[WCUSP] Fwd: 'Gaza is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now'

Fri Sep 8 12:16:43 CDT 2006

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Montreal Muslim News <montrealnews at gmail.com>
> Date: September 8, 2006 9:00:09 AM EDT
> To: megiddo at umich.edu
> Subject: 'Gaza is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all 
> starving now'
>
>  'Gaza is a jail. Nobody is allowed to leave. We are all starving now'
>
> By Patrick Cockburn in Gaza
> Published: 08 September 2006
>
> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1372026.ece
>
> 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.
>
> ________________________________________________________
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