Chris Hedges: Starving Gaza

from Truthdig:


Starving Gaza


Posted on Aug 20, 2007


By Chris Hedges

Gaza has become the Sarajevo of the Middle East. Israel, in an action similar to that of the Serbs in Bosnia, has surrounded and cut off nearly a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the Islamic militant group Hamas took control in June. Electric fences and watch towers manned by Israeli soldiers keep the Palestinians trapped inside the strip. The land and sea blockade, the halting of all but minimal humanitarian aid and the refusal to allow Gaza to receive financial support are crushing Gaza’s industry, farming and infrastructure.

The tactic is clear: Israel and the United States will strangle Gaza by cutting off all money and goods, including fuel and most food, to reduce one of the most densely populated places on the planet to an impoverished ghetto. Hunger and anarchy, they hope, will motivate Gazans to turn on Hamas, and the anarchy will perhaps be used to justify a reoccupation by the Israeli military and see the return of the quisling President Mahmoud Abbas, who was ousted after he led an abortive coup to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government. He is now in the West Bank.

The Bush administration has, in an effort to bolster the credibility of Abbas, promised to provide his government with $190 million in aid and $80 million in security assistance. And the Israeli prime minister has traveled to Jericho to tout Abbas as a partner for peace.

The effects of the siege are disastrous. Palestinians in Gaza are not allowed to travel abroad. They cannot enter Israel for work. They do not fish off the coast because Israeli gunboats open fire at any vessels that are more than a mile offshore. Gaza has seen 75 percent of its factories closed since June, with the loss of 68,000 jobs, according to the World Bank. There is a 70 percent unemployment rate, and 1.1 million of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza depend on U.N. assistance to survive. The boycott has forced the United Nations to suspend $93 million worth of construction projects for homes, schools and sewage treatment in Gaza because cement and other building supplies have run out. These U.N. projects once employed 121,000 people. About 80 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza survive on $2 a day. Basic foodstuffs such as milk powder, baby formula, vegetable oil and medical supplies are running out. Families, unable to get food or find work, are living on little more than tea and bread.

The instability is compounded by the internecine violence among Palestinian factions, gangs, clans, militias and criminals, as well as the Israeli warplanes that bomb refugee camps in an effort to strike at militants and Israeli patrols that make incursions into the strip to round up suspects. It is impossible for nearly all Palestinians to enter or leave Gaza. The only connection the trapped population has with the outside comes through deep tunnels that Palestinians dig across the border into Egypt. These tunnels are used to smuggle goods, weapons and people, as a tunnel under the airport in Sarajevo was during the war in Bosnia. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070820_starving_gaza/