Gaza’s ‘Inviable’ Future? UN Blames Israel

Joseph Klein..
frontpagemag.com..
30 August '12..

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) held a conference on August 27th entitled “Will the Gaza Strip be Viable in 2020?” The conclusion, predictably, was that the Israeli government was fully responsible for the difficult human living conditions in the Gaza Strip and that the Gaza population will face a real disaster on all levels by 2020 if the Israeli “siege” were not immediately ended.

In attendance at the Israel-bashing conference were the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, Maxwell Gaylard, Director of UNRWA operations in Gaza Robert Turner, and UNICEF Special Representative in the Palestinian Territory, Jean Gough.

Gaylard said that the Gaza population is expected to expand by a half million, reaching 2.1 million in 2020, while access to water and electricity, education and health resources will get worse over the same period, unless major remedial action is taken immediately.

“Despite their best efforts the Palestinians in Gaza still need help,” Gaylard said. “They are under blockade. They are under occupation and they need our help both politically and practically on the ground.”

Best efforts? Gaylard may not have noticed, but Gaza is not under Israeli occupation today. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas has controlled Gaza for the last five years after its forcible ejection of its Fatah rivals. Gaylard neglected to point out the reason for what remains of the Israeli blockade. Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups have used Gaza to launch thousands of rockets, missiles and mortars into Israel during the years of Hamas control - 542 this year alone to date. Indeed, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired seven rockets into Israel in the past few days. Two of them narrowly missed a school just as the new Israeli school year got underway.

Despite the Palestinian terrorists’ continuing onslaught of unprovoked attacks, Israel has relaxed its defensive blockade at great risk to the security of its citizens. Building materials and many goods are regularly imported into the Gaza Strip without Israeli interference. Tons of agricultural products are exported without Israeli interference. And Israel is helping the Gaza economy by supplying six times as many megawatts of electricity to the Gaza Strip as Egypt does.

Egypt is not the solution for the Gaza Strip

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
26 July '12..




Would it make sense for Egypt to annex the Gaza Strip?

How about take responsibility for security there?

What about being Gaza’s gateway for foreign trade?

First a reminder:

Hosni Mubarak is dead.

The president of Egypt is from the Moslem Brotherhood and the radical Moslem parties now dominate the Egyptian parliament.

While the Egyptian military still has a say, there’s no telling how long that will last or what the military might find itself doing in order continue having a say.

What would happen if Egypt either annexed the Gaza Strip or took security responsibility for it?

The Gaza Strip: Why Is Washington Sticking Its Head in the Sand?

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
17 September '10

The US Administration, which just forced Israel and the Palestinian Authority to enter direct peace negotiations, seems to have completely forgotten about the Gaza Strip. Perhaps Washington is deliberately sticking its head in the sand; and perhaps we should all stop dreaming?

The peace process is going nowhere and everyone is just pretending: it is important to remind everyone of what they want to conceal or forget.

The Americans seem to be ignoring Gaza: Possibly -- even though the Gaza Strip is back in the news as rockets and mortars are again being fired into Israel -- they do not want the grim reality to spoil the Peace Process Party. They know that for now the Gaza Strip is a lost cause, so they pretend the problem does not exist.

If the Obama administration is hoping that apeace deal might prompt the Hamas and the residents of the Gaza Strip to seek a similar deal, they are they are being naïve; on the contrary, such a deal would only increase Hamas's determination to step up itsefforts -- with the help of Syria and iran -- to scuttle the peace process.

The first and most important question that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton need to ask themselves is whether the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would ever even be able to implement a peace agreement in the Gaza Strip.

Abbas and his Fatah faction fled the Gaza Strip just over three years ago, handing it over to Hamas. As soon as Hamas started shooting in the summer of 2007, Abbas's forces and loyalists either surrendered or ran away.

They gave Hamas everything, including security headquarters, weapons, and government offices.

The handful of Fatah policemen and militiamen who chose to put up a fight were swiftly crushed by Hamas.

Since then, Abbas has not been able to set foot in the Gaza Strip. He is not even able to visit his private residence, which was seized by Hamas.

(Read full article)

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European Involvement in Gaza Spells Trouble for Israel

Soeren Kern
Hudson New York
29 July '10

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will lead a European Union delegation that is scheduled to visit the Gaza Strip in early September. The EU delegation, which will also include representatives from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Norway, was invited by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during a June 24 meeting with his Italian counterpart, Franco Frattini. Lieberman said the idea is for the EU representatives to be able to see Gaza "with their own eyes."

The invitation is part of Lieberman's recent proposal for a complete Israeli disengagement from Gaza. But promoting greater EU involvement in Gaza could backfire on Israel. Zapatero, who leads one of the most anti-Israel governments in Europe, will almost certainly use the visit to call for exerting more international pressure on Israel to completely lift the four-year blockade on Gaza. A high-profile EU visit is also likely to grant international legitimacy to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip. Moreover, European officials will use the trip to call on Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians in other areas as well.

Israel recently said it was easing the Gaza blockade somewhat by allowing a wider range of goods into the territory, with the exception of weapons and dual-use items. Israel has also agreed to let construction materials into Gaza, provided they are destined for projects under international supervision. But exports are still banned and people cannot move freely over the border. Israel says the blockade on Gaza's ports will stay in place to prevent Hamas from shipping in military-grade weapons and long-range rockets.

The September trip will follow recent visits to Gaza by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton ( the EU's top foreign policy official and the most senior foreign emissary to visit Gaza since Israel's decision to ease its blockade) and former EU Commissioner Chris Patten.

Ashton's trip to Gaza, only four months after her first visit there, was aimed to "show EU support" for the Palestinians. She called on the international community to pressure Israel to go beyond easing the embargo to fully lift the "unacceptable, unsustainable and counterproductive" blockade.

"There are small signs of change in policy to allow goods into Gaza, but we continue to call for the opening of the crossings to enable people and goods to move around," Ashton said. "What needs to happen now," Ashton said, "is continued international pressure to move forward." She also proposed that an EU naval mission help with the transfer of goods. Ashton did not, however, meet Hamas officials during her time in Gaza (the European Union, like Israel and the United States, views the anti-Israel militant group as a terrorist group).

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Egyptian Journalist: In Actual Terms, Gaza Is Not Under Siege

MEMRI
Special Dispatch No.3126
28 July '10

In an article in the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram on the economic situation in the Gaza Strip, journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl wrote about the burgeoning recreation industry and of the low merchandise prices.

Also as part of the interest in the economic situation in Gaza, the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida published articles describing the expensive resorts that have been established for Gaza's newly rich, and a Palestinian website reported on the new mall recently opened in the city.

The following are excerpts from the articles:

Stores Overflow with Goods

Journalist Ashraf Abu Al-Houl wrote in Al-Ahram: "I was last in Gaza in mid-February. Returning three weeks ago, I found it almost unrecognizable... and the greatest surprise was the nature of that change. I would have expected a change for the worse, considering the blockade – but the opposite was the case; it seemed as if it had emerged from the blockade.

"A sense of absolute prosperity prevails, as manifested by the grand resorts along and near Gaza's coast. Further, the sight of the merchandise and luxuries filling the Gaza shops amazed me. Merchandise is sold more cheaply than in Egypt, although most of it is from the Egyptian market, and there are added shipping costs and costs for smuggling it via the tunnels – so that it could be expected to be more expensive.
"Before I judge by appearances, which can be misleading... [I would like to point out that] I toured the new resorts, most of which are quite grand, as well as the commercial markets, to verify my hypothesis. The resorts and markets have come to symbolize prosperity, and prove that the siege is formal or political, not economic. The reality [in Gaza] proves that the siege was broken even before Israel's crime against the ships of the Freedom Flotilla in late May; everything already was coming into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. If this weren't the case, businessmen would not have been able to build so many resorts in under four months."

Significantly Lower Prices

"[I] began my search for the truth regarding the siege in Rafah, at the Saturday market, which was loaded with large quantities of merchandise and products of various kinds – at prices mostly lower than in Egypt, particularly for food products.

Nevertheless, there weren't many customers, and this for two reasons: One, supply is much greater than demand, and two, the workers were all waiting to get paid their wages.

"Business owner Abu Yousuf stood at his shop surrounded by hundreds of cans of food. Their price had dropped significantly in the past two months; in some cases by as much as 50%. Clothing vendor Abu Muhammad Al-Masri noted that there was an unprecedented glut on the clothing market in the Gaza Strip. Clothing comes into Gaza from two sources: the tunnels, which provide large quantities, and the border crossings to Israel, via which even more goods arrive, most of which piled up at Ashdod port [and are now coming into the Strip]. He clarified that the merchants wanted to sell [lots of] goods to get back some of their money... and so had increased the supply in the markets, leading to lower prices.

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Videos of Flotilla Incident as Presented by Eiland Team of Experts (English Version)

IDF Blog
13 July '10

Below are videos of the Gaza flotilla incident as presented by the Eiland team of experts in Hebrew, accompanied by a description and subtitles of the video’s content in English.



The events leading up to and throughout the flotilla incident are recounted in the video, as presented by the team of experts led by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland in the IDF’s internal inquiry.

In light of weapons smuggling attempts, a maritime closure was established during the 2008-2009 Gaza Operation. Under the guise of providing humanitarian aid, a number of ships have attempted to reach the Gaza Strip, some permitted to enter, while others were stopped.

Due to these attempts, the IDF General Staff and Navy outlined orders to prepare for future attempts to break the closure, and in preparing for the May 31st flotilla, the IDF planned far in advance with extended discussion, and various simulation model scenarios. IDF attaches abroad and foreign attaches to Israel were all briefed in advance.

In addition, the Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi sent a letter to the Defense Minister and Prime Minister emphasizing the following:

“Cooperation between nation ministries is required and the military option which includes seizing, confiscating and detaining the ship’s activists is a last resort and at a low priority.”

The video goes on to describe the various ships in the flotilla and the courses of their attempted journey to the Gaza Strip, as well as the number and extent of Israeli response ships, aircraft, and absorption center for the ships’ passengers.

The video also outlines the orders given to the IDF soldiers boarding the flotilla ships, including the policy of using gradual force, and using live weapons only in life threatening scenarios.

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Mother of baby saved by Israelis wants him to murder them

Elder of Ziyon
07 July '10

Ha'aretz reports on a documentary by Channel 10 reporter Shlomi Eldar about a Palestinian Arab baby with a rare disease being treated in Israel.

In Sheba's pediatric hemato-oncology department was Mohammed Abu Mustafa, a four-and-a-half-month-old Palestinian infant. Protruding from his tiny body were pipes attached to big machines. His breathing was labored.

"His days may be numbered. He is suffering from a genetic defect that is causing the failure of his immune system," said the baby's mother, Raida, from the Gaza Strip, when she emerged from the isolation room. "I had two daughters in Gaza," she continued, her black eyes shimmering. "Both died because of immune deficiency. In Gaza I was told all the time that there is no treatment for this and that he is doomed to die. The problem now is how to pay for the [bone marrow] transplant. There is no funding."

"I got to her after all the attempts to find a donation for the transplant had failed," [Eldar] relates. "I understood that I was the baby's last hope, but I didn't give it much of a chance. At the time, Qassam rockets falling on Sderot opened every newscast. In that situation, I didn't believe that anyone would be willing to give a shekel for a Palestinian infant."

He was wrong. Hours after the news item about Mohammed was broadcast, the hospital switchboard was jammed with callers. An Israeli Jew whose son died during his military service donated $55,000, and for the first time the Abu Mustafa family began to feel hopeful. Only then did Eldar grasp the full dramatic potential of the story. He told his editor, Tali Ben Ovadia, that he wanted to continue accompanying the family.



...Nevertheless, this idyllic situation developed into a deep crisis that led to the severance of the relations and what appeared to be the end of the filming. From an innocent conversation about religious holidays, Raida Abu Mustafa launched into a painful monologue about the culture of the shahids - the martyrs - and admitted, during the complex transplant process, that she would like to see her son perpetrate a suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem.

"Jerusalem is ours," she declared. "We are all for Jerusalem, the whole nation, not just a million, all of us. Do you understand what that means - all of us?"

She also explained to Eldar exactly what she had in mind. "For us, death is a natural thing. We are not frightened of death. From the smallest infant, even smaller than Mohammed, to the oldest person, we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem. We feel we have the right to it. You're free to be angry, so be angry."

(Read full story)

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International Outrage, Please

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
30 June '10

There are stories in the news right now that in most of their themes are similar to stories that recently set off waves of condemnation and hysteria in much of the world, especially in the delicate global conscience of “the international community.”

In the Gaza Strip, many of the residents have been left without electricity because of a fight that shut down the Strip’s power plant. Palestinians are suffering, with nothing to relieve the daytime heat and the nighttime darkness — but the world yawns.

In a nearby part of the Middle East, an unprovoked and disproportionate attack against civilians destroyed a building and damaged others. The EU has not called for an investigation, and currently the UN Security Council has not been convened to discuss this act of war. Remarkably, this aggression is not even mentioned on the front pages of British newspapers, which normally cover attacks on civilians in this region with great attentiveness.

Also in the Middle East, a repressive regime is razing the homes of a persecuted minority. According to reports, 90 percent of the buildings owned by this minority group have been destroyed in these acts of discrimination and ethnic cleansing. Surprisingly, the UN secretary-general and the Obama administration — which have both publicly and repeatedly criticized Israel for legally demolishing buildings that were constructed in violation of zoning laws — have said nothing about this grave offense.

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A Bit More on the Gaza Strip Diplomacy

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
21 June '10

Elsewhere, I have explained in great detail the changes in Israeli policy as well as the implications of Western policy in the Gaza Strip: economic normalization meaning also normalization of the existence of a Gaza Hamas-ruled statelet. Israel, seeing that there is not going to be any "rollback" to remove Hamas from power has basically accepted a containment startegy of limited the military weaponry and capability of Hamas.

The U.S. government and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the Quartet negotiator have been critical of Israel's concessions as insufficient. While Israel is offering 130 truckloads a day of non-military goods and construction material only for demonstrably non-military projects, the U.S. and European governments want 400 trucks a day, which is what some aid agencies say is needed.

In addition, they want the Gaza Strip to be able to export goods, mainly agricultural, in order to make money.

On one level, the whole debate is absurd since they could just ask Egypt to open the border to this extent. But, of course, the intention is to pressure Israel. Ironically, if they demanded Egypt let more sent in, this would run up against Cairo's argument that it doesn't want to strengthen a revolutionary Islamist statelet on its own border.

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The Distorted Gaza Debate: It’s About Hamas, Stupid

The bottom line must be whether or not the world wants to see another Islamist, genocidal state take hold. Let's discuss that, not overblown humanitarian concerns.


Barry Rubin
pajamasmedia.com
18 June '10

The biggest problem with the way the Gaza Strip and flotilla issues are being presented? This is an issue about Hamas, not an issue about Israel.

The bottom line is whether the West and the world wants to see, on the coast of the Mediterranean: a revolutionary Islamist state openly seeking to commit genocide against Israel’s Jews; a client of Iran; and a dictatorial government determined to spread Islamist revolution, treat women as the Afghan Taliban did, and educate a generation of Gazans into becoming terrorists.

Only if this factor is comprehended can the humanitarian issue be put into perspective. To make the determining factor the raising of Gazan living standards is to ignore the strategic issues involved. And the great irony here is that ultimately an acceptance of the Hamas regime will doom Gazans to far more suffering — not to mention death — than the embargo could ever cause.

Yet even if one takes the humanitarian issue in isolation from the strategic questions, on its own merits, it is a largely phony question. It is being promoted mainly by Hamas and its supporters not to help people in Gaza but to break the embargo, stabilize the regime, and ensure its support base. Of course, this would only continue until Hamas launched the next war, or massive terrorist and rocket-firing campaign, against Israel.

In this regard, the most fundamental points are being distorted. The Gaza Strip is an agricultural area, and there has never been any hunger there. Many photos have been published showing that the shops are full of basic commodities. True, this is being supplemented by smuggling across the border with Egypt, but the outcome is the same.

Additionally, the Gaza Strip has always been a poor area, even in comparison to the West Bank. Statistics are being distorted to act as if the relatively lower living standards in the Gaza Strip are being caused by the sanctions, rather than largely being a continuation of history. Naturally, with a Hamas dictatorship that provoked last year’s war, things are going to be worse than with a government that is moderate, seeking stability, and cooperative with the West.

Here’s an example: On June 1, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) stated that the Gaza Strip “has one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates.” The obvious implication? It is Israel’s fault, because of its sanctions. In fact, the Gaza Strip has an infant mortality rate of 17.71 deaths per 1000 births — about the same as Mexico and better than Brazil, Romania, neighboring Egypt (26.2), Turkey (24.8), and Iran (34.7).

None of those, of course, can be blamed on Israel.

(Read full article)

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Better A Bad Press Than A Good Epitaph

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
13 June '10

(Marty Peretz, as usual, always a little bit different. Y.)

Actually, the hysteria about the Israeli encounter with the Turkish goons has abated. And it has probably come to the attention of some reasonable people that Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working the seas not exactly for the interests of the Turks but for the Islamic crusade being led by the Iranian clerisy and secret police.

I know little about Erdogan but something more about Turkey. The last century of its history is being betrayed in an avalanche of thuggish holiness. Its economy is not doing as bad as that of Greece. But just wait. Tourism is going down, down, down ... and all for the sacred name of Mohammed. Hey, and what about the Armenians? Please, forget about history. I am as certain that Turkey will get into Europe as I am that Osama bin Laden will get into heaven.

Anyway, all this fuss is about Gaza. No, Gaza is not as splendid as Jaffa, the seductive Arab-Jewish neighborhood of Tel Aviv, where I lived ten years ago and where I am going in October to live for seven months on my high-school teaching stint. But Gaza is also not as horrific as Cairo—nowhere near as horrific as Cairo, which is truly horrific—or other cities “at peace” in the Arab world.

(Read full article)

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Israel’s Right to Blockade

Joseph Klein
frontpagemag.com
11 June '10

Does Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and its enforcement of the blockade comply with international law? The evidence suggests that the answer is an overwhelming yes:

The 1909 Declaration Concerning the Laws of Naval War (the London Declaration), the first international instrument to acknowledge the legality of blockades, specifically recognized the right of nations to blockade their enemy.

So does the San Remo Manual, which is a compilation by international law experts of agreed upon international law on blockades and related subjects. The blockade must be declared against a belligerent, and notified to all belligerents and neutral states (Article 93). The declaration must specify the commencement, duration, location, and extent of the blockade and the period within which vessels of neutral States may leave the blockaded coastline (Article 94). The blockade may be enforced and maintained by a combination of legitimate methods and means of warfare provided this combination does not result in acts inconsistent with the rules set out in the San Remo Manual (Article 97).

A blockade is prohibited, according to the San Remo Manual, if (a) it has the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential for its survival; or (b) the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade (Article 102).

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Gaza flotilla a sign of mass derangement

Fresnozionism.org
30 May '10

Tomorrow the so-called “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” is expected to reach the waters off the Gaza Strip. I am interested in what is in the heads of the ‘progressive activists’ that are on board or that support the goals of this operation.

They claim that it’s all about ‘humanitarian’ aid to break the ’siege’ and end the suffering of Gaza residents. It’s remarkably easy to show that there actually is no ’siege’ and no ‘humanitarian crisis’. A siege is not a siege when the besieger permits 15,000 tons of food, medicine and clothing a week into the besieged area. And the Hamas rulers of Gaza have options to ameliorate the minimal pressure that is being applied to them. Want the crossings open? Release Gilad Shalit, who’s been held hostage now for almost four years.

Update: Elder of Ziyon is on the job Twittering "#Flotilla of Fools".

Only the very dumb ones believe their own propaganda. The smarter ones would probably admit the above. But they would say that they are fighting a war against colonialism and racism. They would say that they are fighting on the side of freedom against oppression.

In other words, they are helping Hamas because Hamas represents freedom and opposes racism. Really?

The Western idea of freedom includes such things as freedom of speech, press, and religion. It includes the idea of equality between men and women, fairness to ethnic and religious minorities, gays, etc.

Hamas is violently (and I mean violently) opposed to those freedoms. It also believes that the land of Israel belongs only to Muslims, and that the proper behavior of a Muslim toward a Jew is to kill him (I call that racism, don’t you?)

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Reclaiming our language from the Left

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
25 May '10

Courtesy of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Thursday Israel will again be the target of a jihadist-leftist propaganda assault. A flotilla of nine ships which set sail for Gaza from Cyprus earlier this week is scheduled to arrive at our doorstep.

The expressed aim of the flotilla's organizers is to unlawfully provide aid and comfort to Hamas - an illegal terrorist organization. Since it seized power in Gaza three years ago, Hamas, which is openly committed to the genocide of world Jewry and the physical eradication of Israel, has transformed the Gaza Strip into a hub of the global jihad. It has been illegally holding hostage Gilad Schalit incognito for four years. And it is continuously engaged in a massive, Iranian-financed arms buildup ahead of its next assault.

Beyond providing aid to Hamas, the declared aim of the "Free Gaza" movement is to coerce Israel into providing Hamas with an outlet to the sea. This too is in contravention of international law which expressly prohibits states and non-state actors from providing any support to terrorist organizations.

IN SENDING out the latest group of ships, Turkey and its Irish, Greek and Swedish partners seek to appropriate the imagery of the Jewish pre-statehood struggle for independence from Britain. In a bid to appease Hamas's jihadist precursors, in 1939 Britain's Mandatory authorities broke international law and prohibited Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine.

The League of Nations' letter of mandate for Britain specifically enjoined the British to facilitate Jewish immigration to the land of Israel. Yet following the Arab terror war from 1936-1939, the British issued the White Paper that all but prohibited Jewish immigration. This move blocked the one place on Earth where European Jews were wanted from accepting them and so trapped 6 million Jews in Hitler's Europe.

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For Once, Israel Prefers an Ally to an Enemy

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
24 May '10

(A very interesting take on what's taking place. Your thoughts? Y.)

Recent articles about the Obama administration’s preference for enemies over allies ring depressingly familiar to Israelis, whose country is a past master of that perverse art (see, for instance, its treatment of the South Lebanon Army and the Druze). Thus it was encouraging to learn that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has for once preferred an ally to an enemy, by twice rejecting Qatar’s offer to restore low-level relations.

Qatar opened trade relations with Israel in 1996, then severed them during Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip in January 2009. But about six months ago, Haaretz reported, Qatar offered to let Israel reopen its trade mission in Doha if Israel would let it bring large quantities of cement and other construction material into Gaza, grant it leadership over efforts to rebuild the Strip, acknowledge its regional status, and publicly laud its regional role. It reiterated this offer four months later. Both times, Israel refused.

The initial report attributed Israel’s refusal to security concerns: fear that Hamas would use the Qatari construction material “to build bunkers and reinforced positions for missile launches against Israel.” That in itself was encouraging: after 17 years of “risks for peace” that, without exception, led to suicide bombings and rocket barrages, it’s reassuring to know that this government puts security first. Still, reasonable people could disagree over whether the risk truly outweighed the benefits of relations with another Arab country.

But a subsequent report removed all doubts about the decision’s wisdom. The real reason for Israel’s refusal, it said, was not security but Egypt’s objection: at a time when Cairo is taking enormous flak from the Arab world for blockading Gaza’s southern border, at Israel’s request, it would be intolerable for Israel to let Qatar become the Arab world’s hero by breaking the blockade.

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Debunking the Gaza Seige Myth

Jacob Shrybman
Huffington Post
03 May '10

This May, thousands of activists on a convoy of ships, one of which is named after the extreme left-wing American activist, Rachel Corrie, killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003, plan to sail to the coastal territory in the context of breaking the widely popularized myth of the Gaza siege.

On March 18th, just three days after a man was killed by a Gaza rocket in the Negev, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the Gaza Strip and told the people of Gaza: "We stand with you." Ban called for an end to the so-called Israeli siege of the terrorist-controlled territory, saying it was causing "unacceptable suffering of human beings."

Without questioning the apparent Gaza suffering, one has to ask what siege Ban is referring to, when, in 2009 the IDF Spokesperson reported that 738,576 tons of humanitarian aid was transferred into the Strip.

The UN claims there is a siege when it has given $200 million to Gaza following a military operation that left 1,300 dead and wounded among a population of less than 1.5 million, and yet has only given $10 million to Haiti after the natural disaster there claimed the lives of an estimated 230,000. Of course, that is without noting that Haitians have not been attacking an innocent nearby civilian population for nine years.

International humanitarian aid has been flowing freely into the Strip for years, and in no way stopped after Operation Cast Lead, as 30,576 aid trucks entered the territory in 2009 while in the same period, 4,883 tons of medical equipment was also transferred to it. This past month during the week of April 11-17th 500 trucks of over 17,000 tons of humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip.

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The Palestinians: The Result of No Demands

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
27 April '10

United States-led sanctions on the Gaza Strip have thus far played into the hands of Hamas, earning it more sympathy among radicalized and disillusioned Palestinians.

Because of these mistakes, the Gaza Strip is now swarming with scores of Islamic fundamentalist groups who are leading the Palestinians toward the abyss. If Israel repeats the same mistake and withdraws from any territory unilaterally, Hamas, the Iranians and Al-Qaeda-inspired groups will be sitting also in the suburbs of Jerusalem and on hilltops overlooking Tel Aviv beaches. The last time Abbas received control of an area, in 2005, he ran away, handing it over to Hamas and its allies.

Hamas's rise to power may be attributed to a series of mistakes that were committed by the former US Administration, which insisted on holding a free and democratic election for the Palestinians, ignoring warnings that the Islamist movement could win. Even worse, the former US Administration allowed Hamas to participate in the election unconditionally. Washington should at least have demanded that Hamas recognize the Oslo Accords and the two-state solution, given the fact that the vote was being held under the umbrella of the peace process.

The US finally did demand something from Hamas, but only after the movement had won the election. Yet the biggest mistake Washington made was after the election, when it supported the guys who lost the election in their attempts to bring down the Hamas government.

When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, there was a lot of talk about turning the area into the Middle East's Hong Kong or Singapore. But five years later, the Gaza Strip has been transformed into a center for radical Islamic groups that are funded by Iran and backed by Syria, Sudan, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood and probably Al-Qaeda-linked terror cells.

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Smear intifada

Martin Kramer
martinkramer.org
22 February '10

Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada, a death-to-Israel website, says that in my Herzliya Conference speech, which I posted two weeks ago, I “called for ‘the West’ to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.” According to the site, “Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would ‘happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status.’” The usual suspects, Philip Weiss and M.J. Rosenberg, have jumped on the bandwagon. Being accused of advocating genocide by people who daily call for Israel to be wiped off the map of the Middle East is rich.

In my speech, I made no such “proposal.” The full quote:

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Blockading the Truth: Getting the facts straight on the ‘Gaza Siege’

Anav Silverman
Sderot Media Center (SMC)
20 January '10

The year 2009 brought about a fresh wave of anti-Israel rhetoric and accusations, most which cited Israel’s supposed siege on Gaza. The international press frequently cited calls by human rights groups to “end Israel’s illegal blockade” and “liberate Gaza.” Such messages have been conceived to undermine Israel and present a very misleading angle of the actual Gaza conflict.

In a typical blockade, no supplies would be allowed to enter into enemy territory, or any area of land where the controlling regime facilitates the terrorizing of a neighboring country’s citizens. Most English dictionaries define siege as an “act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies...”

Indeed, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website has reported that in the year 2009 alone, Israel allowed for 703, 224 tons of humanitarian aid and 105,600,128 liters of fuel to be delivered into the Gaza Strip following Operation Cast Lead.

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Amnesia International: Forgetting the Real Culprits in Gaza

Justus Reid Weiner and Dimitri Teresh
Global Law Forum
JCPA
19 January '10

Amnesty International (AI) in its briefing paper titled “Suffocating: The Gaza Strip Under Israeli Blockade”1 asserts that Gazans are suffering enormously under the so-called blockade. These assertions obscure the true nature of the relationship between Israel and Gaza.

First and foremost, thousands of Hamas rocket, missile and mortar attacks predated and prompted any economic sanctions put into effect by Israel.2 Despite this fact, as a recent Ministry of Defense report indicates, the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza increased by almost 900 percent in 2009 as compared to 2008.3 Despite that, Israel’s perennial critics, such as AI, have become increasingly vocal. As will be demonstrated below, flogging the purportedly dire humanitarian situation distorts the overall picture of Gaza and forgets the actual cause for the clearly less-than-optimal circumstances in which Gazans live.

Predictions of an “imminent humanitarian crisis” in Gaza have been made at least as far back as 1996. In the year 2000, various NGOs including AI turned up the heat on Israel by claiming the Jewish state was responsible for the “imminent humanitarian crisis/disaster” in the Gaza Strip. Such terminology was mobilized anew in 2001, and since then annually in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. How has the Gaza Strip been “on the verge” of a humanitarian crisis for in excess of ten years? Chicken Little, the sky is falling.

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