and humane environment for its people, someof whom have been driven to the very edge of despair. With itsgrowing dependence on candlelight, transportation by horse and cart,and underground tunnels to sustain life, Gaza is retreating into amedieval society grinding slowly to a halt.

In an interview with the Guardian, Hazem Balousha, a citizen ofGaza said: ‘We wake up in the night worrying about small things:cooking gas, the next power cut, how to find fuel for the car. We nolonger care about the big things, the important things, the future – wejust try to get through each day’. The Director of UN operations inGaza, Robert Turner, asked of the current situation: ‘So much pressurehas built up. How far can Gaza bend before it snaps?’ In a departingdispatch for the Guardian in January 2014, its outgoing Jerusalemcorrespondent, Harriet Sherwood, summed up the current situation inGaza thus:

“Power cuts, fuel shortages, price rises, job losses, Israeli air strikes,untreated sewage in the streets and the sea, internal politicalrepression, the near-impossibility of leaving, the lack of hope orhorizon – these have chipped away at the resilience and fortitude ofGazans, crushing their spirit”.

Military Strikes

Israeli air strikes and extrajudicial killings add another layer offoreboding on the lives of Gaza’s citizens, particularly in the wake ofOperation Cast Lead (27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009), whichclaimed 1,383 Palestinian lives (including 333 children) and Operation

Pillar of Defence, (14 to 21 November 2012), which killed 167 people,including 32 children. Both operations took the form of aerialbombardments by fighter aircraft, armed drones and helicopters andresulted in heavy civilian casualties, particularly among young people;the former also saw a ground invasion by Israeli troops and tanks. TheNGO Defence for Children International has monitored the numberof children killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since the startof the Second Intifada in 2000 which totals 1,401. 73% of this total,or 1,033 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip alone and noneof these children were involved in hostilities when their lives weretaken.

Unsurprisingly, many of Gaza’s young people suffer symptoms ofconflict-related trauma that often manifest themselves throughbehavioural changes, difficulties with concentrating in school,bedwetting, loss of appetite, apathy and becoming withdrawn.Moreover, the psychological problems related to life under constantthreat of violence combined with the added strain of materialdeprivation can contribute to a difficult domestic life for everyone inGaza. However, an important distinction needs to be drawn betweenthe humanitarian crisis in Gaza and emergency situations like the

typhoon that caused such devastation in the Philippines last November.

Legal obligations

The food and water shortages, electricity cuts, lack of infrastructure,inadequate number of schools, houses and health clinics, child growthstunting, rampant rates of diarrhoea and typhoid fever, psychologicalproblems and material deprivation all directly result from Israel’sblockade. According to the Israeli human rights NGO B’tselem, TheHague Convention (1907) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949)impose general responsibility on the occupying state ‘for the safetyand welfare of civilians living in the occupied territory’. AlthoughIsrael has withdrawn its settlements from Gaza and ‘does not have afixed presence throughout the whole area’, it maintains ‘effectivecontrol’ of the territory. Israel controls the air space over Gaza, thecoastline and the border crossings (Rafah aside) and therefore assumeskey powers normally reserved for a government. The crisis in Gazais not the result of a devastating act of nature: a drought, famine, floodor tsunami but a systematic choking off of Gaza’s economic potentialand means for self-development and independence. It is a cruel formof ‘collective punishment’ and Amnesty International along with ahost of other development and human rights groups has urged theIsraeli authorities to lift the blockade immediately.

The crisis in Egypt has fanned the effects of Israel’s blockadetogether with the recent floods. As UN spokesman Chris Gunnesssuggests: ‘it is the most vulnerable, the women and children, theelderly who will pay the highest price of failure to end the blockade’.The Israeli bombing campaigns aside, the international media largelyignores the slow silent catastrophe of the blockade’s effects on Gazaso the Palestinian people are dependent on civil society movementsaround the world to lead our governments toward action that will liftthe blockade. This means supporting the Boycott, Divestment andSanctions (BDS) movement which is starting to really impact onIsrael’s economy. As the Guardian reported recently:

“The number of European corporations who have severed or

reviewed links with Israeli companies which operate in settlements isaccelerating; the European Union is taking an increasingly tougherline; and the boycott movement is gaining traction in the United States,where it has previously struggled to win support”.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz argues that BDS ‘constitutes aproactive method of nonviolent resistance that is essential to thePalestinian struggle for equality and freedom’. Join the campaign andhelp lift the siege of Gaza.

References

Al Jazeera, ‘Thousands evacuated after Gaza floods’, 15 December2014, available:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/12/thousands-evac-uated-after-gaza-floods-2013121418338338458.html, accessed 3February 2014.

Amnesty International, ‘Israel/OPT: Gaza power crisis has com-pounded blockade’s assault on human dignity’, 1 December 2013,available: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/israelopt-gaza-power-crisis-has-compounded-blockade-s-assault-human-dignity-2013-11-29, accessed 3 February 2014.

BBC, “David Cameron describes blockaded Gaza as a ‘prison’”, 27July 2010, available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10778110, accessed 3 February 2014.

B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in theOccupied Territories, ‘The Gaza Strip - Israel's obligations under in-ternational law’, available: http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/is-raels_obligations, accessed 10 February 2014.

Guardian, ‘Goodbye Gaza: our correspondent reflects on her time inthe Middle East’, 25 January 2014, available: http://www.the-guardian.com/world/2014/jan/25/goodbye-gaza-harriet-sherwood-palestine-israel, accessed 31 January 2014.

Guardian, ‘Scarlett Johansson row has boosted Israeli settlementboycott, say activists’, 6 February 2014, available: http://www.the-guardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/scarlett-johansson-israeli-settle-ment-boycott-activists, accessed 10 February 2014.

Haaretz ‘The boycott is our Palestinian non-violent resistance’, 10February 2014, available: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.pre-mium-1.573315, accessed 10 February 2014.

Haaretz, ‘Egypt's army chief gives first account of his overthrow ofMorsi’, 8 October 2013, available:http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.551314, accessed 31January 2014.

Jerusalem Post, ‘Egyptian army warns Hamas over Sinai border’, 24September 2013, availablehttp://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Egypt-warns-Hamas-over-Sinai-border-326974http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=656905

Ma’an News Agency, ‘UNRWA calls Gaza 'disaster area,' pleads forend to Israeli blockade’, 14 December 2013, available:http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=657098, ac-cessed 10 February 2014.

Middle-East Monitor, ‘Egypt-Gaza tunnels: the lifeline underthreat’, 6 November 2013, available: https://www.middleeastmoni-tor.com/articles/middle-east/8169-egypt-gaza-tunnels-the-lifeline-under-threat, accessed 3 February 2014.

New York Times, ‘Egyptian soldiers in Sinai attack’, 20 November2013, available: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/world/mid-dleeast/egyptian-soldiers-die-in-sinai-attack.html?_r=0, accessed 3February 2014.

The Palestinian Information Center, ‘Egypt’s Al-Sissi orders de-struction for all tunnels to Gaza Strip’, 15 July 2013, available:

http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUx-JEpMO%2bi1s7XN0tFAQC8HW7KmKa4v2ZsstoIb1hxhzkp4FDHd1sdUd1xPwuLS1SFMLVNZGOvgqAx3OCIBabEN2fZAdHrOUQKwgCO33iEIGweEUD71xRdBg%3d, accessed 31 January 2014.

RT, ‘US suspends food and cash distribution, leaving Gaza desti-tute’, 5 April 2013, available: http://rt.com/news/gaza-unrwa-food-suspension-390/, accessed 10 February 2014.

United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs(UNOCHA), ‘The Humanitarian Impact of Reduced Access be-tween Gaza and Egypt Situation Report, 23 September 2013, avail-able:http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_gaza_sitrep_2013_09_23_english.pdf, accessed 3 February 2014.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), OPT Emer-gency Appeal 2014, available:http://www.unrwa.org/resources/emergency-appeals/opt-emergency-appeal-2014, accessed 10 February 2014.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 4 December2013, available: http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-state-ments/adversity-need-renewed-commitment, accessed 4 February2014.

UNRWA, Gaza in 2020: A Liveable Place? August 2012, available:http://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/file/publications/gaza/Gaza%20in%202020.pdf, accessed 4 February 2014.

This article was published by the Ireland-Palestine SolidarityCampaign on 27 March 2014. To get involved and become partof the Irish movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people'sstruggle for their human, national and democratic rights, clickhere to join, or for more information visit us at www.ipsc.ie.