Starvation of Gaza must end

By Sarah Colborne, Chair Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Over the summer, the situation in Gaza became ever more desperate as the isolation imposed by the EU, US and Israel on the 1.5 million people there intensified. In August, fuel was cut off for seven days to Gaza’s only power station. Gazans, already suffering devastating water shortages, were subjected to sweltering heat without lighting, fans, air conditioning or refrigeration.

With around 80 per cent of Gazans now surviving on less than £1 a day, families are living on food parcels from the UN. They cannot even fish to supplement their diets because Israeli gunboats fire on any vessels more than a mile offshore. Eighty five per cent of manufacturing businesses are now closed, according to the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

This blockade has forced the UN to suspend over £45 million worth of construction projects for homes, schools and sewage treatment in Gaza because cement and other building supplies have run out and Israel blocks further supplies. The 121,000 people previously employed on these UN projects have been forced to join the 70 per cent of Gazans already unemployed.

Borders are closed even to imports of paper for textbooks for UN schools in Gaza, and residents are effectively imprisoned.

This policy of collective punishment, initiated following the Palestinian election which delivered a majority to Hamas, lies in stark contrast to previous US statements about bringing democracy to the region. It is an attempt to overturn the democratic right of Palestinians to participate in free elections, and have their choice respected.

However, opposition to this policy, including in Britain, is growing. In August, the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee questioned the government’s commitment to Palestinian unity in the run-up to and following the creation of the Palestinian National Unity Government. It expressed the view that ‘the decision not to speak to Hamas in 2007 following the Mecca agreement has been counterproductive’ and recommended the British government ‘urge President Abbas to come to a negotiated settlement with Hamas with a view to re-establishing a national unity government across the Occupied Palestinian Territories.’
Richard Burden MP won support from 118 MPs for his Early Day Motion calling for talks with Hamas, and for the Quartet to support ‘reconciliation between different parties’. US Ambassador Dennis Ross noted that ‘providing assistance to Gaza now requires someone to deal with Hamas.’ Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell has spoken out supporting dialogue and Efraim Halevy, former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency for 30 years, has also said it was time to negotiate with Hamas’ leaders.

Calls for a just and sustainable peace must be heeded. In 2006, 661 Palestinians died as a result of Israeli military action, with 23 Israelis killed in the same period. Palestinian GDP is now 20 times less than Israeli GDP, Palestinians have suffered a 40 per cent fall in per capita GDP since 2000 — double that of the two worst years of the 1930s US Great Depression.
Whilst the US claims to talk peace, recent Associated Press reports on military aid made its real intentions explicit. The US is offering Israel a $30 billion military aid package over 10 years, a 25 per cent increase on last year.

The Foreign Affairs Committee also ‘challenged [minister] Dr Howells on the issue of what pressure the government has applied on Israel to meet its Roadmap obligations. He replied, telling us that the government tries to “persuade and cajole” Israel’. This treatment contrasts sharply with that imposed on Palestinians living under an illegal Israeli occupation who have been subjected to a brutal boycott and siege, with elected representatives isolated, abducted and imprisoned. British policy must change and international law and Palestinian democracy respected. The starvation and isolation of Gaza must end.

PSC will hold a fringe meeting at TUC Congress in Brighton on Tuesday 11 September, and a lobby of parliament on 28 November.