ISRAELI BLOCKADE 'FORCES PALESTINIANS TO SEARCH RUBBISH DUMPS FOR FOOD'
by Peter Beaumont

Observer
December 21, 2008 UK

UN fears irreversible damage is being done in Gaza as new statistics
reveal the level of deprivation

Impoverished Palestinians on the Gaza Strip are being forced to
scavenge for food on rubbish dumps to survive as Israel's economic
blockade risks causing irreversible damage, according to international
observers.

Thousands of people took to the streets in Beirut's southern suburbs
on Friday to join a Hizbullah-led protest against Israel's brutal
blockade of the Gaza Strip.Figures released last week by the UN
Relief and Works Agency reveal that the economic blockade imposed by
Israel on Gaza in July last year has had a devastating impact on the
local population. Large numbers of Palestinians are unable to afford
the high prices of food being smuggled through the Hamas-controlled
tunnels to the Strip from Egypt and last week were confronted with the
suspension of UN food and cash distribution as a result of the siege.

The figures collected by the UN agency show that 51.8% - an
"unprecedentedly high" number of Gaza's 1.5 million population - are
now living below the poverty line. The agency announced last week that
it had been forced to stop distributing food rations to the 750,000
people in need and had also suspended cash distributions to 94,000
of the most disadvantaged who were unable to afford the high prices
being asked for smuggled food.

"Things have been getting worse and worse," said Chris Gunness of the
agency yesterday. "It is the first time we have been seeing people
picking through the rubbish like this looking for things to eat. Things
are particularly bad in Gaza City where the population is most dense.

"Because Gaza is now operating as a 'tunnel economy' and there is so
little coming through via Israeli crossings, it is hitting the most
disadvantaged worst."

Gunness also expressed concern about the state of Gaza's
infrastructure, including its water and sewerage systems, which have
not been maintained properly since Israel began blocking shipments of
concrete into Gaza, warning of the risk of the spread of communicable
diseases both inside and outside of Gaza.

"This is not a humanitarian crisis," he said. "This is a political
crisis of choice with dire humanitarian consequences."

The revelations over the escalating difficulties inside Gaza were
delivered a day after the end of the six-month ceasefire between Israel
and Gaza's Hamas rulers, which had been brokered by Egypt in June,
and follow warnings from the World Bank at the beginning of December
that Gaza faced "irreversible" economic collapse.

The deteriorating conditions inside Gaza emerged as Tony Blair,
Middle East envoy for the Quartet - US, Russia, the UN and the EU -
warned explicitly yesterday that Israel's policy of economic blockade,
which had been imposed a year and a half ago when Hamas took power on
the Gaza Strip, was reinforcing rather than undermining the party's
hold on power. In an interview in the Israeli newspaper Haartez,
Blair warned that the collapse of Gaza's legitimate economy under
the impact of the blockade, while harming Gaza's businessmen and
ordinary people, had allowed the emergence of an alternative system
based on smuggling through the Hamas-controlled tunnels. Hamas "taxed"
the goods smuggled through the tunnels.

It was because of this that Blair wrote to Israel's prime minister,
Ehud Olmert, earlier this month demanding that Israel permit
the transfer of cash into Gaza from the West Bank to prop up the
legitimate economy.

"The present situation is not harming Hamas in Gaza but it is harming
the people," Blair said yesterday. Calling for a change in policy
over Gaza, he added: "I don't think that the current situation is
sustainable; I think most people who would analyse it think the same."

Blair's comments came as an Israeli air strike against a rocket squad
killed a Palestinian militant yesterday, the first Gaza death since
Hamas formally declared an end to a six-month truce with Israel.

Also yesterday, a boat carrying a Qatari delegation, Lebanese activists
and journalists from Israel and Lebanon sailed into Gaza City's small
port in defiance of a border blockade. It was the fifth such boat trip
since the summer. The two Qatari citizens aboard the Dignity are from
the government-funded Qatar Authority for Charitable Activities.

"We are here to represent the Qatar government and people," said
delegation member Aed al-Kahtani. "We will look into the needs of
our brothers in Gaza, and find out what is the most appropriate way
to bring in aid."

The arrival of the delegation reflects the growing anger in the Arab
world over the Gaza siege, directed at Israel but also at Egypt,
which has allowed the border crossings at the southern end of the
Strip to remain sealed.

On Friday, thousands of people joined a rally in Beirut organized by
Lebanon's Shia Hezbollah movement against Israel's blockade of the
Gaza Strip.

Addressing the Beirut crowd, Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim
Kassem called on Arab and Islamic governments to act to help lift
the Gaza blockade, and urged Egypt to take an "historic stance"
by opening its border crossing with Gaza.

"Silence on the [Gaza] blockade is disgraceful. Silence on the blockade
amounts to participation in the [Israeli] occupation," Kassem said.