Israeli Blockade on Gaza: "Economic Warfare"
Israeli Limiting Food To Gaza Based on Calorie Count
Israeli Gaza Massacre in . . . 1956
Israeli Bulldozers Flatten Farmlands in Gaza
War on Gaza
Israeli Army Not Content With Gaza Killings and Carnage
Israel's new line is that it blockades the Gaza Strip because it wants to stop weapons smuggling. But this is a lie. Israel seeks to stop not just weapons, but most basic supplies including - as Senator John Kerry noted - pasta.
Israel's leaders have themselves stated this repeatedly: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert [who initiated the blockade]: "The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."
McClatchy obtained an Israeli government document that describes the blockade not as a security measure but as "economic warfare" against the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian territory. [...]
The figures show that Israel also has limited the goods allowed to enter Gaza to 40 types of items, while before June 2007 approximately 4,000 types of goods were listed as entering Gaza.
This has lead to a humanitarian catastrophe in the occupied territory. Take the case of stunned growth:
A recent report published in the Lancet medical journal showed that “the trend for stunting among Palestinian children is increasing, and that there is a concern about the long-term effects.” The report shows that there are pockets in northern Gaza where the level of stunted growth among children reaches thirty percent. Stunting, which is caused by chronic malnutrition and affecting cognitive development and physical health, poses a serious threat to normal childhood development and may cause severe health problems for children in the future. The report’s conclusions that the main reasons for the ailing Palestinian health system are the occupation, the recent conflict in Gaza, and inter-Palestinian fighting stress the need for an honest assessment of the health situation within the context of broader Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Thus, the Israeli government’s dismissal of the report as “propaganda in the guise of a medical report” is disheartening. Measuring stunted growth among children represents objective health data collection. Regardless of partisan persuasions, the percentage of Palestinian children who now suffer from stunted growth remains ten percent.
This is not about weapons to Hamas, it is about a cruel collective punishment designed to break the will of the Palestinians people.
"All that you have done to your people is registered in notebooks." - A Palestinian poet.
