Darryl Li, Middle East Report Online, 16 February 2008
(Darryl Li is a doctoral student in anthropology and Middle East studies at Harvard University and a student at Yale Law School. He spent January in the Gaza Strip.)
| For background on Israel’s system of control over Gaza after 2005, see Darryl Li, “The Gaza Strip as Laboratory: Notes in the Wake of Disengagement,” Journal of Palestine Studies 35/2 (Winter 2006). |
In mid-January, when Israel further tightened its blockade of the Gaza Strip, it hurriedly assured the world that a “humanitarian crisis” would not be allowed to occur. Case in point: Days after the intensified siege prompted Hamas to breach the Gaza-Egypt border and Palestinians to pour into Egypt in search of supplies, Israel announced plans to send in thousands of animal vaccines to prevent possible outbreaks of avian flu and other epidemics due to livestock and birds entering Gaza from Egypt.[1] Medicines for human beings, on the other hand, are among the supplies that are barely trickling in to Gaza now that the border has been resealed.