Op-Ed/JPost
08 December '10
Last week, 21 aid groups launched a high-profile PR attack entitled “Dashed Hopes” directed at the blockade of Gaza. Aside from the disproportionate focus on a problem far overshadowed by starving populations elsewhere, the illustrated nine-page document suffered from a glaring omission: mention of Gilad Schalit.
The Gaza blockade was born exactly one year after Schalit’s capture by Hamas militants. It was imposed in response to Hamas’s political takeover of Gaza in June 2007.
However, it soon acquired an intrinsic connection to the campaign to free Schalit even though its full potential as leverage was never tapped.
In February 2009, it was still a nominal bargaining chip in Israel’s dealings with Hamas. Eli Yishai, then deputy prime minister, stated: “Israel is facing a serious humanitarian crisis and it is called Gilad Schalit and... until he is returned home, not only will we not allow more cargo to reach the residents of Gaza, we will even diminish it.”
In June 2009, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell advised a reversal of that policy, but Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu refused.
In July 2009, leaders of the campaign to free Schalit demonstrated at the Erez crossing, blocking the passage of food and medicine to the Gaza Strip.
When the government announced an easing of the blockade after the Mavi Marmara flotilla affair, Noam Schalit railed at Netanyahu: “And where is Gilad in this whole story?”
YET THIS month we learned that the blockade will, for all intents and purposes, expire. And nobody, not even Schalit activists, has uttered a syllable of protest.
(Read the full op-ed "The rise and fall of the Gaza blockade")
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