Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May-June 2007, pages 10, 53

Gaza on the Ground

Trying to Survive Under Sanctions

By Mohammed Omer

FOURTEEN MONTHS after voters democratically elected a Hamas government, the Israeli-mandated, U.S.-enforced embargo, sanctions, and siege of Palestinians continues unabated. The World Bank has proclaimed this collective punishment the Palestinians’ “worst ever economic crisis.” There is growing unease and disgust in Europe and Russia over this tactic, with its accompanying military crackdown and the use of sophisticated weapons on civilians trapped behind walls, between checkpoints and lacking safety and freedom. The results of the siege and of constant punitive Israeli incursions are malnutrition, despair and other physical and psychological maladies.

Palestinian political parties recently managed to form a national unity government, with nearly all factions represented. The new minister of foreign affairs is independent Zyad Amro, and Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank official and member of the “Third Way,” is minister of finance.

Norway was the first country to pledge to break the more than year-old boycott, with a senior diplomat coming to Gaza to meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Following suit, many countries are calling for the lifting of the embargo on Palestinians. Yet, the boycott remains in place, alongside growing fear among Gazans, according to different Palestinian parties, of a major Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip. Thus, even with the formation of a national unity government, the situation remains bleak, with borders closed, poverty high, dependence on food aid skyrocketing, and salaries still unpaid.

Pregnant women without access to maternity care deliver babies with low birth weights and serious medical conditions and deformities. Children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders and other psychological ailments are now the norm rather than the exception. Medications to treat diabetes, heart conditions and cancer remain scarce. Even a Band-Aid is rare. The effects of these policies—imposed by by the outside world as punishment for a people voting their will in a free and fair election—will reverberate for generations.

“Our hospitals are threatened by the lack of medicine, milk, medical supplies, and maintenance for medical machines,” reported the Ministry of Health’s Khaled Radi. “The international sanctions prevent us from maintaining our morgues [essential to prevent the spread of disease]. Those who are disabled and need medical supplies like wheelchairs...can’t find these in hospitals. This equals a slow death for our elderly and the young.”

Pausing for a moment, he added, “Twelve percent of Palestinians in Gaza have asthma; we can afford medicine now, but not for long. Malnutrition is a plague with our schoolchildren. Many are anemic due to a lack of iron and other important nutrients.”

While the mounting health crisis has captured the world’s attention, Gaza is facing an equally threatening danger—its deteriorating infrastructure. Not only did Israel virtually destroy Gaza’s infrastructure during last summer’s re-invasion, but its constant pummeling with hellfire rockets, bulldozers and tank incursions continues to this day, crippling the densely populated and completely severed-off enclave that 1.4 million people, of whom nearly 900,000 are children, call home. Without clean water, sewage treatment, civic buildings, electricity and viable roads and bridges, the prospects for commerce and the rebuilding of a self-sufficient and prosperous society become increasingly remote.

Last month, in the Bedouin village of Umm Al Nassser in the northern Gaza Strip, the walls of a sewage treatment reservoir ruptured, creating a tsunami of putrid water that flooded the village and killed at least five people, including a 70-year-old woman and two children.

“Several major donors have continued to fund small-scale infrastructure projects,” said Talal Hamdan, Rafah Municipality’s public relations officer. “But it is [assistance from] the United States that Palestinians depend upon for water and sewage treatment, infrastructure, road building, and general street maintenance.

“Even if funds are available,” Hamdan added, “Israel continues to close the borders, prohibiting the necessary infrastructure building materials from entering into Gaza.”

Palestinians thus face two major problems: lack of funds to pay for supplies and the ability to receive these supplies. And Israel controls access to both funds and transit. Nothing reaches Gaza without Israeli permission. Following the January 2006 election, for example, the $1 million in U.S. aid earmarked for roads and infrastructure in Rafah and Khan Younis continues to be withheld.

The February summit in Mecca, which with the assistance and support of regional governments resulted in a unity Palestinian government, provided Israel a new opportunity to work with the representatives chosen by the Palestinian people. Instead, however, the government of Ehud Olmert chose to escalate its oppression. Daily attacks on civilians intensified, citizens were arrested without cause and military incursions followed by curfews and martial law resumed in Nablus, Jenin and other Palestinian cities and towns.

“The aim is to provoke Palestinian factions to respond by bombing inside Israel,” explained Prof. Ibrahim Ibrash, a Gaza University political analyst, “thereby violating the prisoner document, and thus affecting the Mecca meeting, which was based on the prisoners document, and the national unity government.”

Israel’s additional punitive actions against the Palestinian people is exacerbating an already tenuous situation. Like others, Ibrash believes that many countries will gradually lift the embargo against Palestine. Even with sanctions no longer hampering progress, however, recovering from the aftermath presents an immense challenge to Palestine’s new unity government.

Mohammed Omer, winner of New America Media’s Best Youth Voice award, reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at <[email protected]>.