[News] Gaza's last gasp

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Gaza's last gasp
Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, 23 January 2008
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9246.shtml


[]

Palestinians in Gaza gather in front of the Rafah border crossing at 
the border with Egypt, 22 January 2008. (Wissam 
Nassar/<http://maanimages.com>MaanImages)

By now, people watching their news programs around the world would 
have caught a glimpse of Gaza City in candle-lit darkness. A pretty 
sight indeed if it were not for the fact that most of the people in 
the Gaza Strip will have to depend on these candles as their only 
source of light now that the power plant servicing much of Gaza's 
population has shut down completely. There is no fuel to keep the 
plant running because Israel has imposed a complete lock-down of this 
most densely populated place on earth. That means no movement in or 
out of the Gaza Strip for people, or any kind of shipments in of 
vital food, fuel supplies and medicines. It is more than a miserable 
existence: it is a slow death.

This is the sixth day of Israel's draconian action against a people 
already suffering from the punitive sanctions imposed on them after 
their democratic elections in January 2006 did not yield a result 
palatable to Israel and parts of the international community. 
Israel's latest 24-hour reprieve to let in some supplies is not going 
to change the circumstances under which the Palestinians have had to 
live for the last two years. At most, these supplies will last two 
days. The Palestinians have been struggling to survive in conditions 
that reached emergency levels even before this latest siege. Hunger, 
poverty and unemployment are widespread and in this maximum-security 
prison surrounded by Israel's military cordon, disease, malnutrition 
and anarchy are dangerously close to breaking out.

Israel claims that its actions are in response to the homemade rocket 
fire aimed at the Israeli town of Sderot bordering the Gaza Strip. 
But by no stretch of the imagination is the firing of rockets 
compared to Israel's ongoing siege of Gaza an even contest. The 
Palestinians are imprisoned in Gaza and have no military force other 
than guns and homemade rockets. Israel, on the other hand, has the 
most sophisticated weaponry in the world at its disposal and uses it 
with merciless ferocity. It is bombing the Gaza Strip with its F-16 
fighter planes and helicopter gun ships and is launching artillery 
fire from the tanks it has surrounding this tiny stretch of land. In 
just the last few days, some 40 people have been killed and 120 
injured, most of them civilians.

Israel's responses are completely disproportionate to the damage 
caused by the rocket fire from Gaza, which is a symbolic retaliation 
for Israel's aggression and its effect is largely psychological. 
While it certainly makes life miserable for the residents of Sderot, 
Israel itself is not under threat. The number of Israelis killed and 
injured by these rockets has been very few compared to the 
exponentially more Palestinians killed in Gaza. In six years, twelve 
Israelis have been killed while hundreds of Palestinians have been 
killed in retaliation, not to mention the hundreds more that have 
been wounded, often permanently maimed.

Such collective punishment of an entire population is illegal under 
international law. Most of the Palestinians in Gaza are not 
combatants. Like in any other population, there is the usual mix of 
civil servants, doctors, teachers, lawyers, health care workers, 
engineers, journalists, politicians, students and the thousands of 
people upon whom any society depends to keep services running -- 
except that hundreds of thousands are now unemployed. And then of 
course, there are the mothers and children, the elderly and the sick, 
the incapacitated, the mentally impaired, the charity workers, 
volunteers, people who do not have a say about what decisions are 
made. There are also angry young men who feel helpless to protect 
their families and people already burdened by decades of humiliation 
and oppression, and many of them are fighting back as any people 
would do under attack, but their means are primitive and limited 
because they cannot leave the confines of Gaza.

Over 1,000 Palestinian civilians have gone out on the streets in 
protest and to beg the world to put an end to this enforced 
starvation and siege. People are queuing up to find bread, but no one 
is baking because there is no electricity. Connections with the 
outside world are dwindling as mobile phones and laptops run out of 
battery power. There is no water because the pumps need electricity. 
Washing machines, cook tops and ovens are useless. People cannot get 
to work because there is practically no fuel for cars and buses. 
Hospitals with generators are running out of fuel to power them, 
halting all surgery procedures. Babies in incubators will die once 
the power goes. Asthmatics on ventilators will suffer. People needing 
dialysis machines and heart monitors will collapse. Clinics and 
laboratories will lose their tests and vaccines. Soon, all 
communication with the outside world will cease and what are we going 
to do about it?

Najwa Sheikh Ahmad who works for UNRWA in Gaza and began the Candles 
for Gaza Campaign with her husband last year in October has written 
to say, "The Israeli side is doing its best to steal every joyful 
moment in our lives. Starting from treating us like another weird 
species that should have no mercy, to destroying the best happy 
moments that a family can have, the wedding of a son, to the slow 
killing of my people, like banning their right to have medical 
treatment outside Gaza which has seen 72 people die already, to 
finally controlling every border and banning the regular rights of 
having electricity, water and fuel -- basic needs that no one should 
have to bargain over. I am sitting in the dark cold with my three 
children and I try to keep them busy, but the days are long and dark 
and they feel bored and are starting to make trouble. Oh God, how 
exhausting it is to live this way in the 21st century."

John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in 
the Palestinian territories said that "The killing of some 40 
Palestinians in Gaza in the past week, the targeting of a government 
office near a wedding party venue with what must have been foreseen 
loss of life and injury to many civilians, and the closure of all 
crossings into Gaza raise very serious questions about Israel's 
respect for international law and its commitment to the peace process."

Luisa Morgantini, the vice president of the European parliament, has 
expressed concern over the escalating acts of murder committed by the 
IOF troops in Gaza and the West Bank and has urged the EU high 
representative Javier Solana and the world community to work side by 
side to force the Israeli government to stop the violence and mass 
punishment against Palestinian civilians.

The UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator, the Undersecretary-General for 
Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said that "This kind of action 
against the people in Gaza cannot be justified, even by those rocket attacks".

Israel's actions have done nothing to further the peace process over 
which there was so much fanfare only a few weeks ago. Where will it 
all stop if Israel is allowed to continue its siege? When people are 
taking their last gasps in their battle for survival, who knows where 
desperation will lead them -- mass riots, anarchy, and absolute 
despair where death will be better than life?

Israel might find that giving the Palestinians their freedom and 
allowing them the dignity of self-determination in their own land 
might be far more effective in bringing about a peaceful solution 
than all this bloodshed and misery. Fifty years have passed since 
Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan said, "How can we complain about 
Gaza's hatred towards us? For eight years, they have been sitting in 
refugee camps while right in front of them, we are turning the land 
and villages of their forefathers into our home." How much deeper 
must the hatred be after decades of oppression that has reduced their 
existence to a mere specter of life? Without a political solution 
that includes Gaza in negotiations to settle the wrongs done to the 
Palestinians, a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis is as remote as ever.

The Palestinians need candles desperately and they need your voice to 
speak for them. There are many ways that you can do this. Organize 
demonstrations or vigils, or take part in ones that are already being 
organized. Take the time and write to newspapers and politicians 
urging them to take action and bring an end to this humanitarian 
disaster. Also, a deluge of letters to the Israeli Embassy would 
allow the Israelis to see that the world does not support a siege on 
the people of Gaza. The power is in your hands to spread the word 
through your churches, work groups, clubs, neighborhood networks, and 
simply by talking to everyone you know. We cannot stand by and allow 
this slow agonizing death of a whole people to continue whatever 
justification Israel gives for its actions. There has to be another 
way that gives succor to the people of Gaza and hope for a better 
future than the ominous one being forced on them right at this moment.

Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of 
<http://www.womenforpalestine.com/>Women for Palestine in Melbourne, 
Australia.




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