By Dave Putson
The situation in Gaza is horrendous, and minute by minute it gets worse. Today Israel is preventing water, food, medical supplies and electricity, from Palestinians, whilst they also continue to increase their illegal no-go zones in the Gaza Strip, now amounting to 70% of the land.
So more than two million displaced people in Gaza are compressed into 30% of the land in which they previously lived, and they are expected to survive however they can, whilst no aid is allowed to reach them. Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide carries on apace and the impacts are known and horrific.
In Gaza, there are no longer any UN supported bakeries that function, no cooking fuel and wheat prices are soaring. Generally, food production and the systems required have been severely compromised by a lack of access to farmers, breeders and fishers. These also are being systematically destroyed by the IDF increasing the no-go areas. Any Gazan attempting to enter one of these areas is at risk of being shot.
Parasitic infection, including fleas and mites, are a massive public health concern, exacerbated by the compression of the population into less than a third of their land. Overcrowded conditions increase the risk of infection and disease spread.
A third of water provision is from the sea, that’s 36,500 cubic metres, which is processed through desalination plants when they have the power to do so. A further 68,000 cubic metres are taken from wells. This may sound like a reasonable supply, but in the given circumstances and with the ongoing bombing, the already-weakened infrastructure is being continually degraded and compromised and it is estimated that possibly two thirds of water processed for use is lost to leakage.
Unicef’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Organisation (WASH) has over 9000 pallets of basic hygiene kits ready to be delivered but are being held outside Gaza as Israel continues with its illegal aid blockade. Basic hygiene is significantly different for women and children, but with this lack of even the simplest provisions, the potential for infections and transmissions presents a huge danger, and this is clearly something that has been included in the Israeli planning.
Murderous, cold calculations by Israeli government
It is insidious and an obscenely murderous, cold calculation by the Israeli government. By mid-April half of the Unicef WASH facilities, that is 334 of 615, had become inaccessible due to being in a the no-go area.
In April, the World Health Organisation (WHO) which had trained thirty medical professionals in primary health care, to focus on trauma care, deployed new Medical Emergency Teams (EMT) to the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza. There are now 21 EMTs, two with nationally-based personnel, and nineteen international. Two are in north Gaza, eight in Deir el Balah, eight in Khan Younis and allegedly one in Rafah, although given how Rafah is now completely flattened, they may have been moved elsewhere, or simply killed as part of the Israeli ongoing slaughter of the innocents.
Unicef is also renovating a newborn intensive care unit at As Sahaba hospital, with an increase of fifteen beds. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) conducted a blood donation campaign in Khan Younis, and despite and regardless of the plight they are going through the Gazans provided 184 blood units. To exemplify and underpin the disgraceful Israeli anti-humanitarian behaviour, only one patient was allowed to be medically evacuated, with their two carers.
A fourth attempt at a polio vaccination campaign for 603,000 children is currently suspended, once again as a consequence of the IDF’s ongoing displacement orders. And with Israel increasingly denying EMT doctors access, and specifically specialists, the injuries Palestinians sustain will not be properly treated and incidental nfections cannot be prevented.
Anyone needing specialist treatment, including the use of specialist medical devices are in the worst circumstances. There are 150,000 Gazans currently being denied specialist medical devices. So anyone who, for example, need dialysis, can only look forward to the prospect of a worsening medical health.
In February, 85,000 children were able to receive lipid-based nutrient supplements, but by March that was down to 22,000 children. It has risen slightly again in April to 57,000. But taking into account that there are over two million in Gaza, and around half of them are children, these numbers for children being assisted leave the vast majority missing out.
171,000 tonnes of food is available to be sent into Gaza
Up to April 25, humanitarian agencies were delivering one million meals a day to Gaza, via 170 community kitchens using pallets for wood burning, since there is no cooking gas now available.
As Israel continues its blockade, there is 171,000 tonnes of food aid ready and waiting for delivery. It is parked outside Gaza and would be able to feed and sustain over two million Gazans for between two and three months. Cooked meals are a lifeline for most families, and one meal a day is not sufficient, calorifically, but in any event, this only reaches half of those in need.
The intensity of the bombing and tank attacks on health facilities continues unabated. And the full aid blockade is preventing the essential supply of medicines, blood units and every aspect of life that cannot be supplied currently from inside Gaza. Each and every shortage is a planned and considered political decision by the Israeli government.
Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, most of the western world’s politicians make hand-wringing statements (at best – some do not even do that) but do nothing. In Jerusalem, Israeli ministers congratulate themselves for the systemic ethnic cleansing that they are organising and putting into effect.
Last week we saw that a ship left Tunisia for Malta, where it was due to collect huge amounts of supplies and then to attempt to break the sea blockade of Gaza illegally conducted by Israel. But the boat didn’t even make the harbour in Malta. Being part of the “freedom flotilla”, it was bombed by drones and caught fire, issuing distress signals, thinking it was sinking.
What is disgraceful is that the Maltese government appears to have allowed Israel to use its airspace for five hours so its aircraft could fly around releasing drones which then conducted the bombing attack. To be able to do this, the Israeli intelligence services are clearly monitoring peace activists and protestors, even though the organisers of the flotilla had tried to keep the venture secret.
There were obviously plans in place in Israel to enable them to conduct all of the logistics and deploy equipment and aircraft, with flight plans to coincide with the ship sailing from Tunisia.
Bombing of an unarmed ship in international waters
A huge amount of planning and consideration must have gone into this bombing. What was not considered was that the bombing of non-military shipping in peacetime, in international waters, is an act of war. The bombing of a unarmed vessel in international waters is in contravention of international law, humanitarian law and the Geneva conventions.
We have to ask why this act of war was perpetrated by Israel with the complicity of the Maltese government. It is yet one more example that exposes Israel’s ongoing breaches of international law, humanitarian Law and the Geneva conventions .
International Law is clear. As an occupying force – Israel in this instance – must allow humanitarian support to the civilian population and civilian lives should not be used as a bargaining chip in any hostilities. Yet two months ago, Israel took the deliberate decision to block all aid into Gaza.
This was supposedly to get Hamas to return the Israeli hostages, ignoring the fact that the previously agreed ceasefire, which Israel signed, at specified that a Phase Two was to have Hamas return all the hostages they held and Israel was to withdraw militarily from all of Gaza. Israel chose not to follow through to the second phase of the agreement they signed, and, instead, returned to bombing and supplemented this by a complete aid blockade.
Israel is proving itself to be what the capitalist press would describe (if it were anywhere else) as a “rogue” state: it is completely comfortable with breaching, at any moment, whatever agreement it signs up to. It is showing the world, in the parlance of mainstream politicians, what a “bad faith actor” it truly is.
The actions of the Israeli government in Gaza have encouraged the illegal settlers on the West Bank to conduct pogroms against Arab villagers and farmers. They have set fires on Palestinian land to try to drive the Arabs out, but it now appears, with unfortunate consequences. Some of these illegal fires are now burning uncontrollably and are threatening cities in Israel itself with fires burning in areas surrounding Jerusalem. In what can only be seen as a monumental irony, the Israeli government is calling on the international community to help fight these fires and to provide aircraft and assistance to water bomb them.
Israel is not being held in any way accountable by western politicians
Whilst Israel seeks humanitarian assistance for fires set by its own rightwing settler community of ethnic cleansers, it continues to deny any humanitarian assistance to the population of Gaza whose ability to cope is being stretched to its very limits. Their ability to source and store food is perpetually changing and often food has to be abandoned because of regular bombing and constant ongoing displacements. This is the impact of an Israeli war which international legal organisations have described as a “genocide” and ethnic cleansing.
That they are not in any way being held accountable in international and humanitarian law, is in indication that such laws are only upheld be western governments when it suits their diplomatic and strategic interests. Otherwise, they are ignored.
It is time for us to start pushing back in our trades unions, in our workplaces, in our shops, in how we shop what we buy. We need to express and assist the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
We need to get ourselves onto the streets for the National and local marches. The next one is the Nakba ’77, End the Genocide march on May 17 (see poster above). We cannot stand by and watch the systematic genocide of a people and it is incumbent upon us to stop this with whatever actions we can undertake.
[Feature picture, from Al Jazeera, is from last year, showing food distribution]
