[Peace-discuss] A Genocide in Slow Motion

Tue Jun 27 20:04:47 CDT 2006

Israel's Deadly Siege of Palestine
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

"The idea is to put Palestinians on a diet but not
make them die of hunger," commented Dov Weisglass,
senior advisor to Israeli Prime Ministers Sharon and
Olmert, when asked how Israel should deal with the new
Hamas government. Even these disgustingly callous
words scarcely do justice to the collective punishment
to Palestinians (illegal under international law)
being inflicted by Israel on the people of Palestine
for democratically electing a government that refuses
to accede to Israeli demands.

The situation is desperate. Since the new
Hamas-dominated government took office in January
2006, record levels of poverty, unemployment, food
insecurity, malnutrition, movement restrictions and
social unrest of all kinds have been reported.

Here is the grim picture as culled from available
sources by Jennifer Loewenstein of the Refugee Studies
Centre in Oxford, the U.K.

In addition to an economic siege imposed by the
governments of the United States and the European
Union in which all aid to the Palestinian Authority
(and in some cases to NGOs as well) has been cut, bank
transfers suspended, contacts with and visas for new
government members effectively banned, and $55 million
in tax revenues illegally withheld each month-
comprehensive closure has been imposed on the
territories restricting access to goods and services
within the West Bank and imposing draconian movement
restrictions on the entire Palestinian population.

Israel has kept the Karni (al-Muntar) industrial
crossing into the Gaza Strip shut for weeks at a time
locking out medicines, food and goods as well as
preventing the export of agricultural produce from
Gaza. Approximately 165,000 employees of the
Palestinian Authority have gone without pay for more
than three months affecting the lives of at least
700,000 people. Doctors, nurses, teachers, civil
servants, policemen and others return home empty
handed each day to families whose overall levels of
poverty and malnutrition have grown dramatically. Save
the Children UK Program Manager Jan Coffey reports
that in Gaza now 78% of the population lives below the
poverty line ($2 per day) and that 10% of children
under five suffer from chronic malnutrition. 

Israeli artillery shelling, targeted assassinations,
incursions into cities and towns, arrests and raids
continue with impunity. Even after the widely
publicized deaths of almost an entire family on a
north Gaza beach and a subsequent attack in which two
children and three paramedics were killed after two
Islamic Jihad militants were assassinated in Gaza
City, the international community remains silent in
effect condoning the piecemeal destruction of an
entire society. These atrocities are in addition to
the economic and political blockade of Palestine.

On March 15, 2006 the World Bank published a report in
which the economic outlook for the occupied
Palestinian territories is assumed based on a scenario
(now extant) in which tax revenues to the PA are
withheld, trade and labor restrictions are imposed and
foreign aid reduced. Under this scenario "[r]eal GDP
per capita declines by 27 percent, and personal
incomesby 30 percent a one-year contraction of
economic activity equivalent to a deep depression.
Unemployment hits 47 percent and poverty 74 percent by
2008. By 2008, the cumulative loss in real GDP per
capita since 1999 has reached 55 percent."

The World Bank estimated in 2004 that, following
"Disengagement," 2006 poverty rates in the West Bank
would reach 41% and in the Gaza Strip 68%.
Unemployment would be at 23% in the West Bank and 38%
in the Gaza Strip. These estimates were made before
the Western powers and their friends imposed the
economic embargo and suspended aid to the Palestinian
Authority. 

Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Centre for Human
Rights provides conservative estimates of the current
situation across the territories. According to
Sourani, the rate of unemployment in the territories
now is 34% in the oPts as a whole and 44% in the Gaza
Strip. This rate rises to 55% during times of complete
closure. He estimates current poverty levels at 50%
for the territories as a whole and nearly 70% in Gaza.

According to an OCHA (Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs) report published on April 11th
2006, unless the siege on Palestine ends unemployment
and poverty will reach especially high levels in the
Gaza Strip (60%) and the northern West Bank (50% & 40%
in the governorates of Salfit and of Jenin, Tubas and
Tulkarem respectively). The OCHA office in Gaza has
warned of a "humanitarian disaster" owing to a lack of
money and food. OCHA estimates the current rate of
poverty in the oPts at 56%. Prior to the Second
Intifada it was 22%.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has also
warned of a "humanitarian crisis" if aid and funding
to the Palestinian Authority continues. "The ICRC is
deeply concerned about the growing needs and the
worsening security situation in the occupied
territories, caused in large part by the decision
earlier this year to withhold funds and other aid from
the Palestinian Authority," it said on Monday, June
12. " [T]he occupying power in this case the State of
Israel-is responsible for meeting the basic needs of
the civilian population of the territories it
occupies. Those needs include sufficient food, medical
supplies and means of shelter." 

Israel's continued withholding of just Palestinian
tax/customs revenues reduces the total available
budget resources for the PA to between US $700 - $750
million. In the PA's draft budget for 2006 prepared by
the IMF in December 2005, the figure needed to sustain
the territories was US $1.9 billion. The United
States' administration nonetheless claims that no
humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories
exists.

The rationale for this onslaught on a civilian
population? Israel says Hamas is a terrorist
organization, bent on Israel's destruction. As
prominent Israelis and western observers have pointed
out, Hamas's leadership has made it clear on numerous
occasions that Israel's right to exist is not at
issue. What is at issue is Israel's adamant refusal to
confirm Palestine's right to exist. As prime minister
Olmert told a joint session of the US Congress in
Washington DC a few weeks ago, "I believed, and to
this day still believe, in our people's eternal and
historic right to this entire land." In other words he
doesn't recognize the right of Palestinians to even
the wretched cantons currently envisaged in his
"realignment".

The world shook with rage at the reports from Darfur.
Do not the starvation, not to mention almost daily
murder of Palestinian civilians merit even a word of
reproach to the government of Israel, or the US and
European governments that have joined in this barbaric
siege?

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 