EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'
- How the US Turned Three Pacifists into Violent Terrorists
- Cornel West: Obama 'Is a War Criminal'
- In 'March Toward Disaster,' World Hits 400 PPM Milestone
- Revealed: How US State Department 'Twists Arms' on Monsanto's Behalf
Popular content
Today's Top News
Little Gauze, Gas in Gaza as Israel Tightens Closure on Palestinians
In the Gaza Strip, Palestine, the conflict between Israel, which controls the borders and since June has been closing them, and the Palestinians, who inhabit the small strip of land along the Mediterranean, is affecting the civilian population in a way that clearly violates international law.
For instance, Dr. Ahmed Abou Nekira, director of the public Al Najar Hospital in Rafah on the Egyptian border, told me recently that his hospital needs a 19,000-liter reserve supply of gasoline, especially with the frequent fuel and electricity cutoffs, but the current stock is only 1,500 liters. The hospital cannot provide milk for its child patients; parents bring it if they can find and afford it in the Gaza market.
As I was leaving the hospital, a woman approached me who clearly needed something; but since I don't understand Arabic it was only on a later visit to her home with my translator that I learned she could not find the needed medications for her asthmatic and epileptic twelve-year-old son.
An anesthesiologist, Dr. Ahmed works occasionally in private hospitals, where he is paid fifty shekels ($13.) for assisting at an operation.
I visited the home of 68-year-old Abou Ahmed, whose diabetes has taken its toll on his legs and eyes. He cannot find his required insulin.
Some gauze is available, but Gaza is forced to do without many essential medicines and supplies. In a Nov. 29 "Emergency Appeal for Medical Supplies for Gaza," the Israeli chapter of Physicians for Human Rights stated: "The prolonged siege imposed by the Israeli government on Gaza, the closing of its borders, the tightening of policies regarding permission to exit Gaza for medical purposes, and the severe shortage of medications and other medical supplies all severely damage the Palestinian health system and endanger the lives and health of thousands of Palestinian patients."
The supply of gasoline has been sharply reduced: during one week in December there was no gas in Gaza's stations. Many people told me about the lack of building materials caused by the Israeli border policy, a deficiency which results in severe unemployment among construction workers. Spare parts and paint for cars are also in short supply. And since almost everything is scarce, prices are escalating, thus putting many items which can be found out of economic reach for many people.
Why is Israel pinching the arteries to Gaza? The Hamas party won legitimate Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 but, since it does not recognize Israel (at least with Jerusalem's current policies) and will not unilaterally renounce the use of force in its struggle, has not been accepted by the international community, by the surrounding state of Israel, or by the Palestinian Authority under the Fatah party. In June 2007 Hamas seized power in Gaza by force, which provoked a strong reaction by Israel: tightening the border closure and stepping up military incursions into Gaza.
According to Israel, these measures are intended to prevent militants in Gaza from firing rockets into nearby Israeli towns like Siderot. During 2007, such weapons took the lives of two Israeli residents, according to B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories; in addition, five other civilians and six Israeli security personnel were killed by hostile action. In a press release of Dec. 31, B'Tselem noted: "In 2007 Israeli security forces killed 373 Palestinians (290 in Gaza, 83 in the West Bank), 53 among them minors.... About 35 percent of those killed were civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities when killed...."
The concerns of Israelis for security are real and must be resolved. At the same time, the injustices suffered by the Palestinians, in Gaza and the West Bank, also cry out for remedy: the constant takeovers of their land by Israeli settlers, with government financial backing and military force for protection; a system of restricted Israeli-only roads and special military zones which carve up Palestinian territory; hundreds of Israeli checkpoints, which humiliate Palestinians even when they are just going from one place to another within the (Palestinian) West Bank; the holding of over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, subject only to military law. According to international law, no nation can take security measures which result in serious harm to a civilian population, as Israel is taking in cutting off access and supplies to Gaza. Only a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will provide true security and peace for Israelis and a decent and dignified future for Palestinians.
Joseph E. Mulligan lives in Nicaragua. He worked for six weeks as a member of the Michigan Peace Team in Palestine.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
19 Comments so far
Show AllIn NYT Israeli Spokesmen for some Interior Dept of Murdering Palestinians said " there is no problem for food or other in Gaza, none"
You might think that in some manner the Israelis would behave humanely, no only Zionists hating each Palestinian for just being. They stole that land from the Palestinians during the mass exodus of Jews during WWII and kept coming then the Six Friggin Day War.
Amazaing the Zionists have a lock on Genocide and the comeback witty repartee use of Anti-Semitic yet they would sooner shoot their Mother than refer to a Palestinian AS A Palestinian, Arab only along with no food, water, meds, gas, electric or borders to be left to F@@K Alone!!
It seems that if the Palestinians stopped firing rockets into southern Israel, then Israel would reciprocate by removing at least some of the fuel blockages (certainly the most immediate fuel blockage to the Gaza power plant which was instituted as a response to said rocket fire and which is most likely the immediate subject of this article). Whatever the beliefs about Israel's view of the Palestinians, there are no fuel shortages in the West Bank; which seems to support the conclusion that no rockets equals no fuel shortage.
Why didn't the article (or any of the previous comments) explicitly mention this option?
Perhaps Stephen the Harpy removed someone from the Torture Watch List a bit too soon.
No oil and gas for Gaza but oil and gas from Iraq for Israel:
25/08/2003
Haaretz
U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan
By Amiram Cohen
The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem. Advertisement
The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a "bonus" the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.
The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.
The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.
National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan's consent and that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its territory. The minister noted, however, that "due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel."
Sources in Jerusalem confirmed yesterday that the Americans are looking into the possibility of laying a new pipeline via Jordan and Israel. (There is also a pipeline running via Syria that has not been used in some three decades.)
Iraqi oil is now being transported via Turkey to a small Mediterranean port near the Syrian border. The transit fee collected by Turkey is an important source of revenue for the country. This line has been damaged by sabotage twice in recent weeks and is presently out of service.
In response to rumors about the possible Kirkuk-Mosul-Haifa pipeline, Turkey has warned Israel that it would regard this development as a serious blow to Turkish-Israeli relations.
Sources in Jerusalem suggest that the American hints about the alternative pipeline are part of an attempt to apply pressure on Turkey.
Iraq is one of the world's largest oil producers, with the potential of reaching about 2.5 million barrels a day. Oil exports were halted after the Gulf War in 1991 and then were allowed again on a limited basis (1.5 million barrels per day) to finance the import of food and medicines. Iraq is currently exporting several hundred thousand barrels of oil per day.
During his visit to Washington in about two weeks, Paritzky also plans to discuss the possibility of U.S. and international assistance for joint Israeli-Palestinian projects in the areas of energy and infrastructure, natural gas, desalination and electricity.
"The concerns of Israelis for security are real and must be resolved. At the same time, the injustices suffered by the Palestinians, in Gaza and the West Bank, also cry out for remedy"
Palestinians can never get a direct hearing in the US; in order to gain any sympathy, authors have to address Isreali's "real security concerns" -- and no matter the amount of state terrorism which the Isreali regime has always practiced but which is filtered out in the US, the powerless Palestinians are the ones who have to give the jackboots the sense of security. So it was that the stormtroopers and the orators spoke about the dangers to German security from Jews.
The Palestinians are the just another stain on the IRON HEEL of the empire that America now controls. They will join the Native America Indians as a notch on America's gun belt.
Hoa binh
How about we all stand up to Big Oil/Gas by first shutting down the phoney "War on Drugs" and legalizing Cannabis cultivation? From there we can produce more than enough hemp oil for fuel and beat the FUCK out of Big Oil/Gas/Coal and bankrupt those motherfuckers. This will pave the way for making it harder for the US to fund the arms industries and zionists all the way. It's not that hard to do.
As the 51st US State, Israel is only doing our nasty work for us in Palestine and Gaza. We preach Democracy, and when the people of Palestine practice it, we are upset because they did not do it our way. Only Israel and the US are totally exempt from the UN resolutions and the Geneva Conventions, not to mention the Nuremburg agreements. It is a shame, and I am truly ashamed to be a US citizen during this awful time.
Do you mean other than namoses?
Don't we embargo countries that menace our national security?
Email the Israeli embassy and protest the barbaric treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza:
info@israelemb.org
Children seeing by candlight
No water, because no fuel for the pumps
Tanks and Attack Helicopters outside
Penned in by barbed wire
Gaza is a DEATH CAMP
And ISRAEL is the New NAZI Extermination Machine.
PS namoses, maybe we just don't understand what it means to be God's Chosen People. Or Master Race. Sounds the same to me....and the result is too: it makes it easy to feed people to the ovens or put them in a Death Camp like Gaza
Google Earth that death pit, then scan the land right next to it that the scum stole from the Palestinians.
This Israeli action is unlawful, inhumane and counterproductive. It will increase and not decrease violence, and the US's uncritical and unconditional support of Israeli atrocities is wrong. The violence by Palestinian radicals is also wrong, of course, but doesn't justify massive collective punishment.
On a different note, I'd like to point out that anesthesiologists don't just "assist" at operations. It is they who monitor and maintain the patient's vital functions including respiration, cardiovascular function and fluid balance. The patient's life is literally in their hands, and anesthetic mishaps are deadlier than surgical ones, which can often be corrected later. They are, in many ways, the unsung heroes of modern surgery.
"Why didn't the article (or any of the previous comments) explicitly mention this option?"
Go suck on one of the clusterbombs that your boyfriends dropped on Lebanon, Eva Braun.
Dichterfreund - You equated me to a Nazi's mistress, and quoted the last line of my post, so I guess that I can safely assume you actually read it.
What I don't understand is why you resorted to a base ad-hominem attack on me ("go suck one of the clusterbombs ... Eva Braun") instead of answering my question or presenting a counter-point.
Based on your brash comment, I doubt that you respect this site (commondreams) as much as most of it's readers, and I, do.
A shame.
Dichterfreund, Most of us here are on the same boat with you when it comes to the frustrations we feel about what is happening in occupied Palestine. I'd have LMAO at the last statement of your comment had it not been about such a tragic issue.
I sincerely doubt AnotherPOV thinks/believes the blockades and the collective punishement dished out to the innocent people of Gaza is about the homemade rockets they occationally fire at the Settlers.
The clasic divide and conquer (the age old tool of the oppressor) going on in Palestine is evident even to my untrained eye. Evidently, the zionist monsters have promised to screw the people of the West Bank, softly with a chain saw in order to break the will of the Gazans.
The ruthlessness of the Zionists toward the people whose land they stole is mind boggling and worthy of Nazi Germany. It hurts like hell to realize my tax money is facilitating such a horror.
Dichterfreund: Here is why the Katyusha rocket threat is not real. With satellites, drones, planes, helicopters, jets, UAV's and an unlimited military budget the Luftwaffe knows in real time if the Motherland is fired upon and can instantly incinerate that quadrant of earth from which it was fired.
Could Tijuana threaten San Diego w/ the USAF overhead? Absolutely ludicrous.
However the constant shrill whining, crying, and gnashing of teeth by the ZioNazi's distracts those who want to be distracted from the daily carnage, bodyparts of children and blood running in the streets that is GazaDauchau.
Now I do respect CD. Any factual response?
mikepeters. besttoallthreaderss
Dichterfeund, pardon, question for AnotherPOV, merci.
As a matter of fact AnotherPOV, an israeli Tecsar satellite, sometimes referred to as the Polaris, which can see through clouds was launched for israel by India today, Monday. The IDF's began recieving the signals 80 minutes later. realtime.