Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · Sama News Agency · 2010
Omar Shaban rebuts the Israeli government's claim, promoted to visiting foreign journalists through images of full shops and fine restaurants, that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza after three years of blockade. He argues that the claim reduces the crisis to the availability of food and ignores human security in its food, civil and political, economic, cultural, health and environmental dimensions. He cites indicators: Israel admits about a hundred types of goods against more than 4,000 the Strip needed before the closure, 90% of some 4,000 factories and workshops have stopped, two-thirds of Gazans live below the poverty line and 80% depend on aid, and 75% of the groundwater is unfit to drink.
Omar Shaban, June 2010: full shelves do not disprove Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, which is a denial of human security, not only of food.
The Israeli government tries from time to time to present different narratives and statements to justify its blockade of the Gaza Strip, imposed for the past three years. At one point it says it is punishment for Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, and at another it claims it is to prevent the entry of weapons or products that could be used in manufacturing weapons. After the falsehood of these narratives was exposed, the Israeli government promoted in recent weeks a new narrative claiming that there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Rather, it says that huge quantities and diverse types of food are available in the Gaza Strip, adding that Gaza has luxury restaurants and hotels serving delicious and refined meals to their customers. The Israeli Press Office called on all journalists seeking permits to visit the Gaza Strip to go to these places to verify the truth of the Israeli narrative, which was supported by a video clip showing one of Gaza’s restaurants serving a delicious meal to its customers. This prompted dozens, if not hundreds, of foreign journalists and correspondents to come to the Strip, where most of their attention was focused on examining the validity of the Israeli narrative, while it was clear that some of them had come to the Gaza Strip already fully convinced by the Israeli narrative, focusing their attention on searching for evidence confirming it without making any significant effort to examine the other aspects of the crisis. Some of them would maliciously ask, “How can one speak of a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip while retail shops and supermarkets are full of all manner of delicacies—not only food, but also luxury items such as chocolate and juices of all kinds?”
In following the reports these newspapers later published, I became certain that many of them lacked realism and honesty in conveying reality, as these reports did not address the multiple dimensions of the term “humanitarian crisis” in the Gaza Strip. By claiming that “there is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip,” the Israeli government aims to say:
• The Gaza Strip is not under siege, or that its siege is merely symbolic. This completely contradicts reality, for there has been a continuous Israeli blockade of the Strip for the past three years, the harshest blockade in history. It is a blockade that prevents the entry and exit of goods, people, ideas, books, notebooks, patients, the elderly, cash, computers, footballs, and musical instruments... and the list goes on. On the other hand, it is an acknowledgment by the Israeli government of the tunnel economy that provides most of the goods present in the Gaza Strip market. This completely refutes Israeli claims that it is fighting the tunnels. Rather, it confirms that the Israeli government has an interest in the prosperity of tunnel trade for many reasons, including easing the intensity of international pressure on it.
• The Israeli government’s claim that there is no humanitarian crisis because the shelves of retail shops and supermarkets in the Strip are full of all manner of desirable goods is a minimization of the situation, restricting the concept of crisis to the non-availability of food. When the Israeli government claims that the Gaza Strip is not suffering from a “humanitarian crisis,” it is as though it is saying the opposite—that the residents of the Gaza Strip enjoy “human security,” which is the term used when there is no humanitarian crisis. Thus, a state of “humanitarian crisis” is realized by the absence of one of the elements of human security, the term that expresses the opposite condition. The Israeli government’s cleverness in using vocabulary prevented it from using the affirmative term “human security,” preferring instead the negative term “there is no humanitarian crisis,” in an attempt to mislead our minds and prevent them from venturing beyond the limits of the term.
To clarify the matter, human security includes many elements, among them:
• Food security, which is achieved through three conditions:
a) The availability of food in reasonable quantities.
b) The ability to access it, possessing the purchasing power and physical ability to obtain it.
c) The quality of food in terms of diversity, quality, and safety, so that it includes everything the body needs.
• Civil and political security, meaning a sense of personal security and the exercise of political and civil rights.
• Economic security, meaning the availability of job opportunities, the protection of property, and the benefit from aid programs.
• Cultural security, meaning the ability and freedom to protect and practice national culture and other cultures.
• Health and environmental security, meaning living in a clean environment now and in the future. Comparing reality with the components of human security through the following indicators:
• The goods available in the Gaza Strip market come from unknown sources and without oversight of quality levels, posing a threat to public health. Israel allows the entry of around one hundred items, whereas the Gaza Strip needed more than 4,000 items before the closure.
• Israel prevents the entry of all inputs necessary for industry, causing production sectors to grind to a halt and depriving hundreds of thousands of job opportunities. After the blockade, reconstruction projects that had been under implementation stopped; their value at the time was estimated at two hundred million dollars. Likewise, the textile and garment sector, which employed 35,000 workers before the closure, came to a halt. Ninety percent of the factories and workshops that had been operating before the closure ceased functioning, and their number is estimated at 4,000 establishments.
• Two-thirds of the residents of the Gaza Strip live below the poverty line and therefore do not have access to food, and 80% of the residents of the Gaza Strip depend on relief assistance. They are therefore outside purchasing power, as they do not possess enough money to buy. This category is not greatly concerned with how available foodstuffs are so long as they cannot buy them. What is the use of shelves full of goods without the ability to purchase? For them, they are only for looking at, pleasing the eye, and grieving the heart.
• Israel allows, by way of exception, humanitarian cases to enter Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan through the Beit Hanoun/Erez crossing, while hundreds of students have been deprived of continuing their education and hundreds of citizens have been deprived of joining their workplaces abroad because they were unable to travel.
Meanwhile, the Rafah crossing opens at a rate of 5 days every two months, causing severe congestion and suffering for those who are able to travel, while tens of thousands remained unable to exercise this right.
• The residents of the Gaza Strip live in a state of constant anxiety and intense fear because of ongoing Israeli threats to launch a new war on the Gaza Strip, or because of repeated incursions into the border areas and occasional random shelling of different areas of the Strip.
• Studies confirm that 75% of the groundwater reserves in the Gaza Strip are unfit for drinking, and that the water share allocated per citizen in the Gaza Strip is below the minimum set by the World Health Organization, in addition to the serious threat to public health resulting from the high nitrate levels in it.
• The blockade has prevented the entry of newspapers, books, new publications, as well as musical instruments and other recreational tools, which are indispensable sources for cultural, scientific, and civilizational development and for strengthening the sense of personhood and humanity. This is but a drop in the ocean in refuting the Israeli narrative that claims there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
Topic: Humanitarian Crisis — blockade · human security · Israeli narrative · poverty — Text © Sama News Agency — archived here with attribution to the source. — Original source