|
CounterPunch
September
9, 2002
Ethnic Cleansing
by Starvation
by Rania Awwad
A US-financed assessment of the overall malnutrition
level among Palestinian children, released this month by the
US Agency for International Development (USAID), found that one
in five Palestinian children under the age of five now suffers
from chronic or acute malnutrition. This astonishing statistic
is on par with impoverished nations such as Chad and Nigeria,
and actually surpasses rates of child malnutrition in Somalia
and Bangladesh. Such figures, the report noted, are "considered
an emergency by most humanitarians and public health officials."
The report points to Israeli-imposed closures and sieges of major
civilian centers as the direct and primary cause.
We typically think of famines as being
caused by natural disasters (droughts, overgrazing) or by crises
that result in the displacement of large populations from their
lands (wars, ethnic strife). The situation in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories, however, is a startling aberration since it is clearly
a man-made disaster intended to specifically target whole civilian
populations. Most importantly, it can easily and immediately
be reversed.
Today, Israeli military sieges are literally
imprisoning families within their homes for days at a time. People
cannot leave their homes to work, buy food, go to the doctor,
or send their children to school. Military checkpoints and roadblocks
are restricting commerce and the transport of food supplies.
Workers cannot travel between Palestinian towns, and farmers
and manufacturers are unable to deliver their goods to shops
and markets. People have exhausted the money they can draw on
from relatives and connections on the outside.
The USAID report also revealed that about
one quarter of West Bank Palestinians have had to sell personal
possessions to put food on the table. The World Bank recently
determined that as many as 62 percent of Palestinian families
are now living on less than two dollars a day. As a result of
these obstacles, increasing numbers of families are skipping
meals or reducing their food intake because eventually they run
out of money and assets to sell.
Even before the current Israeli re-occupation
which began on June 20, many Palestinians relied on aid from
the Palestinian Authority and the UN World Food Program (UNWFP).
With its ministries and institutions flattened, the PA can no
longer serve in this role, and the UNWFP has recently announced
an emergency operation to cope with what they call "dramatically
deteriorating living conditions in the Palestinian Territories."
But how can the slow starvation of a
whole population be stopped when that very starvation is being
altogether denied by the Israeli government and ignored by the
US Administration? Major General Amos Gilad, Israel's coordinator
of government affairs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was hardly
ruffled by the USAID findings. In fact, he asserted that "hunger
is when people have swollen bellies and fall over dead. There
is no hunger yet."
Discovering that dismissive denial of
facts is not working, the Israeli authorities are now moving
to soften criticism with much-hyped symbolic gestures. Israel
recently announced its intention to release about seven percent
of the 600 million dollars in Palestinian tax revenue it has
seized since the start of the Intifada, as well as its intention
to reissue work permits for Palestinians to cross from the West
Bank and Gaza to their jobs inside Israel.
These measures, however, are hardly sufficient.
Much more needs to be done. It is important to understand that
the collective punishment policies pursued by Ariel Sharon's
government against the Palestinians are not reactive but deliberate,
and are intended to serve a specific and well-defined political
purpose. Sharon is the head of the Likud Party, which to this
day vows never to permit the establishment of a Palestinian state
west of the Jordan River.
Sharon's solution is to depopulate as
much as possible the Occupied Palestinian Territories by making
life for its citizens unbearable. And what could be more unbearable
than watching your children cry themselves to sleep from hunger,
night after night? What is most alarming is that Sharon may very
well be having his way. As recently reported in the Jerusalem
Post (an English-language Israeli daily), 80,000 Palestinians
have allegedly left the Occupied Palestinian Territories for
Jordan and other nations to seek economic relief for their families.
In parallel, private Israeli efforts
have been pursuing their missions of "helping" any
Palestinian who wishes to leave the West Bank or Gaza. As the
president of one organization which seeks to assist Palestinians
to "permanently emigrate" put it: "Our aim is
to empty the state of Arabs".
Another group, Gamla, founded by former
Israeli military officers and colonists, has published similar
recommendations on its website in a nine-thousand-word manifesto
titled "The Logistics of Transfer." It argues that
the mass expulsion of every Palestinian is "the only possible
solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and further
makes the claim that this is "substantiated by the Torah".
The starvation of captive Palestinians
is nothing less than the muffled ethnic cleansing of a whole
people. As always, these matters should be of serious concern
to US citizens given that our diplomatic, military, and financial
support have long allowed Israel to pursue with impunity such
policies which contradict our own cherished political values
and commitment to human rights. It is time for us to speak up.
We must not be complicit in the decimation of a whole people.
Rania Awwad
can be reached at: raniaawwad@hotmail.com
CounterPunch Special Report:
9/11 One Year After
Bill Christison
A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
Alexander Cockburn
The
Tenth Crusade
Susan Davis
Mr. Ashcroft's
Neighborhood
Bruce Jackson
When
War Came Home
David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Mike Leon
Bush and War
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers
and 9/11
William McDougal
September 11 One Year On:
That's Entertainment!
Riad Z. Abdelkarim and Jason Erb
How American Muslims Really Responded
to 9/11
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- War Talk As White Noise:
Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
- First Hilliard, Then
McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
- The Missing Terrorist?
Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
- They Never Booed Dylan!:
Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
Yarrow!
- New Shame from the Liffey
Shrike
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
September
7 / 8, 2002
Bill Christison
A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Tenth Crusade
Susan Davis
Mr. Ashcroft's
Neighborhood
Bruce Jackson
When
War Came Home
David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Mike Leon
Bush and War
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers
and 9/11
William McDougal
September 11 One Year On:
That's Entertainment!
Riad Z. Abdelkarim and Jason
Erb
How American Muslims Really Responded
to 9/11
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
September
6, 2002
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Stolen
Trust
Gale Norton, Indians and the Case of the Missing $10 Billion
September
5, 2002
Ben Tripp
Jesus vs.
George the Second
William Hughes
McKinney's
Defeat:
Undue Meddling
Gavin Keeney
Beaux
Reves, Citoyens!
Wayne Saunders
War
Begins; Nobody Notices
Irit Katriel
Drunk
with Power:
Israeli Chief of Staff Calls Palestinians a "Cancerous Demographic
Threat"
Gary Leupp
Who's Afraid
of Iraq?
September
3, 2002
Nabil Amro
Leadership
& Legitimacy:
An Open Letter to Arafat
Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
Holocaust:
The British in Palestine
Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
Flashback:
US War Crimes During the Gulf War
Lou Cohan
Confessions
of a Downloader
Philip Farruggio
Labor
Day Antidote to Apathy
William Blum
Cuban Political
Prisoners
in the US
September
1, 2002
Dave Marsh
No Surrender:
Springsteen's The Rising
August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
Return to the
Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
Confronting Republicans & Police in Portland
Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid
Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|