Kam Kumar
A year after Israel bombarded Gaza, Kam Kumar looks at the continuing siege of Palestinians.
It has been a year since Israel’s brutal and horrific attack on Gaza, in which one of the most densely populated areas in the world was bombed every single day for three weeks. Those left in Gaza dealing with the consequences of war, certainly do not have an existence anything close to a “life” in any meaningful sense.
More than 1.5 million people still live under a full siege, with no means of getting in or out. The Red Cross estimates that 80 per cent of people in Gaza live below the poverty line, while 85 per cent are dependent on foreign aid – for such essentials as food, sanitation and other basic necessities.
However, Israel’s blockade of Gaza often means that even these supplies are not allowed in. As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that growth-stunting malnourishment is increasing, and now affects more than 10 per cent of Gaza’s children.
Israel has even severely reduced the amount of water that can get pumped into Gaza, in what amounts to a calculated and genocidal attempt to starve the Gazans into submission.
It is worth remembering just how mercilessly the Gaza strip, where 1.5 million people live on land 25 miles long and five miles wide, was attacked between December 2008 and January 2009.
* More than 8,000 homes were destroyed.
* Israel used F-19 jets to drop thousands of tons of bombs – causing the deaths of 1,400 Palestinians, 314 of them children.
* Deliberate massacres were committed, such as the bombing of 43 refugees taking shelter in Fakhura United Nations school in Jabaliya refugee camp, on 6 January.
* The Red Cross estimated that 5,380 people were injured, of which 30 per cent were permanently disabled.
* Up to 50,000 people were left needing psychological support.
* NGOs were prevented from bringing medical aid to the wounded, and were themselves subject to harassment and attack by the Israeli forces.
Gaza has been under siege since June 2007. Israel’s sanctions cover agricultural goods, concrete and steel, meaning that homes, hospitals and schools cannot be rebuilt. Gaza is totally dependent on Israel for water, electricity and gas. When Palestinians have attempted to break the dependence on Israel, they are met with brutality. In 2006 Israel even bombed the independent electric power station that supplied almost half of the Gaza strip of its electricity.
While people were being killed and made homeless, the newly elected Obama said nothing about the attacks, and later even reassured Israel in a speech in Cairo that the United States and Israel still had a “special bond”. However, mass protests erupted in outrage across the world, with hundreds of thousands showing solidarity with Gaza. This saw a revival of the anti-war movement in this country, with a new militancy seen in the university occupations, in confrontations with police and in the huge numbers of youth taking to the streets.
Meanwhile, the oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank continues. Under US pressure, Israel has approved a temporary ‘restriction’ of new settlements for a 10-month period – not even one year! About 500,000 settlers live in the West Bank and around Jerusalem alongside 2.7 million Palestinians. This restriction is not a complete freeze, and excludes East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want to be their capital. It also excludes new building projects already started.
The settlers enjoy apartheid-style privileges, where they live in exclusive housing, use special “Jews-only” roads and enjoy a freedom of movement denied to the Palestinians. They even have fresh water pumped to them and away from Palestinians who live on the same land.
Settler violence against Palestinians is also rife. Building new settlements is part of an overall Israeli policy of land grabbing, breaking the Palestinians up into tiny enclaves, and ensuring that the territory controlled by them can never become anything like a state.
Palestinians have been betrayed and sold out by PA president Mahmoud Abbas ever since he came to office. Significantly, his latest betrayal was precisely on the issue of Israel’s bombardment Gaza. He caused outrage in October when he tried to delay the endorsement of a United Nations report investigating Israel’s actions, which could have led to prosecutions of Israeli ministers and officials for war crimes. This has further helped to prove to the Palestinian people, if proof were needed, that Abbas’ corrupt and undemocratic government is a collaborator with Israeli against its own people.