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Palestine Monitor
27 October 2009
By: Aditya Ganapathiraju
Why are people on Gaza so unhappy? Well, if you had to live in a prison, wouldn’t you be unhappy? — Former CIA officer Robert Baer[1]
It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa. – Professor Edward Said 1993[2]
They may be living but they’re not alive. – Journalist Philip Rizk[3]
Why are people on Gaza so unhappy? Well, if you had to live in a prison, wouldn’t you be unhappy? — Former CIA officer Robert Baer[1]
It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa. – Professor Edward Said 1993[2]
They may be living but they’re not alive. – Journalist Philip Rizk[3]
The situation on the ground in Gaza has continued to deteriorate since January. One of the most densely populated areas in the world, this small coastal strip is home to a million and a half Palestinians, many of them refugees for over 60 years. It is now the worst condition it’s been in since 1967 when the Israeli army took military control of the land.[4]
As numerous scholars and observers have concluded, the Israeli plan for Gaza seems to be to turn it into a depoliticized humanitarian catastrophe,[5] turning the Palestinians trapped in there “beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims.”[6]
The Israeli assault against Gaza last winter brought this enclave to the forefront of the news cycle, only to disappear from the headlines in the weeks and months that followed. The attention of much of the world’s dominant media moved on to other issues soon after a unilateral Israeli pullout—planned precisely timed so as not to cause an unsightly distraction from the inauguration of the new American president.
The lack of prominent coverage was not because there was a lack of newsworthy events in Gaza. No, “breaking news is Gaza’s middle name,” says freelance journalist Philip Rizk. “But because this breaking news always holds the same kind of information, no one cares to report on it.”[7]
“An Eye for an Eyelash”[8]
Violence in the occupied territories has always been bloody but many longtime observers were shocked by the brutality of winter assault,[9] which killed more Palestinians in the first three weeks than during the entire first Intifada, or uprising against the occupation (1987-1993), prompting the UN to label it “one of the most violent episodes in the recent history of the occupied Palestinian territory.”[10]
The January offensive left 1,417 people dead, 1,181 of which were non-combatants (313 children and 116 women). Another 5,303 Palestinians were injured in the attacks, including 1,606 children and 828 women, many left devastated with life-altering conditions.[11]
- More than 4000 buildings have been destroyed in Gaza in January 2009 and more than 20.000 severely damaged. Photo: Palestine Monitor
Another 6600 dunams of agricultural land, which Palestinian farmers depend on for their livelihood, were razed (1 dunam=1,000 square meters). In all, some 21,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. An estimated $1.9 billion worth of damage was inflicted, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit report.[14]
“What we’re witnessing today is an assault, a massacre,” and “not a war whatsoever,” said Zahir Janmohamed of Amnesty International on the 15 of January, reminding an audience that this was not a conflict between two equivalent military powers but rather another bloody chapter a long history of “Israel’s colonial operations” in the occupied territories.[15] His views were confirmed by facts on the ground, as one scholar recently observed.[16]
The systemic and widespread destruction of both lives and infrastructure was not an unintended consequence of the offensive but rather a deliberate strategy derived from the destruction inflicted during the 2006 Lebanon conflict.[17]
The attack followed the “Dahiya Strategy,” referring to the Beirut area that was destroyed during the attack on Lebanon in 2006. It concluded civilians must pay for their leader’s actions.[18] Of course if one were to conclude that Israeli civilians should pay for their leader’s actions or American civilians be held responsible for George Bush’s actions, the (muted) international response might be different.
The strategy was formalized two months before the attacks by Tel Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies and urged the use of “disproportionate force” ( by definition a war crime) to inflict crushing damage on “economic interests” and “centers of civilian power,” leaving the targeted society devastated and “floundering” in a long reconstruction process.[19] (for more on the political dynamics involved and actions of Hamas and Israel before and during the attacks, see these papers[20]).
“Behind the dry statistics lie shocking individual stories,” a group of Israeli human rights groups wrote. “Whole families were killed; parents saw their children shot before their very eyes; relatives watched their loved ones bleed to death; and entire neighborhoods were obliterated.”[21]
The stories of those who experienced the attacks, who lost loved ones, and who continue to suffer, offer another perspective often absent here in the U.S. Some of these stories, which described the toll of war beyond numerical abstractions, trickled out in the British press, where journalists are less ideologically constrained to follow the party line, even despite the Israeli military ban on foreign journalists.[22]
Anwar Balousha, a 40-year-old man living in Jabalyia refugee camp in northern Gaza told British reporters of his personal loss. It was around midnight when an Israeli bomb struck their refugee camp’s mosque with a blast so powerful it collapsed several neighboring buildings, including the Balousha’s home. Of his seven daughters sleeping in a single room, five were killed—buried under bricks and rubble as they slept.
“We are civilians,” Anwar said. “I don’t belong to any faction, I don’t support Fatah or Hamas, I’m just a Palestinian. They are punishing us all, civilians and militants. What is the guilt of the civilian?”[23]
While human rights groups and other observers painstakingly extracted similar stories, the lesser-known narrative of a siege decimating Gaza’s society remained largely untold, confined to the dissident press and humanitarian groups.[24]
Most stories usually report on the violence and bloodshed between two forces, which are often implied to be equivalent both morally and physically. The day-to-day struggles of 1.4 million Palestinians enduring and resisting a 42-year old occupation do not fit neatly into the standard narrative of events describing the Palestinian-Israeli issue. It becomes easy for many to see ordinary Palestinians as nameless and faceless creatures, characters in a story taking place in a faraway land.
- The blockade has caused the economy “irreversible damage”. Unemployment has soared 30% in 2007 to 40% in 2008. 80% of Gazans are living in poverty. Photo: Palestine Monitor
[This is the first part of a series on Gaza, Part II describes life under siege]
[This is the first part of a series on Gaza, Part II describes life under siege]
1.“‘U.S. and Iran Share an Equal Monopoly on Violence,’” Inter Press Service, January 23, 2009 http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?id…
2.Edwards Said and David Barsamian ,The Pen and the Sword, Common Courage Press, 1994, page 99
3.“’Gaza wears a face of misery,’ Adam Makary, Al Jazeera” April 4, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/…
4.“UN: Gaza in worst condition since 1967” Ynet, http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/Ar…
5.“Israel wanted a humanitarian crisis” Ben White, Guardian, January 20, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis…
6.“If Gaza falls . . .”Sara Roy, the London Review of Books, January 1, 2009 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01…
7.“’Gaza wears a face of misery,’ Adam Makary, Al Jazeera” April 4, 2009 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/…
8.“How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” Avi Shlaim, Guardian, January 7, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200…
9.Avi Shlaim, Guardian: “On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.” “Leading Israeli Scholar Avi Shlaim: Israel Committing “State Terror” in Gaza Attack, Preventing Peace,” Democracy Now!, January 14, 2009 http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/…
10.UN OCHA Report “Locked In:The humanitarian impact of two years of blockade on the Gaza Strip” footnote 36 http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.nsf/4…
11.Palestinian Center for Human Rights Press Release March 12, 2009 http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Press…
12.“Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about” Haaretz, Barak Ravid http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages… “IAF strike followed months of planning” Barak Ravid http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages…
13.UN OCHA Report “Locked In”
14.Palestinian Center for Human Rights Press Release http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/Press… 15.“The Gaza Offensive and the Laws of War with Zahir Janmohamed,” The Palestine Center January 23, 2009 http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/… 16.“UN Inquiry Finds Israel “Punished and Terrorized” Palestinian Civilians, Committed Acts of War During Gaza Assault, Democracy Now! September 16, 2009 http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/… 17″Israel’s Bombing Campaign Will “Send Gaza Back Decades” Jonathan Cook, January 22, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/module/prin… 18.“The Dahiya strategy: Israel finally realizes that Arabs should be accountable for their leaders’ acts,” Ynet, Ynetnews.com, 6 Oct 2008 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,… 19. “Disproportionate Force: Israel’s Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War” Institute of National Security Studies, Insight No. 74, inss.org.il, 2 October 2008 ->http://www.inss.org.il/publications.p
21.The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories http://www.btselem.org/English/Pres…
22.“Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask” Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio… “Robert Fisk: When journalists refuse to tell the truth about Israel” Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio… “Robert Fisk: Keeping out the cameras and reporters simply doesn’t work” Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio… “Foreign reporters dub Israel ’military dictatorship’” Ynet http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7
23.“’I didn’t see any of my girls, just a pile of bricks’” Guardian, December 30, 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200…
24.“Israel declares Gaza “enemy entity” (19 September 2007)” Electronic Intifada http://electronicintifada.net/bytop…
25.”The Gaza Offensive and the Laws of War with Zahir Janmohamed,” The Palestine Center January 23, 2009 http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/…
26.“Gaza: A humanitarian implosion: A report from eight UK human rights organizations says situation in Gaza worst since 1967” The Real News March 6, 2008 http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?…
27.“New Report Finds Gaza Humanitarian Situation is Worst in 40 years” Voice of America News March 6, 2008 http://www.voanews.com/english/arch…
Aditya Ganapathiraju is a human rights activist living in Kenmore, Washington in the United States. He is a psychology and philosophy student at the University of Washington.
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"The Gaza Chronicles: Part 2 – What a Siege Looks Like
Palestine Monitor
31 October 2009
By: Aditya Ganapathiraju
“Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution,” Sara Roy wrote in July. It has led to “mass suffering, created largely by Israel,” and aided by the active participation of the United States, European Union, and Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. [1]
The Israeli policy of isolating Gaza from the West Bank has been a gradual process that started in the early 1990s. It tightened soon after Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006, and turned even more devastating after Hamas’s 2007 takeover, degrading the society to the point where 96 percent of Gaza’s population of 1.5 million is dependent on humanitarian aid for basic survival. [2]
This “perverse” situation is unique in international affairs in that humanitarian groups are sustaining the Israeli occupation by providing care for a civilian population and territory whose humanitarian needs and economy are being deliberately decimated for political reasons, with full backing of the Israeli High Court, Roy explained. [3]
The UN recently reported that 1.1 million people, or 75% of the population there are food insecure. Some 70-80% of Gazans live on less than a dollar a day and the unemployment rate is around 60%. [4]
The UN says about 10,000 Gaza residents have no access to a water network – while about 60% — about 1 million people – don’t have access to water daily and receive water only intermittently.[5] The water consumption of Gazans is less than a third of what Israelis who live a short distance away use.[6] Ultimately, the crippling Israeli siege has degraded the water situation in Gaza to the point that the entire system “could collapse at any minute,” which “could take centuries to reverse,” according to International Committee of the Red Cross and UN officials. [7]
By: Aditya Ganapathiraju
“Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution,” Sara Roy wrote in July. It has led to “mass suffering, created largely by Israel,” and aided by the active participation of the United States, European Union, and Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. [1]
The Israeli policy of isolating Gaza from the West Bank has been a gradual process that started in the early 1990s. It tightened soon after Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006, and turned even more devastating after Hamas’s 2007 takeover, degrading the society to the point where 96 percent of Gaza’s population of 1.5 million is dependent on humanitarian aid for basic survival. [2]
This “perverse” situation is unique in international affairs in that humanitarian groups are sustaining the Israeli occupation by providing care for a civilian population and territory whose humanitarian needs and economy are being deliberately decimated for political reasons, with full backing of the Israeli High Court, Roy explained. [3]
The UN recently reported that 1.1 million people, or 75% of the population there are food insecure. Some 70-80% of Gazans live on less than a dollar a day and the unemployment rate is around 60%. [4]
The UN says about 10,000 Gaza residents have no access to a water network – while about 60% — about 1 million people – don’t have access to water daily and receive water only intermittently.[5] The water consumption of Gazans is less than a third of what Israelis who live a short distance away use.[6] Ultimately, the crippling Israeli siege has degraded the water situation in Gaza to the point that the entire system “could collapse at any minute,” which “could take centuries to reverse,” according to International Committee of the Red Cross and UN officials. [7]
- Deterioration of Sanitation and Water Utilities:twenty million gallons of raw and untreated sewage has to be dumped into the Mediterranean every day, according to local officials. Photo: Electronic Intifada
In a similarly precarious situation, the sewage system is also being prevented from being repaired by the blockage of spare parts. As a result, twenty million gallons of raw and untreated sewage has to be dumped into the Mediterranean every day, according to local officials.[8] Forty-six percent of all children suffer from acute anemia there, former UN official and international Law Prof. Richard Falk said.[9] He adds that thousands of hearing aids are needed for widespread deafness due to sonic booms from Israeli jets. The restrictions on travel access alone has killed an estimated 260 Palestinians since the blockade escalated in 2007.[10]
The scale and intensity of his type of deprivation is impossible to convey through numbers, but try to imagine if three quarters of the people in your city could not find enough food and water to feed themselves or their children, where the overwhelming majority of them were unemployed, where nearly everyone lived on less than a dollar a day, and this is crucial, that all of this was the planned result of political decisions of a foreign government that has held you under military occupation for over four decades.
- School supplies too, are blocked from entering Photo: Palestine Monitor
Even today, the most basic commodities for life still continue to be barred by the Israeli government. Materials like wood for doors or cement for rebuilding in the aftermath of the destruction left by the last attack remained barred.
No electrical appliances, like refrigerators or washing machines, and no parts for cars are allowed. Also restricted are “fabrics, threads, needles, candles, matches, mattresses, sheets, blankets, cutlery, crockery, cups, glasses, musical instruments, books, tea, coffee, sausages, semolina, chocolate, sesame seeds, nuts, milk products in large packages, most baking products, light bulbs, crayons, clothing and shoes.” [11]
School supplies too, are blocked from entering. More than 100 trucks full of stationary are still awaiting clearance to enter Gaza. All of the 387 government-run and 33 private schools, which serve more than 250,000 students, lack essential supplies. Draconian restrictions on glass, wood, and other building materials, has kept the hundreds of schools damaged during the assault remaining in terrible condition. [12]
When an occupying army blocks, tea, blankets, crayons, and school stationary from entering the “largest prison on Earth,” severely restricts essentials like fuel and medicine, makes travel in and out all but impossible, and exercises complete control over its borders, airspace, and seas, the pretense of “security” seems dubious at best, and suggests that turning Gazans into beggars and Gaza into a “depoliticized humanitarian catastrophe” is precisely the plan.[13]
- the most basic commodities for life still continue to be barred by the Israeli government. Photo: Palestine Monitor
Perhaps former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s advisor Dov Weisglass was describing Israeli policy accurately when he said of the Gaza blockade, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” One might ask if he includes the newborn infants, impoverished elderly, and deathly ill among those to be “put on a diet.” [14]
“What possible benefit can be derived from an increasingly impoverished, unhealthy, densely crowded and furious Gaza alongside Israel?,” Sara Roy asked. [15]
Six months have passed since international donors pledged almost $5 billion in aid to the devastated territory, yet “not one penny” has actually reached inside the borders of Gaza, according to the UN, mainly due to the tight blockade. [16]
This “macabre” situation is not the result of an earthquake or flood but rather the predictable consequence of well-planned decisions by Israeli officials, backed by their judicial body, along with complicit Western powers such as the US and EU. Israeli Professor Avi Shlaim observed that the major powers were “imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.” [17]
The January 2008 testimony of Gaza Community Mental Health Program Director Eyad Al Sarraj offered a glimpse into what the stranglehold of Gaza looked like from the ground: [The] Israeli military establishment decided to stop power supply and fuel to Gaza… food and humanitarian aid are not allowed in. My step son is on ventilator for asthma every night. What will happen to him when our generator is not running anymore? What will happen to hospitals, vaccines and blood banks? What will happen to patients on dialysis machines, and to babies in incubators? [18]
This was all before the brutal attacks this winter. The scale of destruction left behind has been covered by numerous writers, human rights groups, and most recently by the comprehensive Goldstone report. What has received little attention though, is the epidemic of mental anguish resulting from decades of oppression.
[The story of mental health in Gaza is covered in Part III] 1.“If Gaza falls . . .” Sara Roy, the London Review of Books, January 1, 2009 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/roy_01…
3.”Sara Roy – Beyond Occupation” Australian Broadcasting Corp. October 14, 2008, Chapter 8 Making Palestinians Aid-Dependent http://fora.tv/2008/10/14/Sara_Roy_… “Israeli Supreme Court Fiddles While Gaza Starves” http://www.richardsilverstein.com/t…
4.“Israel’s Gaza blockade crippling reconstruction,” Guardian, September 18, 2009 [-.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/s
5.“Analysis: Looming water crisis in Gaza” IRIN News, September 15, 2009 http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx… “Leaked UN report echoes Goldstone and says Israeli blockade is leading to the ‘de-development’ of Gaza” Mondoweiss, September 18, 2009 http://mondoweiss.net/2009/09/leake…
6.“Gaza sewage ’a threat to Israel’” BBC, September 3, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_e…
7.“MIDEAST: Gaza’s Water Supply Near Collapse” IPS, September 16, 2009 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idn… “Who Needs Clean Water?” Pulse, September 24, 2009 http://pulsemedia.org/2009/09/24/wh…
8.“Narratives Under Siege (17): Swimming in Sewage” Palestinian Center for Human Rights http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/campa…
9.“Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity,’ Chris Hedges, Truthdig, December 15, 2008 http://www.truthdig.com/report/prin…
10.“Israel tightens the noose on advocacy organizations” Electronic Intifada, September 23, 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ar…
11.“Destroying Gaza,” Sara Roy, The Electronic Intifada, July 9, 2009 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/ar…
12.“OPT: Gaza schoolchildren lack basic equipment” IRIN News September 9, 2009 [-.http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?R
13.“ Gaza Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan” http://www.btselem.org/English/Publ… “The Gaza Strip-One Big Prison” B’tselem http://www.btselem.org/Download/200… “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” Avi Shlaim, Guardian, January 7, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200…
14.“What aid cutoff to Hamas would mean” Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 2007 http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0227/…
15.“Destroying Gaza,” Sara Roy, The Electronic Intifada 16.“Not one penny has reached Gaza” The National, August 31, 2009 http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs…
17.“How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” Avi Shlaim, Guardian
18.“Israel declares Gaza “enemy entity” (19 September 2007)” Electronic Intifada http://electron…
Aditya Ganapathiraju is a human rights activist living in Kenmore, Washington in the United States. He is a psychology and philosophy student at the University of Washington.
For Part One of the Gaza Chronicles please click on: http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spi…
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