It’s Been a Decade:

No Hope, No Future in Gaza

Rasa - Power shortages, shortage of water supply, shortage of medical supplies, hardships in general wellbeing, higher rates of poverty and unemployment, and a crushing siege have become quite common among the long-suffering population of Gaza Strip.

News ID: 422389

Date: 22 May 2016 - 16:49

RNA‌ - Israel has been besieging the Strip for ten years now, its army murdering more than 5000 Palestinians over the course of three assaults between 2008 and 2014. Israel would also like to annex the West Bank, leaving Gaza as the real state for the Palestinians. The regime is doing everything possible to rid itself of Gaza or keep borders with Gaza closed indefinitely.

These unbelievable and unbearable conditions are not limited to Gaza’s southern border, but also extend to Jordan. It seems that Gaza and Gazans have been effectively abandoned. This policy is transforming the enclave, slowly but steadily to a ticking bomb that may explode with serious consequences.

To avoid such an outcome, action must be taken right now. The world should regard Gaza as a humanitarian crisis. The world community must deal with Gaza as an entity that belongs to the world, and represent the interests of the people of Gaza, not leaving them to be systematically denied access to basic rights and the right to movement.

The Israeli blockade can be described as an intensification of criminal policies designed to isolate the population of Gaza, cripple its fragile economy, and provoke its people against Hamas by harsh and illegal measures of collective punishment. These desperate actions are not all new: The blockade is but the terminal end of Israel's closure policy, which in turn builds on the usurper’s policies as occupier since 1967.

According to Western experts and reports, in practice, Israel's blockade means the denial of a broad range of data-x-items - food, industrial, educational, medical - deemed non-essential for a population largely unable to be self-sufficient at the end of decades of occupation.

Little wonder the international aid agency Oxfam says under current restrictions it could take more than 50 years to build the 89,000 new homes, 226 new schools, as well as the health facilities, factories and water and sanitation infrastructure that people in Gaza need.

So no matter how much money international donors raise for reconstruction, it’s never enough. Israel determines what gets in and out. The truth is that the priority is no longer the survivors. Tel Aviv is the true beneficiary of international aid. Meaning, the self-declared “international community” has abandoned Gaza as it arms Israel with the weaponry and ensures it the impunity that only rewards its brutal onslaught and essentially guarantees repetition.

It is about time the international civil society condemned the failure to bring meaningful pressure on Israel to end the criminal siege that had brought the economy to its knees even before the destruction it wrought on Gaza during the three wars.

There can be no dispute that the measures of collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are illegal under International Humanitarian Law. But International Law was tossed aside a long time ago. The blockade has been presented as punishment for the democratic election of Hamas; punishment for its subsequent takeover of Gaza; and punishment for justified resistance through attacks on illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian lands.

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