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TechnoratiIsrael Blocks Pasta Shipment to Gaza, and Tensions Boil
JERUSALEM - For more than seven weeks, the international aid group Mercy Corps has been trying to send 90 tons of macaroni to the isolated Gaza Strip as part of a global campaign to help the 1.4 million Palestinians there rebuild their lives after Israel's recent devastating 22-day military operation.
![[he isolated Gaza Strip as part of a global campaign to help the 1.4 million Palestinians there rebuild their lives after Israel's recent devastating 22-day military operation. Israel, which controls most of what goes into and out of Gaza, has said no repeatedly.(McClatchy Newspapers photo)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/pasta-2.jpg "pasta-2.jpg")
Israel, which controls most of what goes into and out of Gaza, has said no repeatedly.
At first, Israeli officials said that they wanted to make sure that the macaroni wasn't destined for a Hamas charity. Then they said macaroni was banned because they didn't consider it an essential food item.
On Wednesday, days after American lawmakers raised pointed questions about the macaroni ban, Israeli authorities said that they were preparing to give the pasta a green light.
For the international aid community, the dispute is emblematic of the red tape and political maneuvering that have stymied efforts to rebuild Gaza.
"We're at the end of our rope," said David Holdridge, the head of Middle East emergency relief efforts for Mercy Corps. "This is just ridiculous. It's absolutely absurd."
The Israeli restrictions are expected to be a central issue in the coming days when George Mitchell, President Barack Obama's new Middle East special envoy, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrive in the region for discussions about how to help Gaza without strengthening Hamas, its hard-line Islamist ruler.
"Aid should never be used as a political weapon," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Wednesday in Washington. "We'll try to push to get into Gaza as many supplies as possible."
The macaroni standoff drew the attention of U.S. lawmakers who made a rare trip last week to the Gaza Strip.
"Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington state Democrat who joined Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison in visiting Gaza, reportedly said after hearing about the aid restrictions.
Along with macaroni, Israel has prevented aid groups that are helping Gaza from sending in everything from paper and crayons to tomato paste and lentils.
As international donors prepare to meet next week in Egypt to discuss a massive, coordinated global rebuilding initiative, Israel is making it clear that it will block any projects that could help Hamas.
Israeli objections are expected to prevent Gaza's residents from reconstructing all the major government buildings that Israeli strikes destroyed, including the Palestinian Authority Gaza City parliament building, the presidential compound on the Mediterranean coast and police stations.
"We want to make sure that reconstruction for the people of Gaza is not reconstruction for the Hamas regime," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Ever since Hamas seized military control of Gaza in 2007 - by ousting forces loyal to pragmatic Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - after it swept parliamentary elections the year before, Israel has effectively frozen most international development work by preventing most building materials from getting into Gaza.
Israel's latest military campaign in Gaza caused an estimated $2 billion in damage. Palestinian Authority officials estimate that 4,000 homes were destroyed and another 17,000 were damaged.
At the upcoming donor conference, the major players are expected to confront the difficult question of how to rebuild Gaza while sidelining Hamas.
Abbas' allies are floating a plan to channel money directly to the thousands of Gazans who lost their homes. So long as Hamas and Abbas remain at odds, Gaza's rulers are likely to resist any rebuilding plans that they see as undermining their power.
Egypt is trying to broker a new round of talks to reunite Abbas and Hamas, but there are few signs that the two sides are prepared to set aside their differences quickly and reconcile. Also, so long as Hamas refuses to renounce its stated goal of destroying Israel, it's likely to continue to face international isolation.
Beyond rebuilding Gazan homes, it isn't clear what will be done to reconstruct the dozens of factories and businesses that Israeli strikes destroyed.
Israel also is concerned that Hamas will seize aid coming into Gaza, as the group did earlier this month, when it took thousands of blankets and hundreds of food packages from a United Nations warehouse in Gaza.
Hamas returned the goods after the United Nations refugee agency suspended deliveries of aid in Gaza, but the incident remains a concern for the United Nations and aid groups who are working there.
Each day, Israeli and United Nations officials sit down together in an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, to debate what the most important things are to let into Gaza: tents for the thousands of Palestinians who don't have homes now or glass to replace the windows that the Israeli attacks shattered? Should shoes take priority over first aid kits? Is it more important to bring in diapers or shovels?
"We're at the stage now where, for all of us in the humanitarian aid community, this is an unacceptable process," said Charles Clayton, the head of the Association of International Development Agencies, an umbrella organization that represents 75 groups. "It's not the details, it's the entire process which is unacceptable."
39 Comments so far
Show AllSenator Kerry spoke to Ehud Barak after hearing this and per Haaretz , pasta is now allowed in. The fact that it was held up for weeks is abysmal. It does show the importance of high level US visits to Gaza. (The article indicated there might be a change - this article is more explicit that there has been a change.)
The fact that Haaretz printed this unflattering article - 3 times in 2 paragraph referring to "senior" - shows a willingness to criticize the government that is unlikely to exist in most middle eastern countries' news papers. It also shows a disgust with the original policy.
"However, an incident occurred last week at a crossing into the Gaza Strip that gave a very different impression to a senior observer. When Senator John Kerry visited the Strip, he learned that many trucks loaded with pasta were not permitted in. When the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee inquired as to the reason for the delay, he was told by United Nations aid officials that "Israel does not define pasta as part of humanitarian aid - only rice shipments."
Kerry asked Barak about the logic behind this restriction, and only after the senior U.S. official's intervention did the defense minister allow the pasta into the Strip. The U.S. senator updated colleagues at the Senate and other senior officials in Washington of the details of his visit."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1066821.html
Here's what Mark Regev had to say about the pasta:
http://12seconds.tv/channel/shahidkamal/99647
I see McClatchy and its reporter Dion Nissenbaum are quite the little pro-Zionists and -U.S. imperialism, colonialism, ..., for, after all, they clearly want Mahmoud Abbas, because he bends over for the ruling elites of the West while Hamas does [not] and therefore is rejected by the West even if the majority of Palestinians [elected] Hamas for their government.
Hamas [never] said it wanted to destroy Israel, and this is not the sole lie in the article but is a big and blatant one. It's a major lie, really, for it's the warmongering, war-promoting, ... with the demonisation of Hamas and thereby the false justification of the crimes of the Israeli and U.S. governments; and due to that, the article is also pro-genocide, defender of genocide, a real participant in genocide, etcetera.
I thought McClatchy did some fine reporting over the past several years, with some of their articles anyway, but I've been learning the very contrary about the news media this year, and what's now been learned will likely remain a permanent memory for me. I wouldn't support them in any way at all, except to stop their war-mongering, etcetera and evidently because not only the U.S. Repub. Party doesn't want Hamas, but the Dem. Party also is opposed, and both are criminally instead of justifiably opposed.
Hamas makes some mistakes, but the only demons are in the Israeli and U.S. govts, along with all who support these govts. That's where you will find the real demons, fiends, ...
I'm not sure where you get your information from with statements like "Hamas [never] said it wanted to destroy Israel"....because they have said such things. I've seen Hamas leaders say as much. PBS, a few years ago, interviewed military operatives on both side, and the Hama leaders were clear. Their goal is nothing short of the destruction of the nation of Israel. They said that they will not stop until they push every last one of the Israelis into the sea and that there was no room for accomodation. The comments were unambiguous.
I agree the pasta incident seems absurd and rediculously petty and wish they would not engage in such destructive behavior. But, if you were a country about the size of a tissue box and had about 8,000 increasingly larger and more powerful missles indiscrimently lobbed on you in the past decade with no end in sight, and the entity doing so has the support of a powerful country like Iran dedicated to your destruction, you would probably do anything you felt you needed to to stop it, even at the risk of being accused of 'overreacting'....after all, a country's first obligation to itself is its own survival. I imagine many countries would not even have waited anywhere near as long to do something.
In a most bizarre turn of events, the Israeli supporters are now upset with Hillary Clinton for apparently demanding speeding up of aid shipment to Gaza:
Jewish Leaders Blast Clinton Over Israel Criticism
http://wcbstv.com/national/hillary.clinton.israel.2.945238.html
"In a swift about face from her views as New York's senator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now hammering Israel over its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza," according to this report that says it's from CBS?!!
Hillary "hammering" Israel? Come on! Give her a break!
"I am very surprised, frankly, at this statement from the United States government and from the secretary of state," said Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and member of the NYC Jewish Community Relations Council.
I guess the angry Israeli supporter is now the new angry white man!
I was going to make the same point but you beat me to it. It is ridiculous for the Zionists to hyperventilate at Ms. Clinton while they are behaving the way they are.
Come on! Where have you been? Don't you know the slightest criticism of any Zionist policy makes puts you in the same league as a Nazi war criminal?
I wonder how Israel plans on dealing with the Viva Palestina and allied convoys of aid heading to Gaza and planning to cross over into Gaza through the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza. Viva Palestina's now in Tunisia and should be in Libya within a day or at most two, and is being greatly welcomed in these countries; Morocco, Algeria, now Tunisia, and another great welcoming awaits them in Libya.
http://www.vivapalestina.org
You'll learn of the allied aid convoys through that website. There are enough articles and videos, and photos.
Evil is the word which comes to mind in regard to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Still, on the plus side, the more evil they are and the more evil their actions the sooner world opinion will bring freedom to the Palestinians.
To the Doctor and everyone else who is totally pissed off about Israel. Here's a link to a campaign to end the occupation to Prez Obama.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/641/t/2439/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26705
You can add this little snippet to your letters:
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001
I'll not have anything to do with any senator or congressman who supports or supported this international terrorist state of Israel - certainly neither campaign nor vote for them or their issue.
It's way past time for Thidwick to shed this AIPAC millstone along with his antlers.
Well how about you write the President, and who ever your pimp in congress is and let them know how you feel about your tax dollars going to support the Nazi zionists.
Israel and their number one stooge, the United States are the cancer on the world.
So Kerry & the congressmen are back in USA & still no macaroni for Gazans?
Posters above me were right about the tortured convoluted writing in the above article....do they get the donated pasta or do they have to stand in line & buy it from Israelis?
From this article it seems the Israelis changed their policy and pasta is allowed.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1066821.html
rubyinthedust
They don't have to stand in line. They can go to mykosherkitchen.com for macaroni now. Hunger not being necessary, even for an instant.
It's better to burn out
than it is to rust,
To walk along this moonlit
path without my rubyinthedust.
joe
Pan
The Nazi`s denied the jews Food to make them more compliant and weaken them,always hated them for that.
Read Mila 18
"Israel's" Starving of imprisioned Gazans has caused a generation of children whose development and physical maturing is been stunted. Starved children, getting one cold meal a day as Israeli feces is pumped into their plowed under gardens.
The Nazi's would vomit. Be sickened.
200,000 pounds of complex carbohydrates would, for a moment relieve a lot of pain and suffering that "Israel" went to a lot of trouble to create.
Palestine is lucky the world is watching.
Anyone got the imagination to wonder what "Israel" would do in a vacuum? Unfettered by a revolted world? Think Dauschau, think Auschwitz, think 4000 homes and their unarmed inhabitants bombed last month.
Do No Harm
Do Good.....,
Joe.
Don't think for a second the Israelis are not aware of that. If the Palestinians won't leave of their own accord, they want to make sure they are weakened and will not thrive and reproduce. All peoples have the potential for committing genocide, it was not just some bizarre defect of the German people. The Jews, although they would like to think otherwise, are no different.
Paul Siemering
no comparisons with other monsters are necessary- What Israel has been doing to the Palestinians is mean and nasty and sadistic. no need to enumerate all those things- i don't have all night, and we all know them too well.
but whatever may be going on in the deranged heads of Israel's leaders. the u.s. government has no excuse to aid and abet. do our fellow citizens really hate Palestinians? enough to torture and abuse and bomb them? I doubt it. our pres and our reps and our senators are not doing the will of the people when they keep sending all that money and all those weapons to Israel. It's long past time to cut them loose.
Boycott all Israeli products and encourage your congresscritters and friends that we are sick and tired of feeding this illegal and insatiable beast money, weapons and votes at the UN. Any product with the bar code beginning with 0729 is from Israelhell and not to be purchased. As an added insult to our humanity, the Israeli's just destroyed olive trees this nation helped to finance and plant near Ramallah. Here's a link to what your nation is allowing to happen:
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/LSGZ-7PEHAW?OpenDocument
These bastards should not be allowed to continue these actions and we should not support it.
When tensions boil, it is good to get baked...
The only thing that will solve the israeli-Palestinian conflict is if the Canadian Air Force flrw over every Israeli settlement, city, and squallow, Gaza, & the WB... And dropped thousands of crates of Ganja, bongs, lighters, NVC/Conflict Resolution/Consensus literature, and real historical accounts of civilians and soldiers, and munchy gift baskets of local food, from both sides to each other...
This strategy deeply appeals to me, but I wouldn't dare say so out loud for fear of destroying my prized CD comments cred.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Half the time, what I write is an attempt at humor, the other half I go on a long indignant rant that rambles off topic...
I am not too worried about my CD cred... How many people even read these comments?
Divestment campaign is the only method that might work.
We send to Israel $10,000,000 every day. All we have to do is stop that
blackmail money and Israel will come to terms quick. Mitchell will accomplish
nothing, AIPAC is to strong.
This is genocide. Israel has forfeited the right to exist as a state, just as Nazi Germany did. The world had better not wait to resolve this or we will end up with world war 3, and the few people left will be fighting it out with sticks and stones.
Folks...this is what genocide looks like. Zionism is the mirror image of nazism and we Americans are paying for it.
,
Truthfully, both the Zionist Rulers of the State of Israel and the U.S. Governme are WORSE, than Hitler and the Nazi of 70+ years ago.....Jews should, because of their Holocaust suffering;
never commit the genocide of the recent 40 years on the Palestinian peoples.
These are former victims turning into NeoNazi today.
The United States must stop funding this GENOCIDE.
No more U.S. Tax Dollars for the State of Israel....Use those Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to fund our own economic recovery.
,
It must be clear to the world that Gaza is a giant internment camp for a people whose only crime was freely electing a government that Israel and the US do not approve of. This is a crime against humanity. The invasion was a war crime, and the continuing stranglehold on innocent people is a disgusting display of Zionist arrogance. I try not to hate. I try to practice compassion but the Zionists and their US benefactors make it difficult. The Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel is pointless and unnecessary, it is a sign of complete arrogance by Israel.
You are all correct. Israel has become the new Nazis. Unfortunately, the people who lived through the real Nazi regime have all died off and the younger ones do not know what it is to be deprived of threir humanity. They are treating the Palestinian people who have the true right to the land of their ancestors of their humanity and treating them worse than animals. We would not treat animals like the Israelis treat the Palestinians or we'd be arrested for cruelty. If I were a Palestinian, I'd keep tossing whatever bombs I could get across the artificial border into their areas too. I'd not want to be there at all. I have no desire to ever see that part of the world until the Israelis go back to Russia and Europe from whence they came.`
Kitty Lady
A jews against zionism site claims Hitler set up 40 camps in germany to help train zionists. And there was still one operational camp as late as '42. Perhaps this is why the zionist trolls never reply when I ask why did the armed zionist gangs not resist Hitler?
From the article:
"Ever since Hamas seized military control of Gaza in 2007 - by ousting forces loyal to pragmatic Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - after it swept parliamentary elections the year before..."
This sentence fragment distills much that is problematic about corporate media coverage of the Middle East. First, to describe Abbas as "pragmatic" is to discount the majority in Gaza who see him as a quisling, not to be trusted.
Second, if Hamas had to seize military control after winning elections, something very wrong must have happened in the interim, which the article breezily ignores.
Can a brother get some context?
"Ever since Hamas seized military control of Gaza in 2007 - by ousting forces loyal to pragmatic Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - after it swept parliamentary elections the year before, Israel has effectively frozen most international development work by preventing most building materials from getting into Gaza."
Actually, Hamas, legally elected in fair elections, ousted the Palestinian Authority forces which were being used by the CIA in an attempt to prevent Hamas from governing.
Hamas is a "terrorist" organization only because the U.S. pasted that name on it in 2002, at Israel's behest. What has Hamas ever done to us? Nothing. Their "crime" is in resisting the ongoing Israeli theft and occupation of Palestine.
I have been surprised by the number of people I have talked with who realize that Israel is the "terrorist" in the Middle East, and that Israel has morphed into the Nazis. After so many years of universal military service, in which the main "service" has been brutalizing defenseless Palestinians, a huge part of the Israeli population is sadistic and mentally ill, and so they act out by bombing the captive population of Gaza, and then refusing even to let pasta be donated to their victims.
The macaroni can be used by the "terrorists" to make nuclear weapons!
A few mile-long tube filled with small macaroni elbows makes the perfect media through which to pass the UF6 in he gaseous diffusion enrichment process.
---USAn---
My atomic noodle is ready to explode. I smuggled it through bush's butt ( I thought it was a tunnel)
Yeah - noodle fusion bombs!
Too much pasta make 'em fat. Shalom, and send Israel another $5 billion, please. Times are tough.
I meet more and more people who Hate Israel now.... it has gone way to Far.
They are acting out the New Nazi Military goon squad who get away with the most overt war crimes.
If I see a made in Israel, I ain't gonna buy it,
Shalom