It is easier to enter a maximum-security prison than it is to enter the strip of land — 45km long and maybe 8km wide — that is home to Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians. Surrounded by a forbidding wall, watchtowers and deadly buffer zones, I entered with a hard-to-obtain visa at the Erez crossing — iron gates, an interrogation by bored young immigration officers and scanners. On the other side is a kilometer-long caged walkway that leads into this part of Palestine, trapped between Israel, Egypt, the Mediterranean and the general indifference of the international community.
The view walking — in sweltering heat — through that long cage is apocalyptic. Small groups of Palestinians smash up the remains of Gaza’s bombed industrial infrastructure — the concrete blocks that litter the sandy landscape. They pummel the blocks for gravel and the steel bars inside. The result of their labor is hauled away in carts pulled by mangy horses or donkeys. This is much of what passes for industry in Gaza.
The world periodically wakes up to the horrors of life in Gaza, and then goes back to watching the World Cup or planning summer holidays. We were awakened, for example, by the military assault of December 2008 and January last year, when more than 1,300 Palestinians (including more than 300 children) and 13 Israelis died. We noticed the long-running horror story again when the Israeli Defense Forces attacked a Turkish flotilla, carrying relief supplies, in May, with nine civilian fatalities.
Those who argue that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza should not compare the situation with Ethiopia or Sudan in the middle of a drought or a war. Conditions in Gaza are harsh and the population does suffer. Israel’s government has denied that people are starving and has relaxed its import restriction regime. However, the siege was not intended to starve Gazans; as Dov Weissglass, a former aide to former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, famously observed, the aim was “to put the Palestinians on a diet.”
The intention was collective punishment, imposed partly in response to Hamas’s political control of Gaza. Hamas won the 2006 elections in the whole of occupied Palestine and formed a national unity government with Fatah. The US, Israel and much of the international community then torpedoed that arrangement. It was all very well having elections — until the wrong side won.
With the changes in the import controls on Gaza — there is now a list of what cannot be taken in, rather than of what can — more goods should arrive. However, the ability to buy the jam, muesli, balsamic vinegar and pots of lemon curd that I saw in an up-market Gazan supermarket will not do much for ordinary people, 80 percent of whom depend on emergency food rations.
Moreover, ordinary Gazans cannot rebuild their homes and schools because building materials remain proscribed or are dribbled in only for UN projects. No raw materials, which would allow the revival of Gaza’s commerce and industry, are permitted.
This is a central part of Israel’s policy, in flat defiance of international law and customary norms of civilized behavior. Israel is applying a “smarter” siege, which will keep Palestinians here isolated, poor and aid-dependent, but not starving.
When I was in Gaza before the second Intifada, there were many examples of entrepreneurial activity — factories and farms. Most of that has been stamped out. As the assault on Gaza ended last year, Israeli military bulldozers flattened factories. The imposition of a border zone has gobbled up 29 percent of the strip’s agricultural land.
However, Israel and Egypt — partners in the siege — turn a blind eye most of the time to tunnels (perhaps as many as a thousand) that snake under the Egyptian border at Rafah and bring in black-market goods, which Hamas then taxes. Decent would-be Palestinian businessmen (the potential backbone of a middle class) are destroyed. Racketeers flourish. Kafkaesque politics produces “Alice in Wonderland” economics.
You see some of the humanitarian problems stemming from the siege most clearly when visiting hospitals, as I did with the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, of which I am president. Life-saving drugs are in short supply, and equipment often does not work because of power cuts or the absence of spare parts. Seriously ill patients require permission to be treated in West Bank hospitals, and some are reportedly pressed to collaborate with Israel’s security services in return for being allowed out. Doctors and students can leave Gaza only rarely to attend conferences or universities abroad.
I strongly opposed the international call a year ago to boycott Israel’s universities. However, the Gaza blockade means that Israel boycotts Palestinian academic life. It is time that Israel took its boot off Gaza’s windpipe.
Some in Israel, such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, seem to want to cut off Gaza completely from the West Bank, in contravention of the Oslo accords (and the prospect of a two-state solution), and push it in the direction of Egypt. However, Gaza remains an integral part of Palestine — and a growing part. With its population increasing at 3.5 percent a year, the number of Gazans will double in about 15 years (the same timeframe in which the WHO estimates that Gaza will run out of water for its population).
What type of world will the children you see in such prodigious numbers in Gaza inherit? Will collective punishment make them moderate, law-abiding helots? History is not on the side of this immorality.
I want to see Israel, a free, democratic society, live up to its original values and be at peace with its neighbors. It will not achieve this through its appalling Gaza policy. The world — starting with the US administration and the EU — should tell that to Israel. But don’t hold your breath.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, is chancellor of the University of Oxford.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), former chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China and leader of the “blue fighters,” recently announced that he had canned his trip to east Africa, and he would stay in Taiwan for the recall vote on Saturday. He added that he hoped “his friends in the blue camp would follow his lead.” His statement is quite interesting for a few reasons. Jaw had been criticized following media reports that he would be traveling in east Africa during the recall vote. While he decided to stay in Taiwan after drawing a lot of flak, his hesitation says it all: If
When Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) first suggested a mass recall of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators, the Taipei Times called the idea “not only absurd, but also deeply undemocratic” (“Lai’s speech and legislative chaos,” Jan. 6, page 8). In a subsequent editorial (“Recall chaos plays into KMT hands,” Jan. 9, page 8), the paper wrote that his suggestion was not a solution, and that if it failed, it would exacerbate the enmity between the parties and lead to a cascade of revenge recalls. The danger came from having the DPP orchestrate a mass recall. As it transpired,
Elbridge Colby, America’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is the most influential voice on defense strategy in the Second Trump Administration. For insight into his thinking, one could do no better than read his thoughts on the defense of Taiwan which he gathered in a book he wrote in 2021. The Strategy of Denial, is his contemplation of China’s rising hegemony in Asia and on how to deter China from invading Taiwan. Allowing China to absorb Taiwan, he wrote, would open the entire Indo-Pacific region to Chinese preeminence and result in a power transition that would place America’s prosperity
All 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安), formerly of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), survived recall elections against them on Saturday, in a massive loss to the unprecedented mass recall movement, as well as to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that backed it. The outcome has surprised many, as most analysts expected that at least a few legislators would be ousted. Over the past few months, dedicated and passionate civic groups gathered more than 1 million signatures to recall KMT lawmakers, an extraordinary achievement that many believed would be enough to remove at
RSS