Vita Bekker, Foreign Correspondent, The National, Aug 13, 2009
A worker uses clay bricks to rebuild a Hamas police station destroyed in the Gaza Strip offensive. Mohammed Salem / Reuters
TEL AVIV // Israel deliberately brought the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure to the brink of collapse before its military offensive in the enclave in December and January and has since blocked any efforts of its rehabilitation as part of a strategy to defy Hamas, a report by an Israeli rights group claimed this week.
The damage to the impoverished Strip’s electricity network has prompted the company that distributes Gaza’s electricity this week to warn the 1.5 million residents that it will be forced to institute power cuts of up to 10 hours a day, five days a week, according to Tel Aviv-based Gisha, a group that advocates for Palestinian rights.
The group said such cuts would be the worst in the territory in at least six months and would hit especially hard in Gaza City and its surroundings, where key institutions such as Shifa Hospital are located.
Sari Bashi, executive director of Gisha, said: “Israel has deliberately drained Gaza of the fuel and supplies needed to maintain the water, sewage and electricity systems as part of a policy to pressure Hamas. Israel calls it economic warfare, we call it collective punishment.”
Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in December, claiming it aimed to curtail rocket attacks on its southern communities by militants from Hamas, an Islamic group which controls Gaza, and other factions. Gaza health officials and local rights groups have said that more than 1,400 people were killed in the assault.
Israel controls all of Gaza’s border crossings except for Rafah, which is managed by Egypt. Israel also has authority over most of Gaza’s power supply, with an Israeli electricity company providing about half of the region’s power and Gaza’s own power station relying on Israel granting it access to industrial diesel.
Ahead of Israel’s recent attacks, the country brought Gaza’s infrastructure to a “weakened state”, the report said. Its restrictions on the supply of fuel, spare parts and building materials such as concrete and cement were tightened in 2007, when militants of Hamas violently took over the enclave by routing forces loyal to Fatah, a rival secular Palestinian movement that holds sway over the occupied West Bank.
Furthermore, the blockade on the coastal territory intensified after Israel’s shaky, six-month-old ceasefire agreement with Hamas, which included an easing of restrictions, broke down in November 2008 and the country almost completely closed off Gaza’s borders.
The nearly two-year-old blockade prompted a humanitarian predicament for many Gazans once the operation began in December, Gisha said.
It added: “At the height of the [fighting], more than half a million residents were cut off from running water, sewage flowed in the streets, and hospitals were left to operate on generators running 24 hours a day. All this took place while the strip was being bombarded from the air, sea and land, and its borders remained sealed, leaving residents with nowhere to run.”
Indeed, the restrictions have prompted daily power cuts, frequent disruptions to the water supply, tens of millions of litres of raw sewage being dumped into the sea and contaminating the groundwater that serve much of Gazans’ drinking needs, as well as the reliance of hospitals on decrepit generators.
The group claimed that more than six months following Israel’s assault, the country is still blocking efforts to repair the electricity, water and sanitation systems.
Gaza’s electricity system, for example, “urgently” needs 400 types of spare items such as transformers, power poles and electrical cables that are either completely missing from its inventory or available in limited amounts, Gisha said. Israel has for months been holding up more than 30,000 such parts in warehouses within its territory or in the West Bank, refusing to grant them permits to enter Gaza, the group added. As a result, some 10 per cent of Gazans have been completely disconnected from electricity since the onslaught.
The water system is not faring any better. The shortage of spare parts for its repair has resulted in 10,000 Gazans being deprived of running water since the attacks ended and another 100,000 residents having access only once every five to seven days, according to the report.
Gisha cites Khaider Abu Daher, a 34-year-old father of five in Gaza, who said the destruction of his home during the fighting has prompted his family to live in a tent since then, walk 1.5km twice a day to fetch water as well as scramble to gather wood on which it cooks meals.
The report suggested that Israel’s High Court of Justice colluded with the state’s destruction of the infrastructure by giving it a stamp of approval. According to Gisha, the three petitions it submitted along with other rights groups against Israel’s policies from October 2007 to January 2009 were all rejected. It said that the court accepted Israel’s justifications of its restrictions without holding a “serious discussion” to determine the country’s obligations towards Gazans.
Gisha added: “The rejection of the petitions and acceptance of the state’s claims, time and again, effectively legitimised the state’s policies and exposed the limitations of the High Court in reviewing the activities of the military in the occupied territories.”
Women wearing the burka in Baharak town, Afghanistan. Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters
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Obama’s America Is Not Delivering The Goods
August 15, 2009With great sorrow and deep consternation, we hereby declare the death of the latest hope. Perhaps rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase the famous quote by Mark Twain, but the fears are being validated day after day. Barack Obama’s America is not delivering the goods. Sharing a glass of beer with a racist cop and a pat on the back of Hugo Chavez are not what we hoped for; wholesale negotiations on freezing settlement construction are also not what we expected. Just over six months after the most promising president of all began his term, perhaps hope has a last breath left, but it is on its deathbed.
He came into office amid much hoopla. The Cairo speech ignited half the globe. Making settlements the top priority gave rise to the hope that, finally, a statesman is sitting in the White House who understands that the root of all evil is the occupation, and that the root of the occupation’s evil is the settlements. From Cairo, it seemed possible to take off. The sky was the limit.
Then the administration fell into the trap set by Israel and is showing no signs of recovery.
A settlement freeze, something that should have been understood by a prime minister who speaks with such bluster about two states – a peripheral matter that Israel committed to in the road map – has suddenly turned into a central issue. Special envoy George Mitchell is wasting his time and prestige with petty haggling. A half-year freeze or a full year? What about the 2,500 apartment units already under construction? And what about natural growth? And kindergartens?
Perhaps they will reach a compromise and agree on nine months, not including natural growth though allowing completion of apartments already under construction. A grand accomplishment.
Jerusalem has imposed its will on Washington. Once again we are at the starting point – dealing with trifles from which it is impossible to make the big leap over the great divide.
We expected more from Obama. Menachem Begin promised less, and he made peace within the same amount of time after he took office. When the main issue is dismantling the settlements, the pulsating momentum that came with Obama is petering out. Instead, we are paddling in shallow water. Mitchell Schmitchel. What’s in it for peace? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will once again meet him in London at the end of the month. A “magic formula” for a settlement freeze may be found there, but the momentum is gone.
Not in Israel, though. Here people quickly sensed that there is nothing to fear from Obama, and the fetters were taken off. Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quick to declare that there is no Palestinian partner, even after the Fatah conference elected the most moderate leadership that has ever been assembled in Palestine. Afterward, in a blatant act of provocation, he brought a Torah scroll into the heart of the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, in full view of television cameras, just so America can see who’s boss around here.
Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, another two politicians who smell American weakness, were quick to declare during a visit to Ma’aleh Adumim that Israel will not freeze any construction. To hell with Obama. The settlers continue to move into more homes in East Jerusalem, Netanyahu is silent and Israelis sense that the “danger” has passed. Israel is once again permitted to do as it pleases. The landlord has once again gone insane. Except that the landlord has gone insane because the real landlord is showing signs of weakness, signs of folding, signs of losing interest in events in the region that most endangers world peace.
Nothing remains from the speeches in Cairo and Bar-Ilan University. Obama is silent, and Yishai speaks. Even “Israel’s friends” in Washington, friends of the occupation, are once again rearing their heads.
One source familiar with Obama’s inner circle likened him this week to a man who inflates a number of balloons every day in the hope that one of them will rise. He will reach his goal. The source compared him to Shimon Peres, an analogy that should insult Obama. The trial balloons the U.S. president sends our way have yet to take off. One can, of course, wait for the next balloon, the Obama peace plan, but time is running out. And Israel is not sitting idly by.
The minute Jerusalem detected a lack of American determination, it returned to its evil ways and excuses. “There is no partner,” “Abu Mazen is weak,” “Hamas is strong.” And there are demands to recognize a Jewish state and for the right to fly over Saudi Arabia – anything in order to do nothing.
An America that will not pressure Israel is an America that will not bring peace. True, one cannot expect the U.S. president to want to make peace more than the Palestinians and Israelis, but he is the world’s responsible adult, its great hope. Those of us who are here, Mr. President, are sinking in the wretched mud, in “injury time.”
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Tags:Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Cairo speech, George Mitchell, Gideon Levy, Israel, Israeli settlements, occupation, United States
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