Cease Fire, Cease Siege

ARISH,
Egypt- Yesterday, en route to the Rafah border crossing that leads into
Gaza, our driver pointed to a long line of trucks laden with goods that
are desperately needed in every area of Gaza. "You see," he said, "all
of this is to help people." Generous people, around the
world, want Gazans to have food, shelter, fuel, medicine and water
while the Israeli military ruthlessly attacks their homes and
neighborhoods. The aid shipments will surely save lives and ease
affliction. Nevertheless, this relief will meet only a fraction of the need. What's
more, the Egyptian government's recent decision to allow humanitarian
goods into Gaza through the Rafah border crossing, a border over which
they have sovereign control, is a departure from the normal state of
siege that Gazans have endured for most of the past sixteen months.

A friend,
Caoihme Butterly, who had lived in Gaza during the period when the
borders were sealed, told me that the limited access to food drove up
the prices for basic foods. "A kilo of lentils cost $4.00, but the average person lived on less that $2.00 per day. "Gazans
don't want to live on charity," said Caoihme, "but the humanitarian
provisions become political. We were campaigning just to have the
border open once a week, but we didn't succeed."

It seems
that mutual understanding about the need to open Gaza's borders had
been achieved in the negotiations that established a June 19th,
2008 cease-fire agreement between Israel and Gaza. A blogspot for the
Working Group on the Middle East Peace Process listed the conditions
for the six month cease fire which expired on December 19 2008. Israel
agreed that 72 hours after the mutual agreement took effect, crossing
points into Gaza would open up to allow 30% more goods to enter Gaza. Thirteen days later, all crossing points would
be open between Gaza and Israel, and Israel would allow "the transfer
of all goods that were banned or restricted to go into Gaza." (https://ncfmepp.blogspot.com/ -posted on Jan. 12, 2009)

Jimmy Carter, in a January 8, 2009 Washington Post article entitled "An Unnecessary War," noted that if importation of
humanitarian supplies had returned to the normal level that had existed
before Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, 700 trucks would have passed
through the opened borders every day, carrying food, water, medicine
and fuel. Carter writes that, following the June 19th
agreement, "rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in
supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an
average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce
was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza
to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that
encloses Gaza."

It's true
that Hamas's consequent decision to fire primitive rockets into Israeli
villages caused terror, panic and demoralization amongst Israelis
living in those villages. I believe it's wrong to use weapons under any circumstance. Attacks against civilians prompt spiraling, hideous waves of retaliation and revenge. But
Israel responded with a disproportionate capacity to inflict harm and
suffering by imposing a state of siege, targeting innocent civilians by
denying them essential medicines, health care delivery, fuel, water and
food.

I learned
about the horrors of economic warfare during repeated visits to Iraq,
when civilians suffered under economic sanctions, when pediatric wards
in hospitals were like death rows for infants and hundreds of thousands
of children were punished to death. But I was a shamefully slow learner. In
1991, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and before the United States
began bombing Iraq, I was part of the Gulf Peace Team, an assembly of
international peace activists camped on the Iraq side of the border
between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. "What alternative does the U.S. have?" reporters asked us. "Do you think the U.S. should just sit back and allow Iraq to illegally invade another country?"

"The economic sanctions are a viable alternative," I said. "Continued use of economic sanctions would be a less violent way to persuade Iraq's government to leave Kuwait."

What a foolish and uninformed statement I'd made. Iraq
was subjected to thirteen years of the most comprehensive state of
siege ever imposed in modern history, and the sanctions directly
contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. Now,
many people committed to peacemaking understand that economic warfare
can be just as brutal and devastating as bombing, although news
coverage generally recedes and then disappears once the bombing wars
stop.
This morning, an Egyptian friend corrected me when I questioned him about the June 9th, 2008 cease-fire negotiation between Israel and Gaza's Hamas government. "In fact there was no cease-fire," he said. "The war became an economic war, and it targeted civilians who had committed no crime, particularly children."

People who live on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing understand the impact of the bombing. At a tea shop and a barber shop, windows are cracked. An owner of a small shop near the border told me that his children can't sleep at night because they hear constant explosions. The
Egyptian community of Rafah has also witnessed, previously, month after
month of quiet inactivity at the Rafah border crossing, during the
period when the Egyptian and Israeli governments agreed to seal the
border shut. Trapped, isolated, hungry and desperate, Gazans endured
economic warfare while the world ignored their pleas for relief from
slow motion death. We must call for an immediate cease-fire and a
"cease-siege." As the June 19th, 2008 agreement made clear,
a ceasefire for Gaza cannot only mean an end to bullets and bombs, but
must also end the less visible-but equally destructive-economic
violence. I hope that trucks like the ones our driver pointed to will
be lined up for months and years, carrying tons of cement and
reconstruction materials, along with humanitarian relief, as Gazans
rebuild, above ground, constructing a peaceful future.