Egypt's military ratchets up the misery in Gaza

The military-led Egyptian regime, which yesterday banned the Muslim Brotherhood as well as its political wing which won last year’s elections, is also ensuring that Palestinians cannot escape from the biggest prison camp in the world.

We are talking about Gaza, where 1.6 million people – most of them UN-registered refugees - live in a tiny enclave, with its borders controlled by Egypt and Israel. It’s never been easy getting in and out but things have taken a turn for the worse since the Egyptian army deposed Mohammed Morsi as president and then butchered thousands of his supporters.

The military regime accused the Hamas government in Gaza of being in league with the Muslim Brotherhood government. This slender allegation has been used as a pretext to impose draconian controls on the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Tunnels formerly used to bring goods into Gaza – they have been a lifeline – have been collapsing on top of the smugglers.

The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says only an average of 150 people per day have been allowed to cross into Egypt after its authorities closed the Rafah crossing following the July coup. This was just 15% of the number of people allowed to cross in June.

One of the consequences of the Egyptian-imposed blockade is that money is running short in Gaza and, as a result, importing goods from Israel has also slowed to a trickle. Gazans requiring medical treatment in Egypt have also been affected by the closure.

The Egyptian crackdown has sent the Islamic-inspired Hamas government into a tailspin. It is desperately trying to avoid a confrontation with the Egyptian military. Initially, Hamas condemned the “terrible massacres” in Egypt following the overthrow of Morsi.

Since then, backtracking has been the order of the day. Earlier this month, Gaza's prime minister Ismail Haniya condemned "attempts to draw the resistance into sideline battles away from the [real] enemy [Israel]". He added: "The government is not steering the people towards fighting Egypt or towards aggression against any state, regardless of the unprecedented pressure and circumstances the Palestinian people are under."

Adnan Abu Amr of Umma University in Gaza, said: "Hamas faces a crisis and strangulation that is forcing it to step back and minimise the chances of a clash with Egypt. (They hope) this will stop any unexpected Egyptian moves.. The situation "requires that Hamas appear flexible. Standing up to the Egyptian army is not in their interest."

For ordinary Gazans, the situation remains bleak. As students all round the world settle down for their new year, spare a thought for Manar Alzray, 23, an honours graduate in English language and education. She had planned to continue her education in Canada, where a foundation generously granted her $62,000 to take up a place at Trent University.

But the closing of the Rafah crossing prevented her from completing all the formalities at the Canadian embassy in Cairo. Her online application hit some technical problems and the term has started without her.

“Yet, I have not lost hope,” says Alzray, who has received some of the best grades and test scores in Gaza. “My application to Edinburgh has been pushed to next year, and I am currently applying to Oxford University and the University of Cambridge as well. Next year, I am determined to be in Britain. I will have a pocket full of money and I will hold my head up high. I will be happy, and so will my parents. In 10 years, I will be telling my children this story and laugh at the hard times.”

Let’s hope she’s right. But with the Israeli government continuing to block any movement towards an independent Palestine with its settlement programme and the US-backed and financed Egyptian military regime engaged in its own crackdown, optimism is in short supply.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The Palestinian street has spoken

Perhaps the most serious evidence that the reconciliation agreement signed last week in Cairo by Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian organisations, upsets the global status quo is the chorus of denunciation by Israeli leaders.

The Arab spring – from Tunisia to Egypt – has inspired and driven on young Palestinians themselves and the speed of events has surprised everyone. And since Fatah and Hamas signed the deal, which was endorsed by 11 smaller Palestinian groups and brokered by Egypt’s new government, Israeli leaders from Prime Minister Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and opposition leader Tzipi Livni have all expressed their hostility.

The outbursts from Israel politicians and intelligence agencies, who have worked might and main to divide and rule, are backed up by the withholding of $89 million worth of tax revenues which the Palestine Authority needs to pay 170,000 civil servants and their dependents. This is an illegal act to undermine unity and economically starve the Palestinians, which even the ever-so-tame United Nations general secretary Ban ki-Moon has criticised.

Israeli leaders are terrified that the reconciliation deal that follows years of bitter conflict between Fatah and Hamas – one controlling the West Bank and Hamas the Gaza Strip – will gather momentum for a sense of real Palestinian unity and strength.

Their anger is in sharp contrast to the jubilant feeling in Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied territories and in places like the Ain al-Hilweh camp, the largest in Lebanon, where Fatah and Hamas flags fluttered together and people celebrated over the weekend.

The cessation of hostilities between Fatah and Hamas goes some way towards realising – at least on paper - the demands raised by thousands of Palestinian youth in the March 15 Movement. Two months ago, Palestinian youth under occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank - who make up over 65% of the population there –as well as those living as second class citizens in Israel, took to the streets with 20 of them going on hunger strike. Via Facebook and other means, they issued a call to the governments of the West Bank and Gaza, demanding:

• the release of all political prisoners in the prisons of the Palestine Authority and Hamas
• an end to attacks by one organisation on the other
• the resignation of the governments of Haniyeh and Fayyad to re-build a government of national unity agreed by all Palestinian factions representing the Palestinian people
• the restructuring of the Palestine Liberation Organisation to contain all Palestinian factions and get back to its initial aim: Palestine’s freedom from illegal occupation
• the end of all forms of security co-ordination with Israeli occupation forces.

This new generation seeks national unity independently of political factions. Students and school children on the protest, said they were inspired by movements in other parts of the Arab world to initiate a political movement that would go on until unity was reached.

But as night fell, armed groups in civilian clothes were backed up by the Hamas authorities who then sent in the police. The peaceful youth and many women, journalists and photographers were beaten with sticks and clubs, facts backed up by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

Nevertheless, their discredited leaders have been forced to respond to their “street”. And the Palestinian street, is, as rights campaigner Noura Erakat Erakat has noted, a global one. Perhaps the most significant factor, however, is the ongoing Egyptian revolution. The overthrown Mubarak dictatorship worked with the Israeli regime to turn Gaza into the world’s biggest prison camp. Now Egypt is preparing to open the Rafah border crossing into Gaza, which the Israelis have said they won’t allow.

Many Palestinians interviewed on the streets of Gaza after the deal was signed, are keenly aware that the reconciliation has been made out of a position of weakness by both Hamas and Fatah. Neither the pursuance of a two-state “solution” by Fatah, nor the militant Islam demonization of all Jews by Hamas, has paid dividends. A secular, one-state approach is required. For that to succeed, new leaders will have to come forward.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

For Gazans, the Nakba is a daily tragedy

This is the month when Palestinians remember their Nakba, or "catastrophe," during which millions of women, men and children were eventually pushed off their land and rendered homeless refugees during and after the founding of Israel in 1948.

For those living in the Gaza Strip, the tragedy worsens by the day. The blockade of the territory by Israel, sanctioned by the European Union and Washington, has led to a failing economy, rising unemployment and deteriorating power, sanitation and health facilities, according to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report.

As a consequence of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, 98% of industrial operations have been shut down since 2007 and there are acute shortages of fuel, cash, cooking gas and other basic supplies. The ban on imports of building materials has prevented the rebuilding of some 6,400 homes destroyed or severely damaged by Israel’s military assault on Gaza in 2008-2009 and prevented the construction of some 7,500 homes to cater for an expanding population. Some 3,500 families are still displaced.

Water-related health problems are widespread in the Strip because of the blockade and Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which destroyed water and sanitation infrastructure, including reservoirs, wells, and thousands of kilometres of piping. “Gaza is not a refugee camp in a small remote place. It’s a city of one and a half million people with the needs of a developed urban environment that is used to certain standards. It needs certain standards of maintenance. Everybody should be worried because contaminated water has no borders,” said Filippo Grandi, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

An electricity crisis continues in Gaza with the network only able to meet 70% of demand due to insufficient money to buy fuel for the Gaza power plant, and a lack of spare parts which is causing technical failures. Unemployment in occupied Palestinian territory is over 30%, rising to 67% among young people, according to the WHO report. Seven out of ten families were living on less than $1 a day in May 2008. Chronic malnutrition has risen in Gaza over the past few years to reach 10.2 percent.

Israel’s 2008-2009 military campaign damaged 15 of the Strip’s 27 hospitals and damaged or destroyed 43 of its 110 primary health care facilities, none of which have been repaired or rebuilt because of the construction materials ban. Some 15-20% of essential medicines are commonly out of stock and there are shortages of essential spare parts for many items of medical equipment, the WHO report said. As a result, the steady decline in the infant mortality rate in recent decades has stalled.

Israel’s blockade is ostensibly aimed at the Hamas government, which it and its allies refuse to recognise despite its election victory in 2007. In practice, however, the intention is to demoralise the Palestinians and deny them their right to self-determination. In this the Zionists have the support of Egypt’s authoritarian regime. It has blockaded Gaza’s border with Egypt, even driving a steel barrier deep into the ground to prevent Palestinians from using tunnels to bring in goods.

Gazans, however, continue to smuggle everything from fridges to fans, sheep to shampoo and even cars through the tunnels. The UN estimates that as much as 80% of imports into Gaza come through the tunnels. But the head of operations in Gaza for the UNRWA John Ging, says: "Everything is expensive because people are hostage to the dynamics of a black market."

For ordinary Palestinians, the blockade and deprivation imposed by the racist Israeli state are continuing reminders of the tragedy of the Nakba.

Paul Feldman

Communications

The biggest prison camp in the world

The deportation of Respect MP George Galloway from Egypt today is only the latest in a series of anti-Palestinian actions by the country’s president, Hosni Mubarak which have helped Israel enforce a blockade of Gaza.

Mubarak’s despotic regime is as hostile to the Hamas administration in Gaza as the Israelis are. Some opposition figures in Egypt even go so far as to claim that Mubarak gave the Israelis the green light to launch their murderous attack on Gaza at the end of 2008, which claimed 1,500 lives and led to accusations of war crimes. Foreign minister Tzipi Livni was in Cairo shortly before the air strikes and ground invasion were launched and opposition MPs say Mubarak gave his blessing to the assault.

Galloway was in Egypt as part of an international delegation of the Gaza Freedom March. This originally planned to arrive in Gaza on 29 December 2009 to join a march against the Israeli blockade together with residents of Gaza two days later. Instead, most of its delegates remained in Cairo, having been blocked from going to the Rafah border by the Egyptian government, and instead marched against the Egyptian blockade on Gaza.

An aid convoy bringing medical and other supplies was also held up and the Egyptian authorities attacked people trying to cross into Gaza. Earlier this week, Gazans threw stones at Egyptian soldiers in protest at the delay and one was killed. The convoy finally made it into Gaza yesterday.

The 1.5 million people of Gaza have lacked vital medicine and food supplies for over a year following the Israeli assault. Tunnels used to smuggle supplies in from Egypt have been sealed up by the Mubarak regime. Just before Christmas, international aid groups in a report condemned world governments for betraying the people of Gaza by doing nothing to lift the blockade.

Gaza has become the largest prison camp in the world, not that you would know that from the conspiracy of silence from London to Washington, where the concern is to break Hamas whatever the cost to the Palestinian people. It’s just as well that rapper/poet/playwright Lowkey’s track “Long Live Palestine” is doing so well in alerting people to what’s happening.

Almost 1,500 delegates from 43 countries converged on Cairo in December believing they had permission to go through the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing into Gaza. But under pressure from the Israelis the border was closed on December 29. The very same day Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Mubarak held talks in Cairo. It was a cosy affair. Netanyahu said he was "very encouraged" by the meeting, while Cairo said it had been "very positive". Earlier that week, the Israelis announced a new programme of settlement building in the West Bank.

A series of protests by delegates were broken up by the authorities although the Syndicate of Journalists invited the marchers to join their members at their trade union headquarters for a rally. Delegates also convened an ad hoc convention to ratify the "Cairo Declaration". An international working committee drafted a document setting out a plan of action for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli regime.

Meanwhile, the Egyptians are constructing a steel wall deep into the earth at the Rafah border, making it even harder to get in or out of Gaza.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Support the boycott of Israeli goods

First “they” sit back and watch the destruction of homes, offices, universities, hospitals and the wanton killing of civilians by Israeli forces in Gaza. Then, when the dust has settled, “they” turn up in Egypt and offer billions for “reconstruction”. Hypocrisy doesn’t come more blatant than this.

The “they” in this instance is the so-called “international community” – the major powers and their hangers on like the Mubarak regime in Egypt, led by the United States and Britain. They gave the green light to Israel’s murderous war on Gaza, with its targeting of civilians and the use of banned weapons. So outrageous were the attacks that the Israeli state could face war crimes charges.

Even the promises of aid made in Egypt are hedged with conditions that, together with Israel’s refusal to open border crossings, undermines the pledges as quickly as they are made. For example, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has offered $1 billion – so long as it is channelled in a way that bypasses the Hamas government in Gaza.

At present, the United Nations says that only a quarter of food and medical supplies needed in Gaza are allowed in. Israeli border guards routinely make lorry drivers unload their entire cargo for inspection. The imminent arrival of a new extreme right-wing Israeli government will intensify the crisis. Certain to be prominent in the new government is Avigdor Lieberman, who advocates the expulsion of Palestinians who actually live inside Israel.

Waiting for the blessed “international community” to act against Israel is simply a non-starter. The Israelis occupied the West Bank and Gaza over 40 years ago and have since peppered the area with illegal settlements. In recent years, Gaza has become like a giant prison camp, its population trapped in the most crowded space on earth.

In these circumstances, it is important to support the many calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, both in Britain and throughout the world. In occupied Palestine, 180 organisation have joined together to back a boycott.

All major UK retailers sell Israeli goods, and most of them sell produce from illegal settlements in the West Bank. Details of how this is done are contained in a special report by Corporate Watch. Many goods are channelled through the Israeli exporter Carmel-Agrexco.

In a stomach-churning move, on 12th February, two days prior to Valentine's Day, the Israeli army allowed 25,000 carnation flowers grown by Palestinian growers in the Gaza Strip to cross the border into Israel, for export by Carmel-Agrexco to Holland. By then, about 70% of Gaza's carnation crop had already been lost due to the Israeli siege. The losses in flower sales suffered by growers in Gaza, who used to export 37 to 40 million carnations a year, are estimated to have already reached $4 million.

Many Agrexco flowers grown in Israel or the Occupied Territories are sold on or packed in Holland and labelled accordingly. In a court case in November 2004, the general manager of Agrexco UK at that time, Amos Orr, testified that his company markets 60%- 70% of the agricultural produce grown in Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Also on 12th February, a group of 15 women locked themselves to the gates of Carmel-Agrexco's depot in Hayes, Middlesex, to stop the delivery of Valentines roses. Carmel's offices have been subject to extensive damage by protesters over recent years and their depot occupied. Yet, the company has not been willing to take prosecutions against campaigners for fear of having their business practices exposed and questioned in court.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

The tragedy of the Palestinians

One thing in this turbulent world is always certain - the hypocrisy of the major powers when it comes to the slaughter of innocent Palestinians by Israeli bombs and rockets. Do we ever hear a word of condemnation from Washington and London as the bodies pile up? Never! 

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, today pointedly restricted himself to a call for an “urgent ceasefire”, as if two armies of fairly equal strength were battling it out somewhere. Nothing could be more inappropriate. Israel has the latest US-supplied warplanes and missiles (and atomic weapons) while the Palestinians in Gaza have a few primitive rockets. So the not-so-brave Israeli fighter pilots can bomb and kill at will, which is what they have done. 

Gazans are living in a giant prison camp, surrounded by Israeli forces, denied adequate food, water and medical supplies. Few have jobs and most Palestinians live in abject poverty. Now they are burying their children, killed by an act of state terror while Israel’s principal sponsors turn a blind eye. 

So when Miliband says that "we are now paying a terrible price for the slow and faltering pace of negotiations not just over the last year, probably not just over the last 15 years”, he of course fails to acknowledge his government’s responsibility. The elected Hamas government may not be everyone’s cup of tea but it was the democratic choice of the Palestinians in Gaza. 

What was their reward for a rare display of ballot box democracy in the Middle East? To be isolated by the US and Britain, along with the rest of the European Union because the voters had made the wrong choice! Bit difficult to negotiate in circumstances where the other side ignores you. 

Hamas this year declared a six-month ceasefire with Israel but the Zionists only intensified their attempts to create a Palestinian ghetto inside Gaza. As John Ging, the head of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, said in November: "The people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence ... at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food."

Israel provoked Hamas until they got what they wanted – a resumption by frustrated and starving Gazans of rocket attacks. The response was an entirely disproportionate series of air raids on civilians and infrastructure which has left hundreds dead. A ground invasion will probably follow to “change the realities on the ground”, as the Israeli leaders chillingly put it, just before president-elect Obama takes office. 

Others are also culpable for the tragic plight of the Palestinians. "Arab silence is behind the bombings," read a banner held by one of several thousand people who turned out in the Sunni Arab city of Samarra north of Baghdad. The largest demonstration in the Arab world was in Egypt where 50,000 demonstrated in cities throughout the country. Egypt’s president Mubarak, a Washington stooge, ordered his border guards to shoot Gazans trying to cross into Egypt to escape Israeli air attacks. 

So for the Palestinians, 2008 ends as it began back in 1948 when the state of Israel was declared by rabid Zionist nationalists. They claimed falsely to speak for oppressed Jews everywhere and offered them a place to live at the expense of millions of Palestinians whose tragedy is still unfolding. As Marx once put it, a nation that oppresses another can never be free itself. Such is Israel today. 

Paul Feldman

AWTW communications editor