Gaza becoming catastrophe
While the Israeli army has been shooting Palestinian protestors over the last seven weeks, living conditions in Gaza have become desperate, says .
Dozens of Palestinians killed. Thousands wounded. That’s the toll of the past seven weeks, exacted by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) against protesters along the security fence separating Gaza from Israel. The carnage is likely to get much worse.
Since early April, weekly ‘Great March of Return’ demonstrations have focused on the plight of 700,000 Palestinian refugees, driven from their homeland in 1948.
Exacerbated by the Trump administration, which moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Monday — when 60 Palestinians died and about 2,700 were injured — and further fueled by Israeli independence anniversary celebrations and Tuesday’s Palestinian commemoration of al Nakba (“The Catastrophe”), another catastrophe is unfolding.
Here’s how to avert more death. As the peace process has stalled, living conditions in Gaza have become desperate: an average of five hours of electricity per day, dwindling supplies of food and medicine, staggeringly high unemployment (45% overall, and 60% among young people), rising levels of water pollution ( 90% is contaminated) and disease (sewage pumps need electricity), and an economy that is halting.
Even so, based on my observations and conversations with NGO leaders during my recent visit to Gaza, nothing’s wrong there that, on a humanitarian level, can’t be significantly improved in a few months.
The larger political question, which has defied resolution for 70 years, will take much longer. But a fundamental tenet of civilised behaviour is that human beings shouldn’t die of disease, starvation, or other forms of neglect, while political conflicts are addressed.
Gaza is not Syria or Yemen. Much of the infrastructure is intact and working when the electricity is on, and the basic institutions — homes, schools, hospitals, businesses — still function, albeit precariously.What must be done?
First, Gaza needs electricity 24/7. Electricity has been an issue in Gaza since the IDF destroyed Gaza City’s only power plant, in 2006, in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas — a savagely disproportionate response.
Even so, the power can be restored. Egypt and Israel can supply fuel to existing power plants, and both can turn on electric lines into Gaza. They have done so in the past ,in limited measure, and they could do so now.
This would bolster public and private collaborations underway to provide Gazans with water and sanitation.
Second, Washington needs to restore full funding to USAID and to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides education, medical care, and food aid to more than half of Gaza’s two million people.
The United States, UNRWA’s largest donor nation, gave $355m to UNRWA in 2017 for Gaza, but the Trump administration has pledged only $125m for 2018 — and is withholding $110m of that commitment.
A senior official told me during my visit that unless full funding is restored by the end of May, UNRWA will further curtail its stretched-thin medical and food programmes, and also lay off 9,000 teachers and close 275 schools, leaving 273,000 children and youths without classes to attend after summer break.
Without education, the children and youth of Gaza will have nothing left to lose — a lethal incubator of anger and violence within Gaza, and a potentially overwhelming security risk to Israel. UNRWA funding could be restored now.
Third, 12 years of restrictions on border crossings have had devastating consequences. 90% of Gazan children under the age of 12, who make up one-third of the population, have never left Gaza; the only Israelis most have ever seen are pointing tanks and guns their way.
Also, workers from Gaza can no longer cross the border to work, shortchanging both Gaza and Israel.
In addition, two senior hospital officials in Gaza City told me that there are no CT scanners, MRI machines, or radiation equipment (and relatively little chemotherapy medication) in Gaza.
Patients who have cancer — and especially women with breast cancer — must travel to Ramallah. However, many of these patients are denied permits to travel.
As a result, Gaza’s cancer survival rates are significantly lower than in countries like Israel and the US. People with serious illnesses should not be sentenced to death in the name of Israeli security. The most egregious border restrictions could be lifted.
In the fourth chapter of Genesis, which Jews, Christians, and Muslims claim as sacred scripture, the story is told of two brothers — Cain and Abel — who offer sacrifices to God from their flocks.
A God favours Abel’s offering more than Cain’s, who responds by luring Abel out into the field and killing him.
When God asks Cain what has happened to Abel, Cain feigns ignorance: “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” God says to Cain, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cried out to me from the ground.”
In moral terms, those who can help avert the looming humanitarian crisis in Gaza should help — turn on the power, write the check, ease the border.
Three powerful men — America’s Donald Trump, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — could make a profound difference, and thereby set the peace process on a different course.
If they refuse to act? Shame on them. Once the blood of exponentially more Gazans cries out from the ground, the moral judgment on those who refused to help will be even harsher, and the political impasse will grow even greater.
There’s still time to avert another catastrophe.
