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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20201205-israels-16-billion-siege-on-gaza/">https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20201205-israels-16-billion-siege-on-gaza/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel's $16 billion siege on Gaza</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Asa Winstanley - December 5, 2020<br></div></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-post-content"><p>A new report on the Gaza Strip by a United Nations (UN) agency makes for sobering reading.</p><p>The
UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reports that the
economic cost to Gaza of the Israeli siege since 2007, along with a
series of major military assaults, amounts to <a href="https://unctad.org/news/israeli-occupation-cost-gaza-167-billion-past-decade-unctad-estimates" target="_blank">no less than $16.7 billion</a>.</p><p>The
siege began as a way to punish the Palestinians for refusing to vote
for Israel's preferred candidates in the 2006 Palestinian Authority (PA)
elections.</p><p>Palestine's Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas won
those elections decisively. But they sought compromise: a unity
government with other factions. But Fatah – which had dominated the PA
up until that point – rejected this overture.</p><p>Instead, factions of Fatah led by brutal Gaza warlord Mohammed Dahlan launched a coup attempt, which was <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804" target="_blank">backed to the hilt by the CIA</a> with the approval of the Israelis. George W. Bush even called Dahlan "our guy".</p><p>But
Hamas – the freely-elected government of the PA – saw the coup coming
and nipped it in the bud in Gaza. Dahlan and his troops were expelled
from the strip, where almost all of Hamas's military strength was based.</p><p>But
the Fatah-US-Israeli coup did succeed in the West Bank. The PA has held
no elections since, and the elected term of its leader Mahmoud Abbas as
president expired many years ago. Polling indicates he is deeply
unpopular among Palestinians, who want him to step down.</p><p>Today,
having bitterly fallen out with Abbas over corruption charges, Dahlan
lives in exile in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He is <a href="https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/why-the-uae-supports-mohammed-dahlan-40944" target="_blank">bankrolled by both</a> Egypt's military coup regime and by Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed – to whom he acts as key advisor.</p><p>These
US-allied regional dictators would love to see Dahlan swoop in and take
over the PA from Abbas when he dies (the ageing leader is 85-years-old
and has no obvious successor). His record of torture against Hamas and
other Palestinian resistance factions means that he could be a useful
ally to them.</p><p>And of course, the Israelis would also love him, for
much the same reasons. Dahlan has reportedly been a major influence on
the UAE's recent decision to fully normalise ties with Israel. He has
also been <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/gulf-states-rush-embrace-israel" target="_blank">involved in covert assassination operations</a> in Yemen, reportedly having hired Israeli mercenaries to carry out this plot.</p><p>While the politics interminably rage on, Gaza's people continue to suffer.</p><p>After
Hamas won the elections in 2006, Israeli planners made a cold,
calculated decision to keep Palestinian civilians perpetually on the
brink of starvation – "to put the Palestinians on a diet," in the
notorious words of one advisor to Israel's prime minister at the time.</p><p>This
was how it started. It is Israel's "calorie counting" siege on the Gaza
Strip. This is the real cost of Zionism: maintaining a Jewish state in a
country where the majority of the people are not Jewish means sheer
force and brutality.</p><p>Human rights groups have revealed that
Israeli health officials had decided to begin counting the minimum
number of calories needed by Gaza's inhabitants to avoid malnutrition.
This was then translated in order to determine the number of truckloads
of food Israel was supposed to allow in each day.</p><p>In the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-starvation-diet-gaza/11810" target="_blank">words of that Israeli advisor</a>
Dov Weissglas: "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not
to make them die of hunger." Presumably, he had no objection to
Palestinians dying of hunger, except that it might not exactly appeal to
liberal sensibilities in the Western countries that Israel relies on
for political and military support.</p><p>The siege on Gaza has
continued in the same bloody fashion ever since. In addition to putting
Palestinians "on a diet", Israeli planners have another deadly euphemism
they like to use – "mowing the lawn". This is a rather disgusting,
dehumanising way to describe their periodic wars against the population
of the Gaza Strip.</p><p>Gaza's population is steadily growing. When the
siege began, it was about 1.5 million. Today, it is two million. This
"grass" (people) has to be periodically "mown" down by the Israeli
military. The human cost has been immense. But for the Jewish
supremacist state, Palestinian lives don't matter.</p><p>In Israel's war
of 2014 alone, 2,200 Palestinians – mostly civilians – were killed by
Israel, and 551 of these deaths were children. By way of contrast, when
Palestinian resistance factions fought back to defend themselves, almost
all of the casualties they caused – 73 Israelis – were soldiers.</p><p>Who is the real terrorist here?</p><p>The
$16 billion economic cost to Gaza over the decade between 2007 and 2018
has been immense, but it is nothing compared to the lost and ruined
lives caused by the sheer brutality of Israel and its war crimes.</p><p>The
UNCTAD report says of the combined effects of the siege and the
successive Israeli attacks on Gaza: "The result has been the
near-collapse of Gaza's regional economy and its isolation from the
Palestinian economy and rest of the world."</p><p>It confirms: "Without
the closure and military operations, Gaza's poverty rate in 2017 could
have been 15 per cent, more than a quarter of the current 56 per cent.
The poverty gap could have been 4.2 per cent, one-fifth of the current
20 per cent."</p><p>Most factions of Zionism have always propagandised
their project – in typical colonialist fashion – as being good for the
natives, the indigenous Palestinian Arabs.</p><p>But the reality is
quite the opposite. That is why all Palestinians (aside from a few
collaborators) are anti-Zionists. They are not anti-Zionist because
Zionism posits itself as a Jewish project – they are anti-Zionist simply
because Zionism is anti-them.</p><p>Zionism is indeed racism. For peace to exist in Palestine, this racist regime must be brought to an end.</p><p><br></p> </div></div></div>
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