In Gaza, 1.5 million people live cut off from the rest of the world. Do they actually have access to basic amenities – housing, food, medical supplies? The activists who sailed with the aid convoy from Turkey, heavy-handedly blocked by Israel on Monday, certainly thought the inhabitants of Gaza needed humanitarian assistance.
International aid agency Oxfam, including its Dutch branch Oxfam Novib, works with partner organisations in Gaza. Oxfam’s Catherine Weibel is currently in the region.
“After three years of the blockade, the local economy is devastated. Israel won’t give permission for transfers of building material. Three-quarters of the houses that were destroyed in the bombings of a year and a half ago still haven’t been rebuilt. The same goes for many schools. Water mains and sewers are also partially destroyed. It’s not possible to bring in the spare parts needed to repair them.”
Devastated
“A lot of people have to get by on virtually nothing,” says Feije Duim of Dutch charity Church in Action, another organisation active in Gaza. “A lot of companies, also for food production, have collapsed. People are living on the edge. It’s about things like petrol, paraffin for heating or cooking. People’s health is under a lot of pressure and it doesn’t take much for them to get ill. They’re right on the edge of staying alive.”
Church in Action supplies humanitarian aid worldwide, also to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. It supports a health centre and a Palestinian organisation which runs courses for children. Local churches in the Netherlands have contact with the Palestinians. Church in Action wasn’t involved in the aid convoy from Turkey.
Hamas
Israel introduced the blockade in response to continuing rocket attacks on Israeli territory, launched from Gaza. The local authority in Gaza has been under control of the militant organisation Hamas since it won elections in 2006. There is a ban on transferring arms into Gaza, as well goods which can be used to manufacture arms, like fertiliser.
There is virtually no traffic across the border with neighbouring Egypt. There are illegal tunnels, through which goods enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt, but for ordinary people these products are often too expensive, partly because Hamas levies duty on them.
Israel
Israel maintains that it does allow humanitarian aid to Gaza “despite attacks by Hamas”, as the Israeli foreign ministry website puts it, amounting to more than a million tons of supplies over the past 18 months.
In its operational update for the first quarter of 2010, the International Red Cross (ICRC) concludes that “Restrictions on transfers into Gaza of supplies and on freedom of movement continue to plague the daily lives of Palestinians”.
Particularly the sick and injured pay a high price, according to ICRC official Pierre Wettach. The organisation says at least 110 essential drugs and supplies have run out. For complicated treatment patients have to travel to a hospital in Israel, a journey for which they have to obtain a permit. The ICRC is calling on all parties involved to take responsibility for easing the supply of drugs and medical equipment.
Despondent
According to Catherine Weibel of Oxfam, the transfer of goods to Gaza is clearly inadequate. “Only last week the number of trucks Israel allowed through was only 20 percent of the number before the Gaza blockade was introduced. So people don’t have what they need. They live in very difficult circumstances and are often totally despondent.”
Feije Duim of Church in Action also saw that Palestinians believe they are being treated unfairly and find their situation hard to accept. They are angry and wonder why the world has turned its back on them. Church in Action sees any possible contact with Gaza as important, if only to show its people they have not been forgotten.
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Though Israel is at fault for these sanctions, but too much focus on what Israel should do or shouldn't do, has shifted the focus from the militant organization Hamas, which is holding the Gazans as their human shield. It makes two to make a row. Blaming Israel only and glorifying Hamas, by the international media, observers and UN, have made this issue a very tricky one. Nobody questions why Hamas is using the supplies for their ulterior motives and letting Gazans live in Misery, And why is Egypt acting the way it is. No focus on that ! The world has to introspect seriously on this issue of Hamas vs Israel, to deliver Gazans out of this perpetual misery.
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