The senior United Nations official for humanitarian relief took a tour of Gaza on Tuesday, a year after Israel’s war here, and declared keen concern for what he called the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians due to the blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt.
“What we are seeing here for the people of Gaza is an existence, not a life,” the official, John Holmes, the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, told reporters. He spoke about “the continuing and growing pernicious and negative consequences of this blockade,” saying it was “not just the absence of reconstruction and development” after the war, “but also a situation of development going backwards.”
Israel imposed import restrictions on Gaza after Hamas captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in 2006, and strengthened them a year later after Hamas, which calls for Israel’s destruction, seized Gaza. Israel allows daily shipments of food, medicine and other supplies.
Mr. Holmes, who was last here a year ago, discounted the legitimacy of using the blockade to force the release of the soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit. But he said that Sergeant Shalit should be released and should have been granted visits by the Red Cross, which Hamas has not allowed.
Mr. Holmes noted that some commerce had found its way around the blockade through smugglers’ tunnels from the Egyptian Sinai, but noted the dangers of a smuggler economy, including conditions in the tunnels, which frequently collapse.
He toured a factory in northern Gaza that turns rubble into limited amounts of cement. He also saw some mud huts that a few Gazans had started to build.
“That gave me a faith in the ability of the people here to overcome even the worst problems,” he said. “But of course, that is no substitute for the end of the blockade as soon as possible.”
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