The bold claims about Middle East peace from London ring hollow in the empty streets of Gaza
Sami Abdel-Shafi in Gaza City, The Guardian, 3 May 2008
It is a strange feeling: after working as a productive professional in Gaza for five years, I have become a black market junkie. I make several phone calls a day hunting for fuel for my car, diesel for the electricity generator waiting on standby to power the house, even cigarettes and vitamins. The only way to get hold of these things, to buy life-saving medicines, to purchase the essentials for a life of basic dignity, is through the black market, if at all. Today all Gaza suffers severe water shortages, with the fuel needed to pump and transport water (as well as sewage) dangerously scarce. The few cars seen on Gaza’s mostly empty streets today almost invariably run on used cooking oil due to the lack of diesel.
That feeling of strangeness continued as I read the statement delivered by the Quartet in London yesterday. The four powers mediating in the Middle East – the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia – spoke of “deep concern” and demanded “concrete steps by both sides”. There was no sense, however, that they had properly grasped the depth of Gaza’s plight or the realities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. World politics seems to have morphed into a diplomacy of denial – a denial of how much more firm the international community must be towards the cause of an occupied and dying people.