Tag: Gaza

UN expert repeats call for threat of sanctions against Israel over Gaza blockade

United Nations News Centre

29 December 2009

The United Nations independent expert on Palestinian rights has again called for a threat of economic sanctions against Israel to force it to lift its blockade of Gaza, which is preventing the return to a normal life for 1.5 million residents after the devastating Israeli offensive a year ago.
“Obviously Israel does not respond to language of diplomacy, which has encouraged the lifting of the blockade and so what I am suggesting is that it has to be reinforced by a threat of adverse economic consequences for Israel,” Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, told UN Radio.

“That probably is something that is politically unlikely to happen, but unless it happens, it really does suggest that the United States and the Quartet and the EU [European Union] don’t take these calls for lifting the blockade very seriously and are unaffected by Israel’s continuing defiance of those calls,” he said, referring to the diplomatic Quartet of the UN, EU, Russia and US, which have been calling for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the main UN body tending to the needs of some 4 million Palestinian refugees, said today Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age,” because UNRWA was reduced to building houses out of mud after the 22-day offensive Israel said it launched to end rocket attacks against it.

“The Israeli blockade has meant that almost no reconstruction materials have been allowed to move into Gaza even though 60,000 homes were either damaged or completely destroyed. So we in UNRWA have been saying ‘let’s lift this senseless blockage,’” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told UN Radio.

“We are the United Nations and we always hope that diplomacy will prevail, and it will prevail above the rationale of warfare. But if you look at what is going on in Gaza, and if you look at the continued blockade and the fact that that blockade is radicalizing a population there, then one has to have one’s doubts.”

In a statement last week, Mr. Falk stressed that the “unlawful blockade” was in its third year, with insufficient food and medicine reaching Gazans, producing further deterioration of the mental and physical health of the entire civilian population.

Building materials necessary to repair the damage could not enter Gaza, and he blamed the blockade for continued breakdowns of the electricity and sanitation systems due to the Israeli refusal to let spare parts needed for repair get through the crossings.

Mr. Falk also deplored the wall being built on the borders between Gaza and Egypt.

“I’m very distressed by that, because it is both an expression of complicity on the part of the government of Egypt and the United States, which apparently is assisting through its corps of engineers with the construction of this underground steel impenetrable wall that’s designed to interfere with the tunnels that have been bringing some food and material relief to the Gaza population,” he told UN Radio.

“And of course, the underground tunnel complex itself is an expression of the desperation created in Gaza as a result of this blockade that’s going on now for two and a half years, something that no people since the end of World War II have experienced in such a severe and continuing form.”

As a Special Rapporteur, Mr. Falk serves in an independent and unpaid capacity and reports to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

In a new policy brief, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), entrusted with promoting the integration of developing countries into the world economy, reported that more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s population are now impoverished; 43 per cent unemployed; and 75 per cent lack food security. “In view of the eroded productive base, poverty is likely to widen and deepen unless reconstruction begins in earnest and without further delay,” it warned.

Gaza’s border must be opened NOW

Pam Rasmussen | The Electronic Intifada

29 December 2009

Tell Egypt you stand in solidarity with Gaza – use this online form to send a letter to the Palestine Division at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cairo, and to the Egyptian Embassy in the US

Solidarity activists joined approximately a dozen hunger strikers in front of the journalists' syndicate in Cairo.
Riot police barricading protesters in Cairo.
Protesters occupying the grounds of the French embassy.

This time is clearly different.

I have traveled to Gaza twice this year, in groups ranging from 40 to 60 persons, and although there was a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved in “greasing the wheels” with the Egyptian authorities, we pretty much sailed in. CODEPINK (the group that organized both of my previous trips) developed a well-earned reputation for being able to pull just the right levers to open the doors to the isolated enclave of Gaza — even more so than George Galloway’s Viva Palestina convoy, which is typically allowed in for only 24 to 48 hours (versus our four days).

But too many months have gone by with no change in the crippling isolation of Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt, and it was time to risk our privileged access to take our efforts to break the siege up a notch. Our numbers had to be massive enough to threaten the jailers’ growing complacence and broad enough to send the message that this is a global movement that won’t stop until the Palestinian people are given the freedom and justice they deserve. Thus, this time CODEPINK allied with a number of other organizations around the world, and the number of participants quickly ballooned to more than 1,300 from 43 countries. Likewise, while we have collected or purchased thousands of dollars’ worth of school supplies, winter clothing and electronic devices (such as computers — currently only available via the tunnels and thus too expensive for the average Palestinian in Gaza), our message is also unapologetically political: the borders must be opened, to everyone, all the time. NOW.

We have obviously accomplished our objective. The jailers have taken notice and are running scared. So scared that we not only have been denied entry into Gaza, we have been threatened with arrest and deportation if we so much as carry a sign or gather in groups of more than six. Our reservation with a facility in downtown Cairo for an orientation meeting for delegates was canceled at the government’s order, and requests to hold educational workshops instead were refused. In an even more audacious move that was aided and abetted by participants’ own governments, consulate representatives were called to a meeting and apparently instructed to warn their residents not to come. In Spain, that warning was echoed in a news release. In Canada, individuals registered for the march or who had participated in past delegations received emails from their embassies. In Portugal, one marcher was called on his personal cell phone!

As word spread of Egypt’s refusal to open Gaza’s doors — announcing its decision long after thousands of internationals had purchased expensive airline tickets and mere days before they began boarding their flights — supporters around the world inundated Egypt’s embassies with calls, emails and faxes in protest. Many came from legislators and other government officials, past and present. Egypt only backed further into its corner in response, using the aggressive tone of some of the calls and emails to ignore the overall theme: the injustice of the collective punishment imposed on Gaza’s nearly 1.5 million Palestinians and Egypt’s refusal to allow supporters to help.

As I write this, we are still being refused entry to Gaza, and even permission to travel to al-Arish and Rafah on the border. Thirty-eight of our marchers tried to get to al-Arish on their own, but 30 were then put under house arrest in their hotel and eight were detained at the bus station. Every peaceful vigil or protest we staged was met with an “iron wall” — and sometimes, by violence.

When the French contingent of about 450 persons asked for help from their embassy, and occupied the grounds of the building in protest when initial promises negotiated with the Egyptian government were reneged, they were surrounded by heavily-armed and helmeted riot police and refused permission to leave — even for food or to use a toilet. At the time of this writing, their “occupation” is going on 48 hours now.

Similar “sit-ins” have been or are being waged at the US, UK and Italian embassies (with more to come). At the US embassy, 30 Americans were detained within a circle of police for eight hours (at the direction of their own countrymen, by the way) before being released. The only small victory was an (ultimately frustrating and fruitless) meeting for three of the protesters with one of the embassy’s higher-level officials.

The same treatment was received when vigils were staged at the United Nations, the journalists’ syndicate (in support of about a dozen hunger-striking marchers) and the Kasr al-Nil Bridge over the Nile.

However, there are a few, bright silver linings to this dark cloud. Groups on the left of the sociopolitical spectrum are known for being far less cooperative and cohesive than their conservative, reactionary counterparts. It truly gladdened my heart, therefore, to see the immediate mobilization in our support by groups ranging from the War Resisters League to Jewish Voice for Peace.

Meanwhile, it’s a truism that controversy attracts media coverage. Our missions to Gaza have been ignored by the mainstream media in the past, but this time, Egypt’s defensive and angry response attracted the attention of such mainstream media pillars as the BBC, the Associated Press, Newsweek and The New York Times. I am a communications professional, and Egypt has violated a tenet of Public Relations 101: The more you protest, the guiltier you look.

All images by Pam Rasmussen.

Pam Rasmussen is a peace activist and communications professional from Maryland who recently received a Community Human Rights Award for her work on behalf of Palestinians from the UN Association of the National Capitol Area. She can be contacted at peacenut57 A T yahoo D O T com.

Hebrew University bans student conference on anniversary of Gaza invasion

Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News

29 December 2009

A student group affiliated with the socialist ‘Hadash’ party in Israel had organized a conference commemorating and condemning the Israeli invasion of Gaza one year ago, but the Hebrew University administration banned the conference, saying that it violates the University’s principles.

When students from the Hadash party handed out fliers for the event to their fellow students, some students from the right-wing Zionist Likud party took copies of the flier to the school administration, which determined that the event constituted ‘incitement against the state of Israel’ and would not be permitted. The reason given by the university was that the conference would include a commemoration of the civilians killed in Israel’s Gaza invasion one year ago.

Human rights groups have estimated that over 80% of the 1400 Palestinians killed during the 3-week long Israeli assault were civilians. 5 Israeli civilians were killed in the same time period.

The conference literature said that “one of the first physicians who entered Gaza during the war” would be a featured speaker at the conference. In addition, the literature called the invasion a “dreadful Zionist war”. The university administration considered this to be incitement against the state of Israel, and canceled the conference.

Hebrew University in Jerusalem is one of Israel’s largest universities, with 23,500 students. It was founded in 1925 as a “University of the Jewish People”, and its first Board of Directors included Albert Einstein and Martin Buber, both of whom later took public stands against the Zionist colonial project in Palestine.

This is not humane. We need our dignity

Sami Abdel-Shafi | The Guardian

29 December 2009

On my way to visit a friend in the Abed Rabbo district, north of the Gaza Strip, the taxi driver handed me a small pack of biscuits for change. There are nearly no copper coins left here so cab drivers barter a half Israeli shekel for biscuits brought in from the tunnels between the southern city of Rafah and Egypt’s northern Sinai. Some Gazans, who once earned a respectable living, resorted to melting coins and sold the copper for food supplies.

This was not the first time I was forced into arcane methods of barter. A few weeks ago I was told that oil filters for our British-made electricity generator could only be brought in through the tunnels. One alternative was to fit a refurbished car-engine filter to the generator.

We had wood-fired coffee next to the rubble of my friend’s family’s former homes – all levelled during Israel’s three-week war on Gaza that started one year ago. His only source of income, a taxi, was crushed by Israeli tanks during the assault. He agonises about how his children no longer respect him as their father. He is unable to provide them with the security of a house and an independent family life; they lost everything.

The family is spread around relatives’ homes. But the family’s old man just moved into a 60sq m house built from mud and brick, standing next to the rubble of his 400sq m three-story house for which he saved for a lifetime. It was one of the first the UN Relief and Works Agency built after having seemingly lost hope in any Israeli intention to allow construction materials into Gaza. My friend’s daughter earns the highest grades in her class and is eyeing a scholarship for one of the universities in Gaza when she leaves high school. But this young woman’s resilience and motivation will go nowhere as long as Gaza is blockaded.

Almost nothing has been more deceitful than casting Gaza as a humanitarian case. This is becoming exponentially more problematic a year after the war. Gaza urgently needs far more than merely those items judged by the Israeli military as adequate to satisfy Gaza’s humanitarian needs. This list of allowable items is tiny compared to people’s needs for a minimally respectable civil life.

Gaza is not treated humanely; the immediate concerns about the situation have clearly given way to long-term complacency, while failed politics has now become stagnant. The humanitarian classification conceals the urgent need to address this. Moreover, many in the international community have conveniently resorted to blaming Palestinians for their political divisions, as though they were unrelated to Israel’s policies – most notably Gaza’s closure after Israeli disengagement in 2005.

It seems evident that most officials in the US, UK and other powerful nations in Europe and the Middle East do not – or perhaps cannot – pressure Israel to reverse its policy of forcing Palestinians into eternal statelessness. How Palestinians are forced into degrading living standards in Gaza, and how they have no means to repel the ongoing demolition and confiscation of property and land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is abhorrent. How Palestinians are still divided despite the increased suffering of their people is no less abhorrent. However, no one should fool themselves into believing that their reconciliation would alter Israel’s policy.

The international community must surely adopt a new approach – where it would not be seen as acquiescent to Israel’s policies. If the current policy continues then, at least, let it not be at the expense of Palestinian self-respect. Palestinians are a dignified people, as competitive and civilised as any other people in the world. It is far too humiliating for Palestinians to endure not only being occupied but to be made beggars.

For years it has been impossible not to suspect that Israel does not want peace. Of late, the US-backed state has consistently created impossible conditions for fair and equal negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and it continues to undermine moderate voices and drive people towards extremism in Gaza. The fact that Palestinians still genuinely want peace should not allow Israel to reject the simplest rules of civility. The US and the EU should come to Gaza; then they could draw their own conclusions on an Israeli policy they have backed and funded without ever witnessing its consequences on ordinary civilians’ lives. Surely then they could not fail to see that changing their policy is a moral imperative.

Gaza massacre reflections

Eva Bartlett | In Gaza

28 December 2009

Home damaged during the winter 2008/2009 Israeli massacre of Gaza. Waiting for repairs.

The anniversary of the first day of Israel’s massacre of Gaza last winter passed yesterday. Palestinians still locked in Gaza couldn’t avoid thinking about that hell, recalling to others where they were when the first strikes hit…what they did, what they thought, what they saw and smelled and heard.

At 11 am yesterday I’m in a meeting, but all of us are aware of the significance of the hour, particularly as the minutes pass towards 11:25, when the slaughter began.

Later, I visit a family in the north, their mother killed, shot at close range by an Israeli soldier as she carried a white cloth, trying to lead the family out of their home. Not an isolated story. How are they? Grim, alive without joy, no expectations except that things will get worse. Mahmoud is a young engineer but is jobless. They are not refugess and so don’t receive UN hand-outs. A charitable association gives them flour, oil, sugar and tea every 40 days. Meat, fish? Impossible.

Near their house, the scent of orange blossoms, though most of their trees were razed by Israeli tanks and bulldozers. The Moawiyya school across the street still gapes with its missile holes in the side and in the roof. The neighbouring houses still gape with jagged, absent walls.

Mahmoud lives just 20 m up the street from the tent encampment in this area of Attatra, where the Attar family are still braving the cold, still rendered homeless, still out of the world’s news and off the radar, still uncompensated, and among those more subject to bouts of fear when the Israeli warplanes and drones fly over. They are able to hear shooting from the northern and eastern borders, as well as the regular Israeli navy shooting and shelling of fishermen on Palestinian waters.

******************************************************************

This morning, at 11:55 I re-notice the roar of F-16s… maybe they were always there and I was again oblivious to them…Sometimes it is a casual, drawn-out, rolling roar, as the warplanes troll the skies. Sometimes it’s a rush, sudden, invasive, low, near.

That’s this one, the one that grabs my attention and makes me wonder: perhaps they just delayed it by a day and a half hour.

There is little rational thinking when such planes swarm above. The notion “Israel couldn’t do it again so soon, not with the world commemorating the massacre” dissapates into “why not, Israel has committed massacres in the past, the world has frowned, and it’s buseinss as usual into the next onslaught.”

But it’s not only me, with just a year’s experience here. Of all, I should be more inclined to think, “no way, not now,” when I know that nearly 1500 people from over 40 countries and all walks of life are on their way to Gaza, and another 500 in the Viva Palestina lifeline are hunger-striking till Egypt relents its complicit denial of entry…when I know that the Palestinian-led BDS movement has surged into vitality, and that strong Jewish voices around the world are condeming Israel’s occupations and war crimes.

12:06

But it’s fighter planes like the one currently above us that mocks rationality and screams “it’s here, this time it’s an attack.”

If I, a passport-holding international who can basically leave when I decide and who hasn’t lost a house, a child, a loved one, hasn’t been burned to the bone by white phosphorous, hasn’t had my livelihood and memories destroyed…if I feel this, imagine how those who suffered worst are feeling, the younger children for whom it was their first massacre, or the older children who know in too great detail the sounds of the different war machines.