The pasta, paper and hearing aids that could threaten Israeli security

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor


Monday, 2 March 2009


Members of the highest-ranking American delegation to tour Gaza were shocked to discover that the Israeli blockade against the Hamas-ruled territory included such food staples as lentils, macaroni and tomato paste.



"When have lentil bombs been going off lately? Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" asked Congressman Brian Laird. It was only after Senator John Kerry, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised the issue with Defence Minister Ehud Barak after their trip last month that Israel allowed the pasta in. Macaroni was considered a luxury item, not a humanitarian necessity, they were told. The total number of products blacklisted by Israel remains a mystery for UN officials and the relief agencies which face long delays in bringing in supplies. For security reasons such items as cement and steel rods are banned as they could be used by Hamas to build bunkers or the rockets used to target Israeli civilians. Hearing aids have been banned in case the mercury in their batteries could be used to produce chemical weapons.

Yet since the end of the war in January, according to non-government organisations, five truckloads of school notebooks were turned back at the crossing at Kerem Shalom where goods are subject to a $1,000 (£700) per truck "handling fee".

Paper to print new textbooks for Palestinian schools was stopped, as were freezer appliances, generators and water pumps, cooking gas and chickpeas. And the French government was incensed when an entire water purification system was denied entry. Christopher Gunness, the spokesman for the UN agency UNRWA responsible for Palestinian refugees, said: "One of the big problems is that the 'banned list' is a moving target so we discover things are banned on a 'case by case', 'day by day' basis."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-pasta-paper-and-hearing-aids-that-could-threaten-israeli-security-1635143.html

Or have they all learned to defend themselves when being attacked with a piece of fruit?

is committing a level collective punishment not seen since world war two.

the banned list is a moving target banned on a case by case and day bry day basis or the whims of who ever is on guard duty?

<snip>

"Egypt is today hosting a big conference in Sharm al-Sheikh to rally (mainly pro-western) donors to the task of rebuilding the large amounts of housing and public infrastructure in Gaza that were destroyed by Israel during the recent war.

Ramallah-based Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayad is requesting $2.5 billion for the task. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reportedly carrying with her to Sharm a pledge of $900 million of US funds. Different governments and groups around the world are even competing to give (or be seen to give) money for this reconstruction effort. In some cases, like that of the US, this intention of giving reconstruction aid now seems bizarre and hypocritical, given that Washington could have stopped Israel's assault on Gaza in its very first hours, and thereby prevented just about all of the horrendous damage Gazans have suffered; but under Pres. Bush it chose not to do so.

But there is one party that might well be strongly opposed to the rebuilding of Gaza: the Likud Party, which is shortly going to take over power in Israel. In a telling op-ed published in The Jerusalem Post in early February, Prof. Efraim Inbar, an adviser to Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, argued that,



The article strongly supported a policy of punishing all the people of Gaza for the actions of Hamas.

I interviewed Inbar here in Jerusalem yesterday. Referring to his article and to today's donors' conference, he admitted that the international community might (misguidedly) insist on rebuilding Gaza-- "but we can always slow the process down."

Indeed until now Israel, which is the "occupying power" in the Gaza Strip, has complete control over the passage of all freight into or out of the Strip. Since the Gaza war it has used that power to prevent the entry of just about all the basic materials required for physical rebuilding: cement, rebar, glass, piping, etc. So it seems that the outgoing Olmert government has already been working hard to prevent or slow down the rebuilding of Gaza.

Inbar is the Director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. In another part of yesterday's interview he talked about the need to maintain the extensive series of roadblocks and other movement-control mechanisms deep inside the West Bank with which Israel controls its 2.3 million Palestinians. Those roadblocks currently number more than 600, and have completely paralyzed the ability of West Bankers to build anything like a functioning economy.

Inbar described the West Bank roadblocks as another part of the effort to punish, or "train", the Palestinians. The US and other governments have urged Israel to reduce their number. But Inbar told me, "The Americans may push us on this, and we may remove one or two roadblocks. We'll just play with the Americans!"

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He{Inbar) expressed a lot of confidence that, despite the different "tone" he now hears coming out of Obama's Washington, the new president will not end up doing anything very different on the Palestinian issue than his predecessor.