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Editorial: The Gaza Disaster

Palestine Monitor

11 March 2008

As rumours of a possible ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas spread, relative calm – meaning the absence of large-scale Israeli military attacks - has returned to Gaza. One hundred and eight Palestinian lives and 31 dead Gazan children later, and in a context of impunity and inaction by the international community, Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has ordered the Israeli army to ’scale back operations’ in Gaza. Yet with Israeli troops and tanks still poised on the border of the coastal strip, a shadow still hangs over any ceasefire agreement and the threat of renewed Israeli military attacks continues to loom over the Strip, underlining that this situation should not be mistaken for ’moves towards peace.’

Because while the attacks are over for now, the crippling siege – one that was ordered by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, which was given legal sanction by Israel’s High Court, and which lies near the heart of resistance by armed groups in Gaza – remains firmly in place.

Cuts by Israel to fuel and electricity supplies to the Strip continue, leaving the majority of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants with just 12-16 hours of electricity per day. Water, sanitation and health have seen severely affected. Potable water cannot be pumped and raw sewage cannot be treated due to a lack of electricity to fuel pumps; hospitals rely entirely on generators and uncertain fuel reserves; emergency health services have been suspended, doctors have had to turn patients away, and families are forced to provide food for family members in hospitals. Residents endure hours of blanket darkness at night; people have no water to wash themselves, their clothes or dishes, to cook, or to clean their houses; toilets cannot be flushed; and alarming levels of untreated sewage flow into the sea daily.

This situation alone constitutes a dire humanitarian crisis, but the added factor of prolonged, crippling border closures and sustained military attacks has spelled disaster for ordinary Gazans. Eighty percent of the population – 1.1 million people - now live below the poverty line and rely on humanitarian aid for survival. Hospitals and clinics suffer from a shortage of medications and medical supplies, and cannot import the necessary spare parts to repair broken medical equipment. Patients are dying because the treatment they need is unavailable in Gaza and Israel prevents them from leaving the Strip to receive it abroad. A massive 107 people have died this way since June 2007 alone, including at least 5 children.

It is clear that the Gaza Strip is in the midst of the worst humanitarian situation and that it is facing the most blatant imposition of collective punishment – in direct violation of international humanitarian law - since the Israeli occupation began in 1967. It also clear that the international community still lacks the political will to hold Israel to account for its continuous violations of international law. Instead, it prefers to play along with Annapolis peace process charade, choosing to place its faith in the ability of Israeli leaders guilty of war crimes to seek peace.

And while it does so, Israel openly continues to undermine any possibility of a just resolution of its occupation, not only through its policies towards Gaza, but also through settlement expansion, the construction of the Apartheid Wall, attacks, and wide-scale arrests in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. On Monday, the construction of 750 new housing units in the Givat Ze’ev settlement in East Jerusalem was approved, just one more in a series of approvals that have been granted to the expansion of settlements in Jerusalem since the Annapolis meeting in November 2007.

The cost of the international community’s intentional blindness to Israel’s lack of commitment to peace has been high for ordinary Palestinian people, and for their dream of creating a sovereign, independent and viable Palestinian state. The longer the international community chooses not to see that talk of peace in the current situation is akin to a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the dearer this cost will become.

It is the moral, historical, and legal responsibility of the international community – particularly the United States and the European Union – to play an active and even-handed role in setting on track a genuinely international peace process that brings the resolution of this debilitating occupation back to its basis in international law. Only through such a path can the dignity of Palestinians be restored, and can peace be sought for both the Palestinian and the Israeli people.