“Five shekels worth of bread, please! Five shekels worth! Please!”
By Mohammed Omer, reporting from Gaza City
21 March 2006 Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA)
The Tel Aviv government insists this extended border closure and the resulting impending famine in Gaza is purely due to security concerns. However, in Gaza, the border closure is widely seen as collective punishment for the January election results that gave the Islamist Hamas party a solid majority in the Palestinian Parliament. One wonders, though, how to parse out the nuances — should we call it a “crisis” now when hungry people are lining up outside bakeries throughout Gaza, and save the term “disaster” for the day when Gazans die of starvation? These fine points of reporting, however, probably matter little to Mrs. Abdelal and hundreds of thousands like her who, if not Saturday night, then on Sunday, had to explain to her little boy why he had to go to bed hungry.
“I sincerely hope that today’s opening of Karni is the beginning of a return to normality; for Gazans, this is the first rationing of bread in living memory”, Ging said on Tuesday. [ Only a fully functioning Karni Crossing can avert looming humanitarian crisis 22 March 2006 UNRWA ]
Reportedly, in response to U.S. pressure, the Karni Crossing was reopened on Sunday. What can the Palestinians look forward to with this “return to normality”? A brief snapshot.
The nutritional status of children has deteriorated in the past eight years
Chronic malnutrition: 10% (up from 7.2% in 1996)
Iodine deficiency: 20% (30% in West Bank)
Vitamin A deficiency: 74%
Source: Country Office database
Israeli restrictions create isolated enclaves in West Bank
By Amira Hass
24 March 2006 Haaretz
Despite growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the West Bank and Gaza in 2005 of between eight and nine percent, the per capita GDP has dipped by about 30 percent since 1999, according to the World Bank. The fact that the Palestinian economy is functioning well below its potential, according to the World Bank, is first and foremost the result of restrictions on the movement of people and goods.
The economist Hisham Awartani believes that limitations of Palestinian traffic has raised the cost of the transport of goods and raw materials five-fold. The relay of goods back-to-back in Nablus and Ramallah, long waits at internal checkpoints and travel on poor, bumpy roads damages goods and agricultural produce. In a meeting two weeks ago between Palestinian business people and World Bank representative David Craig and diplomats, Awartani said the restrictions were impairing the competitive edge of Palestinian manufacturers and farmers.
According to Awartani, Palestinian export to Israel is 50 percent below its 2000 rate. Israeli import to the Palestinian areas has fallen by about 34 percent since 2000 because of the decline in Palestinian buying power. According to the World Bank, in the first third of 2005, unemployment in the Palestinian Authority was 23 percent (20 percent in Gaza and 29 percent in the West Bank) – more than double the rate before the intifada. Joblessness in the 20-24 age group was 35 percent, with 43 percent of the population below the poverty line.
19 March 2006: Soldiers disrupt work in factory near Jenin
Israeli soldiers repeatedly go onto the land of a charcoal plant in Y’abed, Jenin District. The soldiers enter the plant and order the owner and his workers to leave and go home. The army’s actions have led to severe losses for the owners from the loss of wood that burned completely while they kept away from the plant.
These losses are in addition to the business’s high marketing costs resulting from the general restrictions that the army places on Palestinian movement in the West Bank, and the special restrictions in the Y’abed area that are imposed because of the town’s proximity to Israeli settlements. As a result of the repeated disruptions and restrictions, the owners want to move the plant and are looking for another site.
Over 200 Palestinian children arrested in two months
2 March 2006 Defence for Children International
Israeli occupation forces are arresting scores of Palestinian children each week, bringing the number of juveniles currently held in appalling conditions in Israeli detention centres and prisons to new record levels.
Information gathered by the DCI/PS Research & Information and Legal Units shows that since the start of 2006 over 230 Palestinian children have been arrested, with the Israeli army appearing to target in particular youths from the Bethlehem Nablus and Jenin areas of the West Bank. The scale of arrests over the past two months brings the number of Palestinian children in Israeli custody to almost 400. This represents a significant increase on the already-inexcusably high numbers of recent years and marks a further indication of the scant regard Israeli pays to Palestinian children’s rights and to international legal instruments.
In interviews with DCI/PS lawyers, children have told how upon their arrest they are handcuffed and blindfolded before being bundled into a military jeep and taken to interrogation centres in nearby settlements or military camps. Still dazed and confused from the arrest, and often having been beaten by soldiers inside the jeep, the children are taken immediately for interrogation in which police and soldiers hurl abuse, threats and sometimes kicks and punches to extract some form of admission from the terrified child. Confessions obtained from this brutalising procedure, which contravenes every legal and moral guideline regarding the questioning of suspects, are deemed sufficient evidence by the Israeli military authorities not only to charge the child, but to charge others implicated in the confession.
Children Behind Bars: Issue 30
21 February 2006 Defence for Children International
The boys at Beit Awwar school have almost forgotten what it is to have a normal day of classes. Their lessons are punctuated by the sound of military orders being barked in Hebrew metres away from the classrooms, and break times degenerate into tense standoffs as soldiers, armed with semi automatic weapons and tear gas canisters, stalk through the playground to deliver the latest threat to the headmaster. The teachers are in a state of despair – every visit from the soldiers leaves the boys aggressive, dispirited and distracted. Academic performance is declining and the syllabus is taking longer and longer to teach.
The reason for the constant interruptions lies less than 100 metres to the west of the school: Israel’s giant segregation wall. Hundreds of giant concrete slabs stretch across a field which until recently was de facto school property, blocking out the horizon of the hills beyond. Further north, the concrete gives way to a mass of barbed wire fences flanked by patrol roads. The land the other side is visible, but still inaccessible.
The wall came to Beit Awwar in September 2004, and from the moment the contractors arrived to clear a path for the barrier, several hundred metres east of where the green line actually lies, Beit Awwar school has been plunged into a cycle of misery. Soldiers patrolling the wall have repeatedly threatened to close down the school, claiming that boys are throwing stones from the building, or hiding there. Recently the threats have escalated, with soldiers warning they will use live bullets on any student seen playing soccer in the field between the school and the wall.
PRCS Weekly Press Release for the period 11-17 March 2006
Jenin, 17/03/2006 (19:50 PM): The PRCS Emergency Medical station received a report of an injury in the village Al Yamoun. Immediately a PRCS ambulance and medical team headed for the site and they found a 5-year old girl with a bullet wound in the head. A doctor from the village had administered first aid, and the PRCS crew quickly transferred her to the ambulance. En route to the hospital they received another young man who had two bullet wounds, one in the hand and one in the leg. The crew administered first aid and transferred him to the ambulance. Israeli soldiers, who had been observing the medical crew, came upon them and barred the way of the ambulance, preventing it from moving. The medical crew tried to explain the critical nature of the injuries and the necessity for their quick transfer to the hospital, but the soldiers refused to let them pass. They pulled the young man from the ambulance and brought him to an unknown destination. Finally they allowed the ambulance to pass, but the child succumbed to her injury before arriving at the hospital.
Jeff Jacoby wrote:
“As a matter of plain economic common sense, the United States has every reason to turn against the Jewish state. What accounts for its refusal to do so? If it isn’t an ”Israel Lobby” pulling hidden strings, what on earth can it be?
Something more powerful than economics: the kinship of common values.”
And that’s something to boast about?