Posted by John, June 2nd, 2010 - under Israel, Palestine.



The terrorist state of Israel assassinated 19 unarmed activists in the Gaza freedom flotilla. People around the world are rightly angry. We need to build on that anger as part of the global campaign to win real gains for the Palestinian people.

This massacre is standard fare for the Israelis. This is the type of treatment the people of Palestine endure on a regular basis.

In 2005 Israel withdrew its troops and settlements from Gaza. While they Israelis have always restricted entry into and exit from Gaza, they began their blockade in earnest when Hamas, the democratically elected Government of Palestine, took over Gaza. They claim they allow in ‘humanitarian’ aid but that is not true.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the blockade:

The Gaza Strip has land borders with Israel and Egypt, and a sea border. Egypt and Israel largely keep their borders with the territory sealed. Israel allows only limited humanitarian supplies from aid organizations into the Strip. The amount of goods Israel allows into Gaza is one quarter of the pre-blockade flow. The Israeli navy maintains a sea blockade from three nautical miles offshore. Egypt has constructed an underground steel barrier to prevent circumvention of the blockade through smuggling tunnels.

Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories, has called the blockade a crime against humanity.

What are the impacts of this illegal Israeli action?

According to Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, that the problems faced by Gaza are not just humanitarian, but “encompass every aspect of society.”

The Israeli invasion occurred 17 months ago. The Israelis killed 1400 Palestinians and destroyed schools, hospitals, homes and mosques. John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, says it is “disturbing” that “no meaningful reconstruction has yet started.” The Israelis don’t want reconstruction to occur.

According to the BBC ‘Amnesty International has dubbed the blockade “collective punishment” resulting in a “humanitarian crisis”; UN officials have described the situation as “grim”, “deteriorating” and a “medieval siege”. ‘

Here’s the BBC again on what the Israeli blockade normally doesn’t allow in.

The UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees Unrwa’s list of household items that have been refused entry at various times includes light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee, chocolate, nuts, shampoo and conditioner. Many other items – ranging from cars to fridges to computers – are generally refused entry. Building materials such as cement, concrete and wood were nearly always refused entry until early 2010, when some glass, wood, cement and aluminium were allowed in.

Unemployment is 40 percent. Many Gazans go hungry. Here’s what the BBC says:

…the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation says 61% of Gazans are “food insecure”. According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, 80% of Gazan households rely on some kind of food aid. Unrwa provides food aid for 750,000 people, half the population.

60 percent of Gazan children have anaemia. Power is intermittent. The water system is crap – literally. An Amnesty International report mentioned in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, ‘said Gaza’s coastal aquifer, its sole fresh water resource, had been polluted by infiltration of seawater and raw sewage and degraded by over-extraction.’ The same report argued that Israelis receive four times as much water as Palestinians.

The blockade is collective punishment for Palestinians democratically electing Hamas as their Government.

They elected Hamas because Fatah was corrupt and because 17 years of the peace process between Fatah and the Israelis has seen the position of the Palestinians go backwards. Rather than stopping the ongoing dispossession – ethnic cleansing under another name – the ‘peace’ process has accelerated the genocide.

The Israelis have built an apartheid wall which turns what’s left of the West Bank of Palestine into small disconnected and divided plots of land. It continues evicting Palestinians and settling Jewish people in previously Palestinian areas.

Here is a map clearly showing the loss of land the Palestinians have suffered. That trend continues.

Strange people these Palestinians – they fight back against genocide.

What is the way forward for Palestine? Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories, summed it up:

I’ve said for some time that the best hope for the Palestinians is not at a governmental level or through reliance on the United Nations, but rather through the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, which has increasingly come to resemble the anti-apartheid campaign that was so successful in delegitimizing the racist regime in South Africa.

Of course it was the struggle of South Africans themselves for freedom, in particular the strength of the trade union movement in South Africa, together with international support and solidarity from ordinary working people round the world, that won the long bloody battle against apartheid.

It is the struggles of the Palestinian people, the Arab masses and our support – economic and political – that hold within them the seeds of the defeat of apartheid Israel.

For those of us in the West that means demonstrating against the Israeli terrorists and building the movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.