Tag: Gaza

PCHR: A Warning from Gaza

PCHR
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

Press Release
Date: 25 October 2007

Israeli Occupation Authorities Seek to Impose More Measures of Collective Punishment on the Palestinian People, and PCHR Warns of Further Deterioration to Humanitarian Conditions in the Gaza Strip

PCHR calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, UN bodies and all international humanitarian organizations to take immediate effective measures to force Israeli occupation authorities to abstain from implementing the recommendations of the special security committee, established by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, to decrease the supplies of electricity, fuels and basic goods for the Gaza Strip. PCHR calls also for pressuring the occupation authorities to allow the immediately flow of foodstuffs and medical supplies in the Gaza Strip. PCHR further warns the international community of the repercussions of the policy of collective punishment practiced by Israeli occupation authorities against the Palestinian civilian population, including the closure of border crossings and restrictions imposed on importation and exportation.

On Tuesday evening, the Israeli Ministry of Defense established a special security committee headed by Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’ei to consider the issue of rockets launched at the Israeli territory from the northern Gaza Strip. The committee concluded a number of recommendations to the Israeli Minister of Defense to be implemented from Thursday, 25 October 2007. The Minister of Defense declared on Thursday afternoon his approval of such recommendations, which include a gradual decrease in the supplies of electricity, fuels and goods imported by the Gaza Strip from Israel and the closure of border crossings of the Gaza Strip for unlimited periods, if Israel came under fire.[1] It is worth noting that the Gaza Strip consumes nearly 200 megawatts of electricity: 120 megawatts bought from Israel, 17 megawatts bought from Egypt and 65 megawatts generated by the Gaza Electricity Generation Plant. The actual need of the Gaza Strip is more than 220 megawatts. The Gaza Strip relies completely on fuels imported from Israel. It consumes 6,000 tons of domestic gas, 2 millions liters of benzene and 8 millions liters of gasoline. The Gaza Electricity Generation needs at least 270,000 liters of gasoline daily to be operated.[2]

PCHR is following up with utmost concern the deterioration to the economic and social conditions resulted from the total siege imposed by Israeli occupation authorities on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, especially the Gaza Strip. PCHR is worried from further deterioration of the living conditions of the Palestinian civilian population if the recommendations of the security committee were implemented, as at least 60% of the Palestinian civilian population would be deprived of electricity supplies and many civilian facilities that provide vital services would stop providing services to the civilian population due to the lack of electricity supplies.

The proposed measures of collective punishment are part of a policy of economic, political and social stranglehold adopted by Israeli occupation authorities against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip. Those authorities have escalated arbitrary measures since Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip on 15 June 2007. In this context, they have closed border crossings of the Gaza Strip, but they later partially reopened Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) and Sofa crossings to allow limited amounts of basic goods and humanitarian aids provided to the population. On 19 September 2007, the Israeli government declared the Gaza Strip as “an enemy entity” and accordingly measures of collective punishment against Gaza escalated. Since that time, IOF have limited the goods exported to the Gaza Strip to only 9 basic materials. As a consequence, local markets ran out of many goods, which caused a sharp increase in prices, which mounted to 500% for some goods. Israeli occupation forces have banned the flow of some medicines, furniture, electrical appliances, cows and cigarettes into the Gaza Strip, and have decreased the amounts of some goods allowed into the Gaza Strip, such as fruits, milk and some dairy products.

PCHR calls upon the international community and international humanitarian organizations to immediately intervene to ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and abstention for imposing more measures of collective punishment against the Palestinian civilian population. PCHR calls also for ensuring the immediate flow of foods, medicines and other goods into the Gaza Strip in accordance with the provisions of international humanitarian law and human rights law. In this context, PCHR welcome the call by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, to the European Commission to suspend commercial relations with Israel until it stops violating the right of Palestinians to receive food without any restrictions. In his report to the UN General Assembly, Mr. Ziegler noted that 22% of the Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territories suffer from malnutrition due to the lack of access to food. PCHR welcomes also the report wrote by Mr. John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in which he called upon State Members, in their capacity as High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to ensure Israel’s compliance with the Convention.[3]

PCHR reminds the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, including Israel, of their obligations under the Convention and other international human rights instruments, particularly:

1) The High Contracting Parties’ obligation under common article 1 of the Geneva Conventions to respect and respect and ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstance.

2) The obligation under article 1-1 of Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1) to respect and ensure respect for the Protocol in all circumstances.

3) Their obligation under article 54 of Protocol, under which:

“1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.

2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.”

4) Their obligation under article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which is “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.”

5) The obligation under article 55 of the Convention, which is “the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate. The Occupying Power may not requisition foodstuffs, articles or medical supplies available in the occupied territory, except for use by the occupation forces and administration personnel, and then only if the requirements of the civilian population have been taken into account…”

6) “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” (Article 25 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

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For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 – 2825893

PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip. E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org

[1] The Israeli radio in Arabic.

[2] Israeli Occupation Forces bombarded the plant on 28 June 2007, cutting electricity off more than half of the Gaza Strip. The plant used to provide the Gaza Strip with at least 90 megawatts of electricity, which constituted about 45% of the consumption of electricity in the Gaza Strip.

[3] UN GA, the state of human rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967, note form the Secretary General, submitted to the 62nd session of the UN GA, 17 August 2007.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel Urgent Appeal for Intervention

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Help Demand Access of Seven Gaza Patients to Lifesaving Care Unavailable in Gaza.

On the 10th of October Physicians for Human Rights-Israel sent an urgent request to the Israeli army and Minister of Defense, demanding that seven patients from Gaza whose access to medical care outside Gaza had been denied for “security reasons” be immediately allowed to exit Gaza via the Israeli-controlled Erez Crossing.

The seven patients are:

1. C, in need of urgent bypass heart surgery, referred to a Palestinian hospital in Nablus in the West Bank.

2. T, 53, in need of urgent bypass heart surgery, referred to a Palestinian hospital in Nablus.

3. I, 16, congenital heart disease, referred to urgent catheterization or open heart surgery in a Palestinian hospital in Nablus.

4. I, 27, deaf, suffers from a brain tumor and is referred for surgery to Palestinian St. Joseph’s surgical hospital in East Jerusalem.

5. H, 43, a Hepatitis B patient, with a sarcoma in the jejunum and metastasis in the lung, referred to Palestinian Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem for chemotherapy.

6. I, 20, a cancer patient who was already treated in the past in Israel, is suffering from a relapse and urgently referred to care in Ichilov hospital, Tel Aviv.

7. L, 22, suffering from Hodgkin’s lymphoma with tumors in the chest, referred to Shiba medical center in Tel Hashomer, Israel.

Despite appeals to the Israeli General Security Service director and the Israel Medical Association, mobilization of Israeli members of Knesset, and extensive local media exposure, no results have been achieved to date.

Since June 2007 the Government of Israel has progressively worsened the conditions for granting permits to patients needing to exit Gaza for medical care unavailable in Gaza. As Rafah Crossing, the only international border with Gaza, has been sealed since 9/6/07, patients now depend totally on Israeli policy for permission to exit, whether to Israel, to the West Bank, to Jordan or to any other country.

We are asking that you urgently intervene on behalf of these individuals, by telephone, email and fax, asking that their access to urgent lifesaving care be immediately granted, and protesting the general Israeli policy of denying Palestinian patients access to medical care unavailable in Gaza:

· IDF Spokesperson, Avi Bnayahu, Telephone + 972 3 569 0797, Fax + 972 3 569 8221

· Israeli Coordinator of Government Operations in the Territories, General Yossef Mashlab. Telephone + 972 3 697 5351, + 972 3 697 7957, Fax + 972 3 6976306, mobile phone of aide Mr. Assaf Baharal: + 972 506 234 082, mobile phone of spokesperson Mr. Shlomo Dror: + 972 506 234 053

· Israeli Minister of Defense, Mr. Ehud Barak, Telephone + 972 3 697 2090, Fax + 972 3 697 6218

· Chair of the Israeli Medical Association and of the World Medical Association, Dr. Yoram Blashar: Telephone + 972 3 6100422, Fax + 972 3 5750704, email blachar@ima.org.il

For further details please contact Miri Weingarten, miri@phr.org.il < mailto:miri@phr.org.il>, +972 546995199, +972 3 6873718 ext. 115

For a previous position paper released by PHR-Israel on Israeli policies at Erez Crossing, and a related article, see: http://www.phr.org.il/phr/article.asp?articleid=480&catid=42&pcat=42&lang=ENG

The European Parliament calls for change in Gaza

By: LUISA MORGANTINI
Vice President of he European Parliament
(GUE/NGL)

Brussels 11th October 2007,

In a resolution voted today in the Parliament, MEPs, called on Israeli Government for the lifting of the blockade of the Gaza Strip and to fulfill its international obligations under the Geneva Conventions to guarantee the flow of humanitarian aid, humanitarian assistance and essential services, such as electricity and fuel. Luisa Morgantini, Vice President of the European Parliament, who was in the Parliamentary delegation in Gaza Strip, on her speech stressed the need to lift the embargo on people and goods and the end of the military occupation.

“I was recently in Gaza- Luisa Morgantini declared- and I saw how the Strip is suffocating in a serious humanitarian crisis due to the raids and the closure imposed by the Israeli Army: massive devastation of public facilities and private homes, the disruption of hospitals, clinics and schools, the denial of access to proper drinking water, food and electricity, and the destruction of agricultural land wanted by Israel create a true catastrophe for civilians. Furthermore, the blockade on the movement paralyzes the economy and contributes to an extremely high rate of unemployment, while the health system is under severe pressure, a significant proportion of the population is suffering from a lack of urgently needed treatment and medicines and many NGOs and humanitarian organisations are obstructed by the lack of freedom of movement and of resources.

European Union has to demand with force to the Israeli Government that human rights and International law must be fully respected in the whole area, ending the continued emergency of Gaza Strip but also the military occupation in West Bank, where the robbery of Palestinian lands continues without any condemnation and, in spite of the meeting between Olmert and Abbas, the Israelis change the situation on the ground which casts serious doubts if they want peace or just gaining time to grab more land: it is an example the recent decision by the IDF to expropriate 272 acres of land from four Arab villages in order to build, as declared by Israeli Authorities, a new Palestinian road that would connect East Jerusalem with Jericho. But this decision would free up the existing E1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adunim, allowing the construction of a new Jewish settlement consisting of 3,500 apartments and an industrial park, blocked by an international protest since 2004, that showed the risk of the cutting of the West Bank in two, separating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. This unilateral and illegal policy by Israeli Authorities must immediately end.

EU must to face up to its full responsibility on the respect of the legality, first through implementation of the existent EU-Israel Agreements on Movement and Access, but also imposing Israel to respect the International law concerning human rights, to end the military occupation in West Bank and the closure of the Gaza Strip and of the WB: even if there is an humanitarian tragedy, its solution is political.

This is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace and to give more credibility to the International Peace Conference in November, reinforcing the negotiations based on the UN resolutions and on the right of Palestinians and Israelis to live in two States, in peace and security”.

Ha’aretz: Twilight Zone – The children of 5767

By: Gideon Levy

September 28th, 2007

It was a pretty quiet year, relatively speaking. Only 457 Palestinians and 10 Israelis were killed, according to the B’Tselem human rights organization, including the victims of Qassam rockets. Fewer casualties than in many previous years. However, it was still a terrible year: 92 Palestinian children were killed (fortunately, not a single Israeli child was killed by Palestinians, despite the Qassams). One-fifth of the Palestinians killed were children and teens – a disproportionate, almost unprecedented number. The Jewish year of 5767. Almost 100 children, who were alive and playing last New Year, didn’t survive to see this one.

One year. Close to 8,000 kilometers were covered in the newspaper’s small, armored Rover – not including the hundreds of kilometers in the old yellow Mercedes taxi belonging to Munir and Sa’id, our dedicated drivers in Gaza. This is how we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the occupation. No one can argue anymore that it’s only a temporary, passing phenomenon. Israel is the occupation. The occupation is Israel.

We set out each week in the footsteps of the fighters, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, trying to document the deeds of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, Border Police officers, Shin Bet security service investigators and Civil Administration personnel – the mighty occupation army that leaves behind in its wake horrific killing and destruction, this year as every year, for four decades.

And this was the year of the children that were killed. We didn’t get to all of their homes, only to some; homes of bereavement where parents weep bitterly over their children, who were climbing a fig tree in the yard, or sitting on a bench in the street, or preparing for an exam, or on their way home from school, or sleeping peacefully in the false security of their homes.

A few of them also threw a rock at an armored vehicle or touched a forbidden fence. All came under live fire, some of which was deliberately aimed at them, cutting them down in their youth. From Mohammed (al-Zakh) to Mahmoud (al-Qarinawi), from the boy who was buried twice in Gaza to the boy who was buried in Israel. These are the stories of the children of 5767.

The first of them was buried twice. Abdullah al-Zakh identified half of the body of his son Mahmoud, in the morgue refrigerator of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, by the boy’s belt and the socks on his feet. This was shortly before last Rosh Hashanah. The next day, when the Israel Defense Forces “successfully” completed Operation Locked Kindergarten, as it was called, leaving behind 22 dead and a razed neighborhood, and left Sajiyeh in Gaza, the bereaved father found the remaining parts of the body and brought them for a belated burial.

Mahmoud was 14 when he died. He was killed three days before the start of the school year. Thus we ushered in Rosh Hashanah 5767. In Shifa we saw children whose legs were amputated, who were paralyzed or on respirators. Families were killed in their sleep, or while riding on donkeys, or working in the fields. Operation Locked Kindergarten and Operation Summer Rains. Remember? Five children were killed in the first operation, with the dreadful name. For a week, the people of Sajiyeh lived in fear the likes of which Sderot residents have never experienced – not to belittle their anxiety, that is.

The day after Rosh Hashanah we traveled to Rafah. Dam Hamad, 14, had been killed in her sleep, in her mother’s arms, by an Israeli rocket strike that sent a concrete pillar crashing down on her head. She was the only daughter of her paralyzed mother, her whole world. In the family’s impoverished home in the Brazil neighborhood, at the edge of Rafah, we met the mother who lay in a heap in bed; everything she had in the world was gone. Outside, I remarked to the reporter from French television who accompanied me that this was one of those moments when I felt ashamed to be an Israeli. The next day he called and said: “They didn’t broadcast what you said, for fear of the Jewish viewers in France.”

Soon afterward we went back to Jerusalem to visit Maria Aman, the amazing little girl from Gaza, who lost nearly everyone in her life to a missile strike gone awry that wiped out her innocent family, including her mother, while riding in their car. Her devoted father Hamdi remains by her side. For a year and a half, she has been cared for at the wonderful Alyn Hospital, where she has learned to feed a parrot with her mouth and to operate her wheelchair using her chin. All the rest of her limbs are paralyzed. She is connected day and night to a respirator. Still, she is a cheerful and neatly groomed child whose father fears the day they might be sent back to Gaza.

For now, they remain in Israel. Many Israelis have devoted themselves to Maria and come to visit her regularly. A few weeks ago, broadcast journalist Leah Lior took her in her car to see the sea in Tel Aviv. It was a Saturday night, and the area was crowded with people out for a good time, but the girl in the wheelchair attracted attention. Some people recognized her and stopped to say hello and wish her well. Who knows? Maybe the pilot who fired the missile at her car happened to be passing by, too.

Not everyone has been fortunate enough to receive the treatment that Maria has had. In mid- November, a few days after the bombardment of Beit Hanoun – remember that? – we arrived in the battered and bleeding town: 22 killed in a moment, 11 shells dropped on a densely packed town. Islam, 14, sat there dressed in black, grieving for her eight relatives that had been killed, including her mother and grandmother. Those disabled by this bombardment didn’t get to go to Alyn.

Two days before the shelling of Beit Hanoun, our forces also fired a missile that hit the minibus transporting children to the Indira Gandhi kindergarten in Beit Lahia. Two kids, passersby, were killed on the spot. The teacher, Najwa Khalif, died a few days later. She was wounded in clear view of her 20 small pupils, who were sitting in the minibus. After her death, the children drew a picture: a row of children lying bleeding, their teacher in the front, and an Israeli plane bombing them. At the Indira Gandhi kindergarten, we had to bid good-bye to Gaza, too: Since then, we haven’t been able to cross into the Strip.

But the children have come to us. In November, 31 children were killed in Gaza. One of them, Ayman al-Mahdi, died in Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, where he had been rushed in grave condition. Only his uncle was permitted to stay with him during his final days. A fifth-grader, Ayman had been sitting with friends on a bench on a street in Jabalya, right by his school. A bullet fired from a tank struck him. He was just 10 years old.

IDF troops killed children in the West Bank, too. Jamil Jabaji, a boy who tended horses in the new Askar refugee camp, was shot in the head. He was 14 when he was killed, last December. He and his friends were throwing rocks at the armored vehicle that passed by the camp, located near Nablus. The driver provoked the children, slowing down and speeding up, slowing down and speeding up, until finally a soldier got out, aimed at the boy’s head and fired. Jamil’s horses were left in their stable, and his family was left to mourn.

And what did 16-year-old Taha al-Jawi do to get himself killed? The IDF claimed that he tried to sabotage the barbed-wire fence surrounding the abandoned Atarot airport; his friends said he was just playing soccer and had gone to chase after the ball. Whatever the circumstances, the response from the soldiers was quick and decisive: a bullet in the leg that caused him to bleed to death, lying in a muddy ditch by the side of the road. Not a word of regret, not a word of condemnation from the IDF spokesman, when we asked for a comment. Live fire directed at unarmed children who weren’t endangering anyone, with no prior warning.

Abir Aramin was even younger; she was just 11. The daughter of an activist in the Combatants for Peace organization, in January she left her school in Anata and was on the way to buy candy in a little shop. She was fired upon from a Border Police vehicle. Bassam, her father, told us back then with bloodshot eyes and in a strangled voice: “I told myself that I don’t want to take revenge. Revenge will be for this ‘hero,’ who was so ‘threatened’ by my daughter that he shot and killed her, to stand trial for it.” But just a few days ago the authorities announced that the case was being closed: The Border Police apparently acted appropriately.

“I’m not going to exploit my daughter’s blood for political purposes. This is a human outcry. I’m not going to lose my mind just because I lost my heart,” the grieving father, who has many Israeli friends, also told us.

In Nablus, we documented the use of children as human shields – the use of the so-called “neighbor procedure” – involving an 11-year-old girl, a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy. So what if the High Court of Justice has outlawed it? We also recorded the story of the death of baby Khaled, whose parents, Sana and Daoud Fakih, tried to rush him to the hospital in the middle of the night, a time when Palestinian babies apparently mustn’t get sick: The baby died at the checkpoint.

In Kafr al-Shuhada (the “martyrs’ village”) south of Jenin, in March, 15-year-old Ahmed Asasa was fleeing from soldiers who had entered the village. A sniper’s bullet caught him in the neck.

Bushra Bargis hadn’t even left her home. In late April she was studying for a big test, notebooks in hand, pacing around her room in the Jenin refugee camp in the early evening, when a sniper shot her in the forehead from quite far away. Her bloodstained notebooks bore witness to her final moments.

And what about the unborn babies? They weren’t safe either. A bullet in the back of Maha Qatuni, a woman who was seven months pregnant and got up during the night to protect her children in their home, struck her fetus in the womb, shattering its head. The wounded mother lay in the Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus, hooked up to numerous tubes. She was going to name the baby Daoud. Does killing a fetus count as murder? And how “old” was the deceased? He was certainly the youngest of the many children Israel killed in the past year.

Happy New Year.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907708.html

Guardian: Life behind the wire

By: Chris Doyle

September 24, 2007

Imagine if, after an IRA bombing, a British prime minister declared Catholic areas in Northern Ireland to be hostile territory, and threatened to reduce or cut off goods, water, fuel and electricity supplies.

It sounds implausible but the one and a half million residents of the Gaza Strip, an area the size of the Isle of Wight, may soon face this scenario. The Palestinians of Gaza, already imprisoned, their land, air and sea borders totally closed, are now considered by Israel eligible to have their water, electricity and power cut off. Israeli officials insist that humanitarian considerations will be taken into account, though the Israeli record is not one to reassure Palestinians. These were not a concern when Israel bombed Gaza’s only power plant last summer.

This Israeli decision comes after more Qassam rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel at local communities such as Sderot and a military barracks, where 69 Israeli soldiers were wounded. Israel has a duty to protect its citizens, but are its responses legitimate, commensurate to the threat or even effective?

This is an expansion of an existing sanctions regime. One of the Israeli Prime Minister’s advisers, Dov Weissglass, chillingly described the Israeli policy a year ago: “It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.”

It was no joke. Since Weissglass’s comments after the Hamas election victory in 2006, Gazans have indeed learned how to diet. The World Food Program lists it as a global hunger hotspot. Out of its 1.5 million residents, 1.1 million have to survive on food handouts. The Israeli journalist, Amira Hass, describes Gazans as being imprisoned in “an enclosed space like battery hens”.

The “moderate” Israeli vice-premier, Haim Ramon has pushed for this, describing it as cutting off the “infrastructural oxygen”. Imagine a Palestinian mother having to tell her children that there is no electricity because you are not allowed any infrastructural oxygen.

Oxygen is about the only thing that this Israeli government has not considered denying to Gazans. Israel has also stolen hundreds of millions of Palestinian tax dollars. The Israeli group, Physicians for Human Rights, reports that, since the decision was taken, 87 Palestinians in need of medical care have been denied exit from Gaza. Paper was, at one point, a commodity Israel had to ban. “Some 200,000 children will go into our classrooms on 1 September, and won’t have the books they need,” reported John Ging, the Director of Operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza in August. Perhaps the Israeli army sees paper planes as a threat?

Apologists for Israel argue that, since the removal of Israeli forces from inside Gaza in 2005, it is no longer occupied. This is far from the case, as acknowledged by the UN. Gazans are denied any sovereign control over their territory as Israel controls all entry and exit to Gaza by air, land and sea. Israel’s ability to turn on and off vital supplies at will proves the extent of its vice-like control. The prison wardens have merely redeployed from inside the prison to the perimeter. Israeli forces can enter Gaza at will.

Gazans are not sentenced criminals. They are not all supporters of Hamas or Islamic jihad. Over 50% of the population are children under the age of 16, usually running barefoot among the narrow, unpaved streets of Gaza’s horrific refugee camps.

Israel has declared “hostile” a piece of territory, even though it is responsible for its population under international law. Israel wants control without responsibility. Gazans are meant to be protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Last year, the then UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, John Dugard castigated the international community for this, saying: “In effect, the Palestinian people have been subjected to economic sanctions – the first time an occupied people has been so treated.”

Israel has sub-contracted out its humanitarian responsibilities to international donors. Israel renders Gaza aid-dependent, but expects others to pick up the tab, principally EU taxpayers.

This targets a people who have already endured 60 years of conflict. As a result of war in 1948, Gaza was swamped by 200,000 Palestinian refugees, two and half times the size of the existing population. Israel invaded in 1956 and in 1967, the start of 40-year Israeli occupation. Until 2005, Gaza was segregated to cater for the Israeli settlers who took up to 30% of Gaza’s scarce territory. The closure of Gaza started as long ago as 1991 and since then, has only been tightened. Gaza is enclosed by an electrified fence. The result is that Gaza was deliberately rendered completely dependent on Israel for everything including water, fuel and electricity. Sara Roy, the Harvard academic and a leading expert on Gaza, describes the Israeli policy towards Gaza as “de-development” that precludes “the possibility of any kind of developmental process, even a disarticulated one, by destroying the economy’s capacity to produce”.

Even before Hamas came to power, Gaza had been further brutalised. Since the start of the Intifada in 2000, the Israeli army has destroyed infrastructure including homes, schools, factories, greenhouses, and mosques. There is no Gazan economy left to smash. Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael, who recently visited the strip, likened Gaza to a “flattened moonscape”.

By treating Gaza as separate from the West Bank, the Israeli government is yet again in breach of its international commitments in Oslo and the “road map” to consider the two areas as one territorial unit, something the US is now actively encouraging. Such division makes peace a more distant prospect, mutilating the corpse of a Palestinian state.

Collective starvation is being used as a political tool of pressure. One Israeli official admitted: “It is meant to be used as leverage on the civilian population, to pressure the Hamas regime over the Qassam fire.” This is a war crime and for clear moral reasons, a cast-iron case of state terrorism, threatening an entire civilian population for political ends.

Palestinians fear that it is Gaza first, West Bank next. The latter’s 2.5m Palestinian inhabitants will be almost hermetically sealed by the Israeli barrier, due to be completed next year. Will it too be declared hostile territory and threatened with losing its remaining water, fuel and electricity?

In nearly every other context, such crimes would be slammed from every governmental and parliamentary pulpit. But the silence is as deafening as the Israeli sonic booms over Gaza. British government ministers condemn boycotts of Israel, but cannot even muster a word of condemnation of Israeli practices that actually endanger hundreds of thousands of lives. The hypocrisy is not lost on millions of Arabs and Muslims.

Gaza has become a human laboratory experiment. But will this starvation camp work? Will an entire society, brought to its knees, reject the program of one political group and kowtow to the demands of the occupier? It will fail as every Israeli attempt to subjugate the Palestinians has. Even if Gazans capitulate, if only to survive, it will be only a short-term gain. Rocket attacks will resume. Just as Israel’s bombing of Lebanon last summer failed to compel Lebanese to turn against Hizbullah, this crushing of Gaza will continue to bolster Hamas’s support as well as those who will make Hamas seem like the good guys.

There will be no security for Israel until it takes its boot off the Palestinian throat for good. A two-state solution requires a single viable sovereign Palestinian state next to Israel based on the pre-1967 lines, with Gaza and the West Bank linked, not split apart. No Israeli government, including those of Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, has yet signed up to this. Increasingly, most Palestinians believe they never will.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/chris_doyle/2007/09/life_behind_the_wire.html