Humanitarian Situation in Gaza Depends Upon Political View
BBSNews 2006-07-12 - Tel Aviv -- Yesterday Human Rights groups in the Middle East announced plans to petition the Israeli High Court for crossings in the area to be opened for humanitarian supplies to be delivered on a regular basis to avert a further civilian human toll in Gaza. A release from Physicians for Human Rights in Israel summed up the problem as they saw it quoting a resident and local Gaza water official:
"Withholding fuel, food, and equipment from Gaza residents constitutes collective punishment, in violation of international law. The petition argues that Israel is not fulfilling its legal obligations to provide for the needs of the civilian population and to distinguish between military and civilian targets.According to Faysal Shawa, a businessman and Gaza resident: "We have been thrown back to the way people lived 100 years ago ... We don't have water, we don't have milk for our kids."
According to Maher Najer, Deputy Director of Gaza's Water Company: "We face severe shortages in the electricity, fuel, and spare parts needed to operate Gaza's water and sewage systems. These shortages threaten to create a public health catastrophe."
A BBSNews reader sent us an article from Arutz Sheva, a publication apparently published from one of the illegal settlements in the West Bank. The article starts with a headline proclaiming "PA Claims of Hunger are a Lie". We found this very article and judging from the Web page, Israel also has its share of Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters given at least one Web banner that claims its aim is "preventing, treating homosexuality", another that provocatively asks "Are American Jews in Danger?" and a story about how some in Israel are trying to topple the current government through a no-confidence motion in the Knesset because of the scheduled Gay Pride parade to be held next month in Jerusalem.
A hallmark of right ring extremist fundamentalist rhetoric is Gay bashing. When some people can be so utterly intolerant of someone who is simply born the way they are, taken in that light, it's hard to not recognize that there might be a bias coming from Arutz.
BBSNews took our reader seriously and contacted Physicians for Human Rights in Israel and asked about the claim that "Claims of Hunger are a Lie" and we received the following from Shabtai Gold, a media contact at PHR:
The claim that people in Gaza are suffering because of the continued closures and attacks on infrastructure is certainly not a lie.I can quote an interview yesterday in Haaretz with Karen Abu Zayd, the head of UNRWA:
"And indeed, Abu Zayd says she does not recall a situation in the territories as bad as the one faced by the Gaza Strip since the disengagement, and especially in the last few weeks. Even in the most difficult days during the second intifada, she says, the elevators in apartment buildings worked, and water flowed in the taps. Currently, darkness also has fallen on refugees' homes in the camps, and food is gradually running out."
Arutz Sheva is an unreliable source of information, in my personal opinion, due to its extreme bias. It is run from illegal settlements in the West Bank, openly supports violations of international law and certainly does not believe in human rights (e.g., its refusal to call the organizations filing the appeal "human rights organizations" but prefers to call us "extreme left wing" organizations). Indeed, some items are getting in, this is true. But to claim there is no crisis in Gaza? To claim that there are not real, legitimate and severe problems in Gaza? To claim that Israel has no responsibility for what is going on and that it is not obligated to care for the civilian population under international law?
Also, as our petition states, one of our main demands is a steady and regular supply into Gaza. This certainly has not been the case recently.
The current crisis started with exchanges of missile fire. Palestinian homemade and largely ineffectual projectiles hurled into Israel and high-tech heavy weaponry from Israel causing ever increasing civilian deaths including a family that was mostly wiped out by Israeli gunboat fire upon a Gaza beach during a picnic. While Israel does not take responsibility for this attack on civilians, an expert from Human Rights Watch claims evidence that shows very little chance that any other explanation is possible.
That was the point that Hamas declared an end to a self-declared truce that it had largely adhered to according to most news reports.
Then the day before the Israeli soldier was captured an operation was mounted by Israel that would be the first incursion into Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal the year before. According to Jonathan Cook it was reported in the Observer on June 25th, 2006 in a small paragraph of a story:
"...the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago". More precisely, it was the first time the Israeli army had re-entered the Gaza Strip, directly violating Palestinian control of the territory, since it supposedly left in August last year."
The next day, against this ever escalating backdrop, fueled by the decades long illegal occupation of territory outside of Israel's internationally recognized boundaries, Corporal Gilad Shalit was captured by Palestinian militants.
The carnage caused by ignoring Security Council resolutions continues. Terror cannot be condoned in favor of either side. Currently however most Western governments and media are not focused on destroyed bridges, highly restricted civilian movement, constant sonic booms designed to elicit fear from the civilian population in the Occupied Territories, the destruction of Gaza's electric plant, destruction of crops and farmland and the "requisitioning" of Palestinian homes to be used for Israeli soldiers during this incursion while at the same time destroying the personal property and livelyhoods of these unfortunates caught in the cross-fire.
All of these continue while the West sits idly by and ignores what is happening.
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