Media coverage
Al Jazeera Net · 2009-12-28
This part of the report examines the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip as a tool of punishment and political coercion after Hamas’s electoral victory, and the direct effects it had on daily life, especially for students, mobility, electricity supply, and basic materials. It also highlights the severe economic damage inflicted on fishermen and industrial facilities by border closures and the blocking of fuel and raw materials, warning that the siege targets not only the present but also the future of Gaza’s economy.
This part of the report examines the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip as a tool of punishment and political coercion after Hamas’s electoral victory, and the direct effects it had on daily life, especially for students, mobility, electricity supply, and basic materials. It also highlights the severe…
– The Israeli siege as punishment and an instrument of subjugation
– An economic siege of the present and the future
– The use of military force and the worsening health crisis
– Egypt’s role in the siege and passage through the tunnels
## The Israeli siege as punishment and an instrument of subjugation
Hassan Hijazi: Israel brought out a new old weapon from its arsenal, which it has used in turns in fighting the Palestinians. In June 2007, Tel Aviv besieged the Palestinians, resuming its confrontation with about one and a half million people in Gaza who refuse to submit to the will of the occupier. The future of Gazans, including about a quarter of a million students, is threatened because of the effects the siege has left on all aspects of life, making their insistence on continuing their path in building tomorrow a test.
Mahmoud Natil: Before the siege, when we went to the university, the student would leave home in a relaxed frame of mind. Whenever he wanted to go to the lecture, whenever he wanted, he would find transportation. But under the siege we are living through, everything changed. On ordinary days, when the student wants to go to the lecture, he now has to leave about two hours before it.
Ali al-Naftji: Cars started running on cooking gas, and even if you want to get to the university, you need as much time as possible. It takes a long time before you reach the university, and you miss most of your lectures. So one day, while we and the guys were gathered, we decided to make this kind of competition so that we could reach the university as quickly as possible.
Mohammad Ashour: Before the siege, I used to leave the university, go home, have lunch, sleep, wake up, and study. After the siege, I started going to the university and coming back exhausted so that I could help my father and also provide household expenses.
Dan Schueftan / Specialist in Israeli-Arab relations: Yes. This situation constitutes a major obstacle for Hamas. We must continue this in order to make life in Gaza more miserable.
Mohammad Ashour: The lecturers, of course, assigned us a study booklet or a book so we could study the course from it. This siege had the effect that there was no paper.
Ali al-Naftji: And most of the time the electricity cuts off, and there is no possibility for a person to study and make up for it, so he is forced to study by candlelight.
Omar Shaban / Economic expert: The Palestinian family has, through the length of the crisis, become accustomed to devising methods of survival and steadfastness.
Mohammad Ashour: I had been hoping to continue after the bachelor’s degree, but the siege and the closure of the crossings had a major impact on my morale and on my ability to continue in another country.
Mohsen Saleh / Director-General of Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations: They will not sell their dignity, they will not sell their religion, they will not sell their land, and they will not give up their rights in order to obtain some bread.
Ali al-Naftji: Despite the siege, despite the country being closed off, despite there being no fuel, and despite there being nothing, a person is compelled to continue the educational path because there is no alternative but to study and obtain a certificate that becomes a weapon in his hand.
Mohammad Ashour: It is true that this joke and this competition were not a radical solution to the problem of the siege, but it was our own creativity in overcoming the transportation problem.
Hassan Hijazi: Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of blood and bullets expended in order to tighten its grip on this rebellious Strip. In September 2005, 17 settlements were evacuated, and the settlers were forced to leave what would later be known as the largest prison humanity has known. The Palestinians hurried to hold legislative elections that would lay the foundation for a new phase in which the rival factions would line up to confront internal and external challenges. But the specter of internal fighting and Arab and international pressures appeared before the Palestinians with the announcement of the election results. Hamas, which wanted to combine armed resistance and politics, sensed after its sweeping victory in January 2006 that its path would be difficult. It never ceases to describe peace negotiations with the Israelis as a waste of time, unlike Fatah, which had dominated the Palestinian political scene since the advent of the Palestinian Authority in 1993. Hamas also considers its conflict with the Israelis a conflict of existence, not a conflict over borders. This set off alarm bells in Tel Aviv the day after its victory, with threats against the Palestinian people and their new choice of a new chapter of confrontation no less bloody than the previous ones.
Raanan Gissin / Media adviser to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: I believe that the most important consequence of Hamas’s victory is that Gaza, Ramallah, and all the Palestinians will bear the consequences of their choice. The problem lies in the choice the Palestinians made, not in Israel. They are the ones who elected a terrorist Palestinian government to run their lives, and it will knock them to the ground.
Mahmoud Abbas / Palestinian President: I remind the members of the Council and the members of the coming government of the imperative of respecting all signed commitments.
Mohsen Saleh: Hamas did not recognize Israel’s right to exist, and Hamas did not recognize that Israel has a right to 78% of the land of Palestine. Therefore, the siege was used here as a weapon for a process of subjugation and a process of overthrow. If they do not respond to the conditions, the siege will be imposed so as to create a popular mood that may be angry with or hostile to this government led by Hamas and that would lead to its overthrow.
Dan Schueftan: The Palestinians are waging war on Israel, not only Hamas, not because the Palestinians elected Hamas, but because they support waging war against Israeli civilians. It is stupidity on our part to be in this situation—the only situation in which people wage war against you and you feed them. This is war.
Mohsen Saleh: The siege in itself is one of the instruments of subjugation used by the Israelis to subjugate the Palestinian people in order to achieve political objectives. The method is not new; the method is old, but it is repeated in different forms. When the West Bank and the Strip were placed under Israeli occupation, the Israelis initiated the use of this method in different forms. Sometimes cities were besieged, sometimes villages or certain areas were besieged and put under curfew for a day or several days, and this method was used for decades.
Dan Schueftan: The goal is to make war against Israel more difficult. The Palestinians will not abandon Hamas because the Palestinians are not intelligent. The Palestinians did not abandon Haj Amin al-Husseini despite the great harm he caused them, and they did not abandon Arafat either despite the great harm he caused them.
Hassan Hijazi: Thus the Israelis adopted the weapon of starving the Palestinians and besieging them after the formation of the first Hamas government in February 2006, and Tel Aviv bet on the siege to break the will of the Palestinians and impose its dictates on them, just as it had bet on this method in previous confrontations.
Mohsen Saleh: The method of siege was used against the Palestinian presidency itself when Yasser Arafat was besieged in the Muqata'a in Ramallah for two and a half years before Hamas won the elections, and this should be kept in mind. Thus, the instrument—the instrument of subjugation as a political usage—was present and constant in Israeli policy.
Hassan Hijazi: Israel sealed the six gates of its prison on about one and a half million people and allowed the entry of only about 26% of the imports that had entered the Gaza Strip before Hamas won the legislative elections. It also restricted Gazans’ movement outside the Strip, which gradually affected the lives of the السكان and their way of living. But political division was the only thing all of whose needs made their way through the bars of this prison and from within it as well, until the dispute between the two major movements on the scene reached the point of armed confrontation, which Hamas settled on 19 June 2006, something Israel regarded as an additional justification for imposing a suffocating siege, this time on the Strip.
Omar Shaban: The economy, or control over the Palestinian economy, has always been one of the tools of Israeli policy, whether in punishing the Palestinian people or rewarding them. The Palestinian economy constituted one of the challenges facing Israel; the economy was one of the factors in building the Palestinian state, and therefore Israel maintained keeping the Palestinian economy confined and constantly living through crises so that the Palestinians would not be able, through the economy, to reach political goals.
## An Economic Siege on the Present and the Future
Hassan Hijazi: The Israeli insistence on drowning the economy of Gazans appeared clear through punitive measures against about four thousand fishermen who were confined along the Gaza shore. The sailing range set by the Oslo Accords for Palestinian fishermen was reduced by the Israelis over the past years, until, with the renewed siege on the Gaza Strip, it reached about one tenth, affecting the livelihood of about forty thousand people who live off fishing and the professions connected to it.
Hassan Azzam / Director General of Fisheries - Gaza: Yes, the occupation had besieged the sea before the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, but the siege intensified during the period in which the siege was imposed on the Strip in general. The occupation reduced the fishing distance granted to the fisherman to fish in the sea. According to the agreements, the fisherman is supposed to be given a distance of twenty miles to sail through the sea so that he can fish and practice his profession freely, but the occupation gradually reduced this distance until it reached six miles, and sometimes three miles, and at times the occupation closed the sea to the fisherman, so that the fisherman was unable, for six months during 2007, to sail and fish throughout all that period.
Participant 1: I mean, one day the fisherman makes one hundred shekels, and for ten days he doesn’t make a shekel. If you calculate it altogether over the course of the year, it doesn’t come out to five shekels a day for him. If you calculate it overall and multiply it out, it doesn’t come out to ten shekels. But he tells you, the piece of fish that I take home to my children saves twenty or thirty shekels.
Hassan Hijazi: International reports warned of the deterioration of the fishermen’s living conditions in light of the low quantities of fish they catch. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Refugee Affairs issued a warning about fishermen relying on the food grants provided by the United Nations in Gaza. But what is more dangerous in the report is its fear that the fishing industry will disappear if the Israeli restrictions imposed on it continue.
Participant 2: When we go out, after six kilometers the shooting starts and sends us back. That is what the Jews do; the shooting starts beside us.
Participant 1: Not beside us — on the hasakas. They burned the hasakas with people on them, injured people on board the hasakas, and young men were martyred.
Participant 2: And my brother’s hand was severed.
Participant 1: And your brother’s hand was severed. Yes, say that people get hit, the felucca gets burned, the hasakas get burned. They shoot at us, spray us with water, abuse us, arrest us, make us get down in the middle of the bitter cold for an hour and a half, two hours, three, leaving us in the freezing cold while we are in darkness, not wearing clothes, not wearing anything.
Hassan Hijazi: Despite the efforts of solidarity activists to save the stricken fishing sector, as a result of losses estimated by March 2008 at 27 million US dollars, Israeli practices and the shortage of the fuel quantities needed for fishing trips not only aggravated the fishermen’s economic problem, but also upset the food balance of the Strip’s residents, which required finding alternative projects.
Hassan Azzam: The fish farming project is a project that is, today, newly introduced in the Gaza Strip, and the government was compelled to launch this project in order to make up for the shortfall in the quantities of fish caught. According to the statistic that I mentioned, of course there is a large gap between need and the quantity caught from the sea. Accordingly, this required the implementation of projects whose aim is to provide part of the need, or part of the gap in the fish quantities lacking for the population, in addition to creating sources of work, and also as projects from which the country benefits. The siege threatens the fish farming projects, in addition to all the projects that are established in this country. The reason for this threat is the prevention of basic materials from entering the Gaza Strip. As an example, this project before you was supposed to consist of 16 ponds producing fingerlings that would be distributed to investors and farmers so that they could supply their projects with these fingerlings. Of course, today you find before you only four ponds, and the rest of the ponds were supposed to have been established a long time ago, but the occupation’s procedures and the siege prevented this. There are also many projects that were destroyed by the occupation deliberately.
Hassan Hijazi: Thus death cast anchor on the shores of Gaza, just as it settled on its land, which buried about 3,500 industrial and craft establishments that stopped production because of the closure of the crossings and the prevention of the entry of imported raw materials on which industry in Gaza depends completely.
Participant 3: This is footage of these factories, and this is considered as a kind of embodiment of the state of the grave, the state of...
Participant 4: During this period of this severe siege, all our assets turned into piles of iron, and our workers turned into unemployed workers.
Samih al-Haddad / Factory Director: We supplied active cables to municipalities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, such as the Jerusalem Electricity Company, the Hebron Electricity Company, Nablus, the Gaza Electricity Company, and the Energy Authority. We were working at a very large production capacity; perhaps we covered around 40% of the local market. We decided to close the factory because raw materials stopped entering the country, as I told you, about a year ago. So we continued working partially for four months, and after that there was no raw material stock left at all.
Omar Shaban: There are four thousand industrial units in all fields — in agriculture, industry, and services. About 90% of the Palestinian private sector in the Gaza Strip depends on imports from Israel. Israel’s prevention of the entry of any raw materials or any intermediate materials brought 95% of these units to a halt. Only 5% of these factories remained, those that depend on internal resources, and they are not operating at high rates.
Hassan Hijazi: Al-Haddad estimates the loss of his factory at more than two and a half million dollars, while economic bodies estimate the monthly losses of the industrial sectors in Gaza at 15 million dollars since the tightening of the siege in June 2007. But what the reality of industry has become under this closure foretells catastrophic effects that will also strike the future even after the severity of the closure is eased.
Samih al-Haddad: You saw that the factory has all turned into rusted iron. Afterward, when you want to come and operate it, I am sure the issue of maintenance will cost you a great deal to restore your equipment and machines so they can work again as before.
Omar Shaban: What we are witnessing now in terms of siege is a siege against the future, not against the present. There are dozens of businessmen who decided to abstain from work as a private sector and began looking for a job, or began relying on relief. If this siege were resolved, we would need many long years to convince them to return to their businesses. There are dozens of businessmen who got rid of machinery and production vehicles.
Samih al-Haddad: We at al-Haddad Company have 63 workers and employees with us. Forty of them are sitting idle, and these have been harmed and their living conditions are extremely bad. These workers who have turned into unemployed workers — I visit many of them and see them and see their situation. Their situation is very bad.
Abu Ahmad al-Burno / Factory worker: When I was informed by the company that, “Uncle, due to the lack of raw materials and goods, we are sorry, but we are forced to stop work,” the news had a strong impact on the workers. The worker thinks, how is he going to live? Before, he was barely, with extreme difficulty, managing to get by. Today, when he stops working and there is no salary at all, what is he supposed to do? Life has many demands.
Omar Shaaban: The average rise in prices, especially in food commodities, reached threefold, that is, 300%, amid a tremendous decline in incomes. Average incomes in the Gaza Strip do not exceed six hundred dollars per person annually, which is a level of extreme poverty globally. Consequently, this accumulation led to the creation of the phenomenon of poverty in the Gaza Strip for another fundamental reason: two-thirds of the population of the Gaza Strip are refugees who have historically depended on UNRWA.
Hassan Hijazi: The high poverty rates increased the humanitarian burden placed on UNRWA, as a UN statistic indicated that eight families out of every ten live below the poverty line of $594 per month. This added more people to the list of beneficiaries of aid from international organizations, which in August 2008 was estimated at 1.2 million people out of a population of about 1.5 million in the Strip.
John Ging / Director of Operations of the Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip: We are engaged in a major battle to confront the needs of the Strip. Many people need assistance amid the deterioration of the economic conditions. This makes us try to raise more money to provide to those in need, but unfortunately we are not raising enough money to meet the growing needs, which leads to the worsening of people’s suffering here.
Participant 5: And borrowing, naturally—the grocery store opens a line of credit, and excuse me, the vegetable seller opens a line of credit, and the stationery shop opens a line of credit. Our lives have become mostly debt upon debt. Even though we are trying and striving, the debts have increased beyond what is reasonable. We have, I mean, a kind of solidarity; as much as possible there is assistance among us. My brother, for example, if things become easier for him today, he helps me; if things become easier for me, I help him. Naturally, most families in the Gaza Strip live according to this pattern. Everyone helps everyone. Were it not for the assistance among them, things would be extremely difficult.
John Ging: This situation does not create suffering and misery only on the material level; it destroys people psychologically. What does the future hold for them if things are getting worse day after day and there is no condemnation from the world? Everyone knows how bad the situation is, and everyone knows how people are suffering, yet the situation remains at the same level of badness. In April 2008, we were forced to close the fuel station for our buses because it had run out of fuel. So, once again, these are just examples of the difficulties humanitarian institutions face while carrying out their work here.
## The Use of Military Force and the Worsening Health Crisis
Hassan Hijazi: The effects of the Israeli restrictions imposed on the entry of fuel derivatives went beyond the 650,000 people receiving UNRWA assistance to include all the residents of Gaza. The Strip entered periods of paralysis, the first of which was in October 2007, when Israel began limiting fuel supplies. This was reflected in various aspects, including the health sector, where this hospital was unable to prepare meals for its patients, forcing its administration to use primitive methods.
Dr. Ramadan / al-Quds Hospital - Gaza: By God, we have been cooking ever since the gas crisis in the Gaza Strip occurred, so we were forced to cook over wood because we have patients, and it is not suitable to buy them special food from private restaurants, because we have diabetic patients and patients with hypertension, so it is not suitable for us to bring them food from outside. Thank God, we endure a bit ourselves so that we can provide some relief for the patients we have in the hospital, that is all.
Hassan Hijazi: Israel continued to use the fuel card to increase the humanitarian suffering of the residents of Gaza and to tighten the siege on them, and it did not hesitate to halt the supply of industrial diesel to the Strip’s only power plant, as happened in January 2008. This plunged large parts of the Strip into darkness, and the recurrence of this constitutes a nightmare for Gazans and their medical institutions in particular.
Hassan Khalaf / Director General of al-Shifa Hospital - Gaza: The worst and truly terrifying scenario is for the electricity to be cut off and for the generators to be unable to supply the hospital with electricity. There are categories of patients who would die within less than half an hour. These categories, or the category of intensive care patients, whether in general intensive care or cardiac intensive care. We have a nursery with thirty beds for premature infants who depend entirely on electrical equipment, on receiving medications, and on ventilators. We also have ten operating rooms, and certainly they operate around the clock, 24 hours a day, in addition to kidney patients, patients who undergo dialysis three times a week. They cannot live more than a week without dialysis. Therefore, no fewer than seventy patients would die within half an hour, and two hundred kidney patients would die within a week, in addition to other patients whose conditions are critical or whose injuries are severe.
Hassan Hijazi: A quick tour of the largest hospitals in the Strip reveals the extent of the suffering of their staff in providing the necessary medical care to the residents of the most densely populated area in the world.
Hassan Khalaf: There has been a major impact on the volume of medicines reaching us. When we speak about medicine, we are talking about the list of essential medicines that was specified by the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the Red Cross, and it consists of 450 items. The shortage of medicines fluctuated according to the pressure and the closure of the crossings. At some times, the number of medicines for which our stock was zero reached 110 medicines. This rises and falls depending on the handling through international organizations and their ability to influence the Israelis to open the crossings and allow the entry of certain items. But certainly this matter harms us and affects broad categories of our patients, and sometimes we are forced into a bad situation because of the siege and because of the shortage of medicines.
Bassem Naim / Minister of Health in the dismissed government: Therefore, the suffering is severe because we cannot plan for the next day, and we cannot guarantee that the medicine with which we began treatment for one of the patients will allow us to complete all the required doses of treatment. There are tens of thousands of patients who need treatment plans for months, especially cancer pat…
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