Humint Events Online: Gaza Is Still a Nightmare, a Massive Concentration Camp Run by Israel

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Gaza Is Still a Nightmare, a Massive Concentration Camp Run by Israel

My last visit to Gaza had been in May 2014, just before Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, an assault that resulted in the deaths of more than two thousand Gazans – combatants and civilians – and the destruction of eighteen thousand homes. When I went back less than three years later the changes were evident everywhere. But two things struck me particularly: the now devastating impact of Gaza’s decade-long isolation from the rest of the world, and the sense that an increasing number of people are reaching the limit of what they can endure.
Gaza is in a state of humanitarian shock, due primarily to Israel’s blockade, supported by the US, the EU and Egypt and now entering its 11th year. Historically a place of trade and commerce, Gaza has relatively little production left, and the economy is now largely dependent on consumption. Although a recent easing of Israeli restrictions has led to a slight increase in agricultural exports to the West Bank and Israel – long Gaza’s principal markets – they are not nearly enough to boost its weakened productive sectors. Gaza’s debility, carefully planned and successfully executed, has left almost half the labour force without any means to earn a living. Unemployment – especially youth unemployment – is the defining feature of life. It now hovers around 42 per cent (it has been higher), but for young people (between the ages of 15 and 29) it stands at 60 per cent. Everyone is consumed by the need to find a job or some way of earning money. ‘Salaries control people’s minds,’ one resident said.
 (snip)
‘What do the Israelis want?’ I was asked the question again and again, with each questioner looking at me searchingly, sometimes imploringly, for an answer, for some insight they clearly felt that they didn’t have. Why is Gaza being punished in so heartless a manner, and what does Israel truly hope to gain by it? One well-placed person claimed that ‘50 to 60 per cent of Hamas’ would give up any claim to Jerusalem in return for the Rafah border crossing being opened up again. Israel has exhausted all the ways it has of putting pressure on Gaza. When Gazans were allowed to work in Israel, Israel had leverage: it would seal the borders and extract whatever concessions it sought. Now even that leverage is gone, and all that remains is menace – a policy towards Gaza that emerges not from any sense or logic but from what Ehud Barak once called ‘inertia’. According to an article in Haaretz, Israel’s ‘security cabinet has not held a single meeting on Israeli policy concerning Gaza for the last four years’. At what point does menace stop working as a form of coercion? What will Israel hope to gain from its next attack on Gaza, when people there already speak about entire families being wiped out as a normal topic of conversation?
If the Israelis were thinking clearly, one person said, ‘everyone could benefit. All they must do is give us a window to live a normal life and all these extremist groups would disappear. Hamas would disappear. The community must deal with … these groups, not IDF tanks and planes. Our generation wants to make peace and it is foolish for Israel to refuse. The next generation may not be as willing as we are. Is that what Israel truly wants?’ In the first six months of 2016, the Ministry of the Interior reported that 24,138 babies were born in Gaza, averaging 132 a day. In August 2016 alone, 4961 babies were born, or 160 a day: more than six babies every hour and one baby every nine minutes. The distance between Gaza City and Tel Aviv is 44 miles. ‘What will Israel do when there are five million Palestinians living in Gaza?’
(emphasis added)
 
It's an insane, hopeless and intolerable situation.

4 Comments:

Blogger the mighty wak said...


ya israel are dicks, but evidently democrats are too::


HOMELAND SECURITY JEH JOHNSON TESTIFIES RUSSIA NEVER CHANGED VOTES, DNC HID SERVERS FROM GOVERNMENT


hmm. DNC hid servers from the govt.

11:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...


Expect no substantial progress as long as Israeli White House agent Jared is on duty.

6:59 PM  
Blogger the mighty wak said...


there wouldn't be any progress even if jared wasn't on duty.
hey didn't jared lose a bunch of weight by only eating subway sandwiches?
maybe he can order a ham sandwich at subway while he's in israel.

9:13 AM  
Blogger spooked said...

"HOMELAND SECURITY JEH JOHNSON TESTIFIES RUSSIA NEVER CHANGED VOTES, DNC HID SERVERS FROM GOVERNMENT" Link doesn't work. It's not an accurate summary anyway, it's rather tendentious.

10:37 AM  

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