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"The idea is to put Palestinians on a
diet but not make them die of hunger," commented Dov Weisglass,
senior advisor to Israeli Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert,
when asked how Israel should deal with the new Hamas government.
Even these disgustingly callous words scarcely do justice to
the collective punishment to Palestinians (illegal under international
law) being inflicted by Israel on the people of Palestine for
democratically electing a government that refuses to accede to
Israeli demands.
The situation is desperate.
Since the new Hamas-dominated government took office in January
2006, record levels of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity,
malnutrition, movement restrictions and social unrest of all
kinds have been reported.
Here is the grim picture as
culled from available sources by Jennifer Loewenstein of the
Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford, the U.K.
In addition to an economic
siege imposed by the governments of the United States and the
European Union in which all aid to the Palestinian Authority
(and in some cases to NGOs as well) has been cut, bank transfers
suspended, contacts with and visas for new government members
effectively banned, and $55 million in tax revenues illegally
withheld each month- comprehensive closure has been imposed on
the territories restricting access to goods and services within
the West Bank and imposing draconian movement restrictions on
the entire Palestinian population.
Israel has kept the Karni (al-Muntar) industrial crossing into
the Gaza Strip shut for weeks at a time locking out medicines,
food and goods as well as preventing the export of agricultural
produce from Gaza. Approximately 165,000 employees of the Palestinian
Authority have gone without pay for more than three months affecting
the lives of at least 700,000 people. Doctors, nurses, teachers,
civil servants, policemen and others return home empty handed
each day to families whose overall levels of poverty and malnutrition
have grown dramatically. Save the Children UK Program Manager
Jan Coffey reports that in Gaza now 78% of the population lives
below the poverty line ($2 per day) and that 10% of children
under five suffer from chronic malnutrition.
Israeli artillery shelling, targeted assassinations, incursions
into cities and towns, arrests and raids continue with impunity.
Even after the widely publicized deaths of almost an entire family
on a north Gaza beach and a subsequent attack in which two children
and three paramedics were killed after two Islamic Jihad militants
were assassinated in Gaza City, the international community remains
silent in effect condoning the piecemeal destruction of
an entire society. These atrocities are in addition to the economic
and political blockade of Palestine.
On March 15, 2006 the World Bank published a report in which
the economic outlook for the occupied Palestinian territories
is assumed based on a scenario (now extant) in which tax revenues
to the PA are withheld, trade and labor restrictions are imposed
and foreign aid reduced. Under this scenario "[r]eal GDP
per capita declines by 27 percent, and personal incomesby 30
percent a one-year contraction of economic activity equivalent
to a deep depression. Unemployment hits 47 percent and poverty
74 percent by 2008. By 2008, the cumulative loss in real GDP
per capita since 1999 has reached 55 percent."
The World Bank estimated in
2004 that, following "Disengagement," 2006 poverty
rates in the West Bank would reach 41% and in the Gaza Strip
68%. Unemployment would be at 23% in the West Bank and 38% in
the Gaza Strip. These estimates were made before the Western
powers and their friends imposed the economic embargo and suspended
aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights provides
conservative estimates of the current situation across the territories.
According to Sourani, the rate of unemployment in the territories
now is 34% in the oPts as a whole and 44% in the Gaza Strip.
This rate rises to 55% during times of complete closure. He estimates
current poverty levels at 50% for the territories as a whole
and nearly 70% in Gaza.
According to an OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs) report published on April 11th 2006, unless the siege
on Palestine ends unemployment and poverty will reach especially
high levels in the Gaza Strip (60%) and the northern West Bank
(50% & 40% in the governorates of Salfit and of Jenin, Tubas
and Tulkarem respectively). The OCHA office in Gaza has warned
of a "humanitarian disaster" owing to a lack of money
and food. OCHA estimates the current rate of poverty in the oPts
at 56%. Prior to the Second Intifada it was 22%.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has also warned
of a "humanitarian crisis" if aid and funding to the
Palestinian Authority continues. "The ICRC is deeply concerned
about the growing needs and the worsening security situation
in the occupied territories, caused in large part by the decision
earlier this year to withhold funds and other aid from the Palestinian
Authority," it said on Monday, June 12. " [T]he occupying
power in this case the State of Israel-is responsible for
meeting the basic needs of the civilian population of the territories
it occupies. Those needs include sufficient food, medical supplies
and means of shelter."
Israel's continued withholding of just Palestinian tax/customs
revenues reduces the total available budget resources for the
PA to between US $700 - $750 million. In the PA's draft budget
for 2006 prepared by the IMF in December 2005, the figure needed
to sustain the territories was US $1.9 billion. The United States'
administration nonetheless claims that no humanitarian crisis
in the occupied territories exists.
The rationale for this onslaught
on a civilian population? Israel says Hamas is a terrorist organization,
bent on Israel's destruction. As prominent Israelis and western
observers have pointed out, Hamas's leadership has made it clear
on numerous occasions that Israel's right to exist is not at
issue. What is at issue is Israel's adamant refusal to confirm
Palestine's right to exist. As prime minister Olmert told a joint
session of the US Congress in Washington DC a few weeks ago,
"I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people's
eternal and historic right to this entire land." In other
words he doesn't recognize the right of Palestinians to even
the wretched cantons currently envisaged in his "realignment".
The world shook with rage at
the reports from Darfur. Do not the starvation, not to mention
almost daily murder of Palestinian civilians merit even a word
of reproach to the government of Israel, or the US and European
governments that have joined in this barbaric siege?
Hitchens
Hails "Glorious War"
The recent memorial for long-term
New York Review co-editor Barbara Epstein, sadly felled by cancer
on June 15, was disfigured by an unseemly outbursts from Christopher
Hitchens. There was a list of invitees for the private ceremony
and C. Hitchens -- a sometime NYT contributor was not on
the list. He implored to be admitted, and some misguidedly decent
soul gave him the green light.
Visibly taken with drink, in
the estimate of at least one observer, Hitchens showed up and
soon made his way to Jean Stein, a close friend of Barbara Epstein,
also editor of Grand Street in recent years. Hitchens spared
Stein the habitual presentation of his hairy cheek but made a
low, facetious bow and offered his hand.
Stein icily declined, saying
she had no desire to shake hands with him for many reasons, not
least the fact that Hitchens had attacked one of her best friends,
Edward Said, while he was on his death bed.
As Hitchens retreated, someone
remarked to him, "So your glorious war has turned out to
be a total disaster, hasn't it?"
"It is glorious,"
the sodden scrivener blared, "and it IS my war because it
needed Paul Wolfowitz and myself to go and convince the President
to go to war."
As mourners digested this megalomanic
outburst, Hitchens continued, "And we are going to kill
every Al Qaida terrist and Baathist in the country and that's
a good thing. They need to be killed and we will kill them."
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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