How Hamas Tortures Gaza

Joshua Klein
frontpagemag.com
28 April '10

John Ging, the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Operations in Gaza, briefed correspondents at the United Nations headquarters in New York last week on the humanitarian plight of the people in Gaza. He said that the Palestinian people in Gaza faced “a struggle to survive on a daily basis.”

Ging noted that Gaza’s infrastructure was in a state of collapse, as there was no legitimate economy anymore due to lack of commercial trade into or out of the area, nor was there any prospect of a restoration of it as long as the blockade instituted by Israel at the border crossings continued. He also blamed the blockade for preventing the import of vital construction materials needed to build more UNRWA-run schools and classrooms to accommodate the expanding child population in Gaza.

While acknowledging some recent positive developments as Israel has allowed more commercial truckloads to enter Gaza, he said they were “a drop in the bucket.” “So, if we can have 20 truckloads of aluminium (sic) a month; then why not 50? And if you can have 50, why not a 100?” Ging asked.

Ging blamed the current situation on the failure to implement the detailed Agreement on Movement and Access in Gaza that Israel and the Palestinian Authority negotiated in November 2005 with the help of the World Bank and the Special Envoy of the Mideast Quartet. Although the agreement had specified certain steps to be taken to keep the crossings open and vital supplies flowing into Gaza, those steps were never taken, he claimed, resulting in “bewildering human suffering and misery” for 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza.

What Ging neglected to mention is that Hamas and its radical Islamic allies bear much of the blame for the human suffering in Gaza because they are the reason that the Agreement on Movement and Access in Gaza was never fully implemented.

For its part, Israel had in good faith begun to implement this agreement by allowing a significant increase of truckloads into and out of Gaza through the crossing points bordering Israel, after it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and turned over governing responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority.

(Read full article)

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