Gaza Under Siege

The siege of Gaza has reached new levels of intensity. Israel has imposed an embargo that effectively blocks the delivery of fuel oil supplies to the strip. Despite the crossing of two lorries carrying cooking gas and three carrying diesel at Israel’s Nahal Oz border, on Tuesday, a humanitarian crisis unfolds. Thousands of homes in the territory have been left without power. People live without light or heating in a bitter cold and wet winter. Bakers haven’t been able to bake bread in the absence of fuel to fire their ovens. Unicef stated that the effect on Gaza city’s main pumping station results in 600,000 Palestinians not having access to safe drinking water. Hospitals are short of medical supplies and paralysed by the power cuts. Medical infrastructure is on the verge of breakdown. If not enough the very habitat of the Palestinians is being destroyed. 30.000 cubic metres of sewage have been dumped in the Mediterranean untreated as a direct result of the embargo.

However it comes just as the latest addition to the already horrendous living conditions that Gaza citizens have to endure. 35% of Gazans live on less than two dollars a day; unemployment is by 50% and 80% receive humanitarian assistance. But the ultimate suffering for Gazans is that they are locked inn in this tragedy. Gaza’s border closures are without example. Palestinian are effectively prisoners to their misery, just that prisoners would receive a more humane treatment.

The Israeli government denies creating a humanitarian crisis, and calls the disaster a plot by the Gazan authorities. However Israel is not trying to obscure the rationale behind the blockade. It is intended to pressure Hamas into stopping the rocket attacks, launched from the Gaza strip onto Israeli territory. There has been a stark increase in the number of these attacks, 200 rockets and mortar bombs have plummet on southern Israel in the past week alone. Although the Israeli government has a right to stop the attacks on its civilian population it can’t do so by all means.

The collective punishment of civilian populations is specifically forbidden by International law. The Geneva Convention clearly spells out that occupying powers have the absolute obligation to supply capture territories with utilities such as fuel or water.

We should aim for the nonviolent settlement of conflicts in the Arab world, if through nonviolent struggle or negotiation. In this respect we urge the leaders of the world to take action against collective traumatisation of a people, the breaking of international treaties and undignified treatment of human beings. The world has become too used to the suffering of the Palestinian people. This is an outcry to remind it of their humanity.

More pragmatically the siege of Gaza undermines peace talks launched with the Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas, and drives a further wedge between an already divided county. It is very likely that in the absence of a ceasefire with Hamas and the deficiency of peace talks in general, the rockets will soon fall again in Israel. Peace cannot be build by bringing suffering and destitute to 1.5 million people.

If the cycle of violence is to be broken, serious efforts for peace have to be accompanied by social justice. It is impossible to foster moderation and compromise, or build confidence in peaceful means of conflict resolution among Palestinians in the face of such brutal suppression. The intensity of the siege will again play in the hands of radicals.

What we the Israeli state and the international community should be doing, is treating the Palestinians with dignity and compassion in order to foster moderation and to empowering those people that believe Palestine’s future lies in peaceful resolution of their conflict. Efforts to reinitiate the peace process, the building of civic institutions and the reviving of the Palestinian economy are being emptied of any meaning and effect by the current situation in Gaza.

There has never been a more acute time to change the status quo in Gaza. Suppressed, hungry, unhealthy, traumatized and angry people don’t make good partners in a peace process.