In practice, the Gazan economy has been made inoperable by the siege. Exports are not allowed, except for limited and intermittent exports of agricultural products that have to be carried out under strict Israeli control. The three military operations in seven years have left Gaza in ruins and a large portion of its population exists in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis, depending on aid and with no prospects of economic sustainability.
Ayah Bashir: For example, in Deir al-Balah where I live in the central Gaza Strip the Al-Awda Factory was entirely destroyed in the recent attack. This factory had manufactured sweets, biscuits and ice cream since 1977. It employed over 400 workers in three shifts, 24 hours a day. Now the factory is gone and all the workers are unemployed.
Narrator: According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 178,000 Palestinians are directly affected by the restrictions on access to the land and sea in Gaza. Restrictions on the land cover 62.6 km2, which represents 35% of Gaza’s agricultural land and 17% of the entire territory. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre has estimated an annual loss of 75,000 tons of agriculture output (some $50 million). At the same time, Israel continues to benefit from both Gaza and the West Bank as major captive markets for its products by preventing possible alternatives to Israeli merchandise.
Ayah Bashir: Before the Summer 2014 attack, a large percentage of the population had access to food and water through a vouchers assistance scheme. After the massacre and the intolerable humanitarian devastation as people lost their homes and possessions, many have had to obtain even their clothes through vouchers issued by NGOs.
The Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza has led to skyrocketing unemployment resulting in despair, depression, drug addiction, and recently fatal attempts at migration as people have drowned while attempting to flee Gaza by sea. Prolonging and tightening the existing siege on Gaza is not about destroying Hamas, disabling tunnels, or stopping rocket fire into Israel. It has always been about Israel’s control over our lives, land, and borders. And it has been about killing more of us.
Significantly, this strategy is not new. We have endured a long history of massacres, decades of systemic ethnic cleansing, 47 years of military occupation, and apartheid policies and forced displacement since 1948. All this continues to this day. However, the latest massacre, genocide, holocaust—call it what you may—of Gaza in 2014, is the most ferocious one I have ever witnessed with my own eyes. The deliberate targeting and ruthless slaughter of defenseless civilians, the majority of whom are refugees, the massacre of entire neighborhoods as in Al-Shuja‘iya, Khuza‘a, and Rafah, and the obliteration of houses: All are deeply shocking.
What is happening in Gaza is multigenerational trauma. Years of war and aggression have affected everything—human beings, houses, infrastructure, land, trees, animals, livelihoods, hospitals, medical supplies, schools, mosques, factories, water resources and even Gaza’s only power plant. All of this was already in bad condition before the summer of 2014 as a direct result of the seven-year-long siege imposed by Israel and enforced by Egypt.
Resistance, Escape and the Political Climate
Narrator: When Leningrad was under siege, the powerful and well-organized Soviet army fought on behalf of the besieged civilian population. The civilian population, including children, was also mobilized by the city and state governments to assist in the resistance efforts, e.g., by producing ammunition and erecting anti-tank barriers.
With respect to Gaza, claims are often made that the militias use the civilian population as human shields, e.g., by firing rockets out of civilian areas. These claims are then used as justifications for attacks against civilians. But based on the example of Leningrad, the situation of siege itself makes it difficult to make sharp distinctions between the military and the civilian population: The civilian population as a whole, collectively subjected to extreme hardship by the siege, will ardently mobilize to support the resistance efforts in any way it can. The besieged population’s support for those fighting to end the siege on their behalf was near absolute in Leningrad, despite the fact that the government was oppressive. It is substantial in Gaza’s case as well, particularly during military operations. Because the siege is intolerable, the population views ending it as the most urgent goal and is willing to ignore, for the time being, the rulers’ other deficiencies.
Escape from the besieged Leningrad was hard and so is fleeing besieged Gaza. To be evacuated from Leningrad, one needed to ride over a frozen lake with the risk of sinking if the German army’s bombardment broke the ice. (No tunnels could be dug out of Leningrad because the land is frozen most of the year.) To flee Gaza, one needs to be one of the few who are able to prove special circumstances (e.g., those who have received a scholarship to study abroad may be issued a permission to leave via Israel), have the luck to be allowed into Egypt through the Rafah crossing, which is opened sporadically and inconsistently, or travel to Egypt through the tunnels—tunnels that Egypt has since destroyed. Terrifyingly, precisely during those times when Gaza becomes most dangerous—i.e. during Israel’s military operations—the exits shut down completely and leaving becomes near-impossible. At other times, Israel’s policy of issuing permits is somewhat conflicted: on the one hand, there is a desire to encourage emigration, on the other, an equally strong desire to deny Gazans freedom of movement.
Ayah Bashir: I think it is so dehumanizing and humiliating to view us, the Palestinians of Gaza, as miserable. It is true that we suffer enormously and survive catastrophic conditions, but we are also people who resist for our dignity and justice. We all pray that we don’t become one of Gaza’s numbers. After surviving the 2008–09 onslaught on Gaza, during which I felt so powerless, I joined the Palestinian movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on Israel that gave me a renewed sense of optimism and sense of power. I also survived the ruthless assault on Gaza in 2012. The Israeli horror of 2014 coincided with the 9th anniversary of the BDS call and the 10th anniversary of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on the illegality of Israel’s apartheid wall in the occupied West Bank. Not only does Israel’s brutality intensify the growing BDS movement, it also shatters the illusion that the Israel of today has any intention of achieving a just peace.
Esther Rappaport: I wish that people in Israel and in the West were more aware of the non-violent resistance to the Occupation and the Siege that so many Palestinians practice. Unfortunately, the only form of resistance coming from Gaza that the world pays any attention to is rocket fire: When that is happening, Gaza is in the news and the world becomes aware of its existence, its plight, and its desire for change. Once, however, a ceasefire is achieved, the world sighs with relief, as if the problem was now solved, and forgets all about Gaza. It is intolerable that nothing else that the Palestinians of Gaza say or do manages to break the walls of complacency and indifference.
Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network (al-shabaka.org), http://bit.ly/1DgSy4E
Investigators: Israel Fired on Civilians Carrying White Flags
Charlotte Silver
The Israeli military opened fire on a mass march of civilians who were carrying white flags and calling out “peaceful, peaceful” as they tried to exit Khuza‘a village in southern Gaza, which had been under siege for three days, corralling them back into the village.
Those who were trapped in the village had tried to coordinate a safe evacuation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, but Israel’s shelling would not let up.
This is one of the many disturbing findings from one of the only international and independent fact-finding missions that Israel has allowed to access the Gaza Strip since the August 26 ceasefire that ended 51 days of intensive bombing.
Last week the mission published “No Safe Place,” a more than two hundred-page report on their findings from their forensic investigation. The mission’s aim was to assess the types, causes and patterns of injuries and deaths and to collect ev
idence for potential use in local or international justice mechanisms.
The investigation devotes special attention to the siege on Khuza‘a, detailing the attempts civilians made to flee Israeli fire and finding that the army used people as human shields, executed civilians at close range, and intentionally neglected mortally wounded children. During the four days of heavy bombardment of the village, scores were critically injured. While the report refers to twelve deaths specifically, it says the total number of casualties remains unknown.
The report also finds that most of those who were killed during the summer assault were crushed to death, frequently in their homes, and often with other members of their family by their side. More than 142 families lost at least three members in a single strike. Recent casualty counts estimate the total killed as at least 2,257 and as high as 2,310.
Organized by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the investigation team consisted of international experts from the fields of forensic pathology, emergency medicine, pediatrics and health and human rights.
The delegation interviewed 68 injured patients and reviewed 370 digital images and records of those killed and the report includes transcripts of interviews with injured civilians and medical professionals. While limited in scope and access, the report concludes that evidence suggests several serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.
All of Gaza a Battlefield
The report confirms what was reported at the time: indiscriminate and total bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
While in some cases the Israeli military dropped warning leaflets or sent “warning strikes” or “roof taps,” this did not save lives as there were no clear boundaries of where the battlefield was. The army targeted possible escape routes, ambulances carrying wounded people, and individuals attempting to flee.
Hospitals Overwhelmed
The mission found that the rate of injury and death overwhelmed the capacities of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, and the destruction of medical facilities further undermined medical workers’ ability to adequately treat patients. Doctors testified that they were forced to take shortcuts like not using sterile gloves or sterile gauze and had use makeshift suture material. Some patients reported that they found maggots in their wounds after leaving the hospital.
For those needing rehabilitation, their options are now worse. Gaza’s sole public rehabilitation hospital, al-Wafa, was completely destroyed during the war. And while there are other private or nongovernmental medical rehab facilities, there is a lack of cohesion in providing services to the population in part because many international groups refuse to coordinate with Hamas government authorities.
Psychological Trauma
The majority of the 68 patients interviewed suffer insomnia, flashbacks, nightmares, screaming, loss of appetite, weight loss, depression and unstable emotional states.
Doctors and nurses said that the trauma they saw was not just from the attacks, displacement, threats of joblessness and poverty, but also the sense of total isolation from the rest of the world. Those interviewed said that Gaza’s dire situation affects individuals’ life choices, like whether or not to get married and have children.
Medics Under Attack
Yousef al-Kahlout, a 32-year-old medic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, said Israel’s tactics posed a danger more grave last summer than in previous wars. Ambulances came under repeated attack and first responders were put at risk by Israel’s method of striking a single target multiple times in close succession, a method called “double tapping.”
The report adds that the Israeli military would often refuse to coordinate with the International Committee of the Red Cross to allow local medics into an area to evacuate casualties, forcing them to enter dangerous areas at their own risk.
Even when the Israeli military would coordinate with the Red Cross to allow Red Crescent staff to enter an area, medics would come under fire.
Powerful Explosives Used Indiscriminately
Huge numbers of injuries and deaths last summer were caused by the indiscriminate use of large amounts of powerful explosives, the report states.
One weapon used to inflict such destruction is called an “explosive barrel” by local residents and “Tzefa Shirion” (Viper Armor) by the Israeli military. Its stated purpose is to clear landmines for advancing troops, but Israel used it in at least two neighborhoods in Gaza: Khuza‘a and Khan Younis. The device can be rolled out from a tank or dropped from the sky; as the barrel rolls forward, its explosives are detonated and a corridor is created for the military.
The mission also found evidence corroborating the use of flechette shells, which indiscriminately spray thousands of tiny darts, and evidence suggesting the use of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), an experimental weapon that was previously used in Israel’s 2008–2009 military attack on Gaza. Doctors also found computer chips with SONY markings embedded in bodies like shrapnel.
The publication ends by encouraging the pursuit of justice, while also acknowledging the deep sense of pessimism Palestinians have towards any international mechanism to deter Israel’s constant attacks on Gaza. One head nurse at al-Shifa hospital said: “Many felt that ‘another report’ documenting their pain and suffering would be ineffective in addressing the root causes of the morbidity and mortality they experience daily.”
The Electronic Intifada, January 28, 2015, http://bit.ly/1CsRMTZ
Revealed: Gaza Orphans Israel Trip Was Government-Backed PR Stunt
Ali Abunimah
An Israeli initiative to exploit a group of Palestinian orphans from Gaza to burnish Israel’s blood-soaked image backfired on Sunday when Hamas, the Palestinian political and military resistance movement, put a stop to it.
A group of children whose parents were killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza last summer and several adult chaperones were about to pass through the Erez crossing into Israel on Sunday to be greeted by Israeli officials and a media throng.
But Hamas officials halted the visit. According to a statement posted on Facebook by the interior ministry in Gaza, security services stopped “37 children of martyrs from departing to the lands occupied in 1948 [Israel] for a suspicious visit to several settlements and occupied cities.” It said the step was taken “to protect the culture of our children and our people and protect them from the policy of normalization.”
But it appears the children—though they were the props—were not the target.
The visit was the brainchild of an Israeli operative deeply involved in settlements in the occupied West Bank, working closely with the Israeli government.
It involved Palestinian counterparts in Israel with ties to the ruling Likud party and the Zionist political establishment.
It is unlikely that the non-governmental organization in Gaza that helped coordinate the visit was aware of these facts when it agreed to take part.
Priceless Propaganda
The children had been scheduled to visit the Palestinian town of Kafr Qasim and the Bedouin forced-resettlement town of Rahat. They were also to be received by Palestinian Authority de facto leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
But the week-long visit would also have provided Israel with priceless photo opportunities of happy, smiling Gaza children at the zoo in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, as well as several Israeli settlements.
Such propaganda would have provided a marked counterpoint to the indelible images from the summer of some of the more than five hundred children killed and thousands injured and terrorized by Israel’s attack.
Israeli media, public relations officials and international media sympathetic to them, including the BBC and AP, have presented Hamas’ action as preventing hapless orphans from making what Reuters termed “a rare goodwill visit to the Jewish state.”
Exploiting Orphans
Many commenters on social media have noted that Israel advocates fully supportive of the siege of Gaza and of restricti
ons that routinely prevent Palestinian students, medical patients and loved ones of prisoners passing through Erez, were suddenly outraged that this particular group of children had been stopped.
Marian Houk, a journalist currently based in Ramallah, said it was “hard to understand” Israel’s decision to allow the orphans in to “visit kibbutzes, a zoo” and Mahmoud Abbas, while it had recently “refused to allow a man from Gaza to visit his dying 18-month-old son in the West Bank, and then refused to allow him to attend the funeral.”
The story of Israel’s refusal to let Bakr Hafi visit his young son, Emir, who died on 14 December, was told by Haaretz.
The Electronic Intifada’s Rami Almeghari reported last year on the case of twelve-year-old Amal Samouni, who has shrapnel in her skull from Israel’s 2009 attack on Gaza, and was denied permission to travel through Erez for treatment in the West Bank.
Not surprisingly, news of the visit provoked a fierce outcry from Palestinians on social media.
Refaat Alareer, the Palestinian writer and educator in Gaza, tweeted, “I would categorically refuse for my nephew, whose father Israel murdered, to go to be brainwashed by some liberal Israelis.”
In July, Alareer wrote a moving tribute to his brother Mohammed, who played a beloved children’s character on Palestinian TV and who was killed by Israel’s indiscriminate shelling of Gaza City’s Shuja‘iya neighborhood.
“Israel is so vulgar and despicable it murdered my niece Raneem’s dad and now Israel wants to use [children like] her for propaganda,” Alareer added.
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