{"id":4755,"date":"2008-11-18T17:33:12","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T22:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4755"},"modified":"2008-11-18T17:33:12","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T22:33:12","slug":"jonathan-cook-the-real-goal-of-israels-gaza-blockade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4755","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Cook: The real goal of Israel’s Gaza blockade"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada<\/em>, 17 November 2008<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The latest tightening of Israel’s chokehold on Gaza — ending all supplies into the Strip for more than a week — has produced immediate and shocking consequences for Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants.<\/p>\n

The refusal to allow in fuel has forced the shutting down of Gaza’s only power station, creating a blackout that pushed Palestinians bearing candles on to the streets in protest last week. A water and sanitation crisis are expected to follow.<\/p>\n

And on Thursday, the United Nations announced it had run out of the food essentials it supplies to 750,000 desperately needy Gazans. “This has become a blockade against the United Nations itself,” a spokesman said.<\/p>\n

In a further blow, Israel’s large Bank Hapoalim said it would refuse all transactions with Gaza by the end of the month, effectively imposing a financial blockade on an economy dependent on the Israeli shekel. Other banks are planning to follow suit, forced into a corner by Israel’s declaration in Sept 2007 of Gaza as an “enemy entity.”<\/a><\/p>\n

There are likely to be few witnesses to Gaza’s descent into a dark and hungry winter. In the past week, all journalists were refused access to Gaza, as were a group of senior European diplomats. Days earlier, dozens of academics and doctors due to attend a conference to assess the damage done to Gazans’ mental health were also turned back.<\/p>\n

[Read the report<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 17 November 2008 The latest tightening of Israel’s chokehold on Gaza — ending all supplies into the Strip for more than a week — has produced immediate and shocking consequences for Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-1eH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4755"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4757,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4755\/revisions\/4757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}