Two months after its war on Gaza ended, Israel continues to impose a policy of “no development, no prosperity, no humanitarian crisis” on the strip’s 1.5 million people.
Food and medicines flow through the goods crossings between Israel and Gaza at a volume to provide a bare sufficiency, but a flat ban on construction materials has blocked the rebuilding of destroyed and damaged houses, commercial premises, schools and essential infrastructure.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “access remains the single most important condition for the advancement of the relief and rehabilitation efforts”.
Under pressure from the international community to boost relief supplies, Israel has, marginally, increased the flow of food and medicines. During the first week of March, 729 lorry-loads of goods entered Gaza, 43 per cent for humanitarian programmes; 88 per cent carried food and the rest transferred hygiene/cleaning supplies, medicines, non-edible goods, educational material, industrial and electrical appliances and packaging.
The daily average cited by OCHA was 121.5 trucks as compared to 80-100 during the 22-day war. This is less than half the 246 figure in the third week of July 2008, more than a year after Israel tightened its blockade. When the goods crossings were working normally, they used to process 450-750 lorry-loads daily, rather than weekly.
Volume is not the only problem. Aid agencies and traders never know what will be on daily lists of approved goods and in what quantities. In recent weeks, banned items included pasta, lentils (an item in UN ration packages), toilet paper, certain kinds of cheese, tooth paste and tooth brushes, jam, laundry powder and school notebooks. Aid agencies and traders do not know from day to day what items will be stopped. Medicines expire, perishables perish, and storage costs rise.
One of the reasons volume is limited is that only three of the four import-export crossings between Israel and Gaza are partially operational. The Nahal Oz facility for fuel works at less than capacity. Only a limited amount of industrial diesel needed by Gaza’s sole power plant is supplied, no diesel or petrol for private vehicles is getting through, and a small percentage of requirements of cooking gas is provided.
At the industrial-scale Karni crossing, conveyor belts - which can handle a large volume of a variety of goods - shift only grain into Gaza. Karem Shalom, with two walled bays for transferring goods from Israeli to Palestinian trucks, is operating to rule. Sufa, the entry point for construction materials is closed.
The head of a Western non-governmental organisation said: “Not one bag of cement has come into Gaza.”
UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman Christopher Gunness declared: “The blockade has to be deconstructed if Gaza is to be reconstructed.”
He said UNRWA had “patched up” some of the agency’s 50 facilities damaged during the Israeli offensive. Although the agency “put out the white phosphorus fires” which smouldered long after the building was bombed, its “main warehouse lies in ruins”.
He argued that the Karem Shalom crossing “is a bottleneck” which cannot be used if “we are to get in construction materials on an industrial scale. This can be done only through Karni [which is] like a normal cargo terminal at a port.”
The NGO head observed that projects due to be undertaken by many agencies (once there are materials) could be doubly delayed because US and some international aid bodies insist that there should be no contact with local Hamas-run authorities, including ministries and municipalities. This slows down the process of launching projects.
The NGO chairman said that his agency is set to repair water pipes in outlying neighbourhoods where Gaza-manufactured two-to-three inch pipes can be used. Larger diameter, high pressure pipes are unavailable due to the blockade, he said. He also made the point that Gaza-made pipes cost three-to-four times more than imported items because raw materials have to be smuggled in through the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza.
“Project estimates go up,” he stated.
Shelter is not the only problem. UN satellite images reveal that the flood of sewage created by Israel’s bombing of a treatment plant southeast of Gaza City is so large that the pool can be seen from outer space. The sewage plant, serving 400,000 people, was damaged early in January. While teams from the Palestinian water authority and the Red Cross were able to fix a pipe pouring raw waste into the Mediterranean, there have been delays because of lack of building materials and spare parts. The health risk is high and will increase as the long, hot summer approaches.
UN relief and other international aid agencies also face restrictions on personnel because Israel and Egypt, which control the Erez and Rafah people crossings into Gaza, do not permit the entry of all the specialists and other staff these organisations require to gear-up operations in the strip. Even some sappers were not allowed into Gaza to help a small team collecting and disposing of unexploded Israeli ordnance. This, too, poses a grave risk to Gaza’s citizens.
Jaber Wishah, deputy director of the Gaza-based Palestinian Human Rights Centre, said Israel’s blockade of construction materials is “a violation of human rights: the right to proper housing, the right to health”. Nevertheless, the international community is deaf to the appeals of OCHA, UNRWA and human rights organisations while the people of Gaza grow poorer and more desperate by the day.
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