Electronic Intifada on the US Boat to Gaza

I have a detailed look at the US Boat to Gaza’s efforts to break the Israeli naval blockade later this month as part of the biggest planned flotilla to Gaza yet.  It originally appeared in the Electronic Intifada.  Excerpts:

Recent weeks have seen renewed attention on the blockade of Gaza as international activists’ efforts to break Israel’s blockade with a flotilla come to a head.

The Israeli government has begun to ramp up its propaganda efforts, claiming the flotilla has ties to terrorism. The United States government has warned activists working against the blockade, with a State Department spokesman telling reporters earlier this month that “groups and individuals who seek to break Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza are taking irresponsible and provocative actions” (State Department press briefing, 1 June 2011).

But while the flotilla is only beginning to make headlines now, it’s been a long time in the works.

The organizing for an American boat to join the flotilla began a year ago. Ten days after Israeli forces killed nine activists aboard the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza on 31 May 2010, hundreds of people streamed into a Manhattan church basement for a report on the attack. The one question on everyone’s minds was: “What could we do next?”

The event featured Ann Wright, a former US army colonel who resigned from her State Department post in 2003 to protest the Iraq war, and Adam Shapiro, a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. Wright, who had just described her experience on board the US-flagged Challenger boat that was part of the international Gaza Freedom Flotilla, gave the answer: organize a boat filled with American passengers and join the next flotilla to break the blockade.

Wright’s idea was met with thunderous applause, and activist Laurie Arbeiter proposed two names for the boat: The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My (Palestinian) Father, based on US President Barack Obama’s memoirs. The former name was chosen.

Nearly a year later, final preparations are underway for the next big flotilla to Gaza, which is scheduled to occur in late June. The US Boat to Gaza will take part in the largest planned fleet yet, with an estimated 1,000 passengers from an array of countries collaborating to break Israel’s blockade.

Solidarity activists say that because the US is Israel’s chief economic, military and diplomatic backer, it’s crucial to have US citizens challenge the blockade.

“It’s precisely because of the horrendous role that the US government has played literally for decades now that people inside this country need to have strong voices” against the blockade, said Leslie Cagan, coordinator for The Audacity of Hope and longtime anti-war activist.

Read the whole article here.

The uncertain future of the Gaza blockade post-Mubarak

The overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has caused a lot of people to speculate on what the Egyptian revolution means for the people of Gaza.

Under Mubarak’s rule, Egypt was the junior partner in the Israeli/U.S. effort to squeeze the people of Gaza following the Hamas takeover in 2007.  Mubarak’s gone now, so what happens next?

The only thing that’s clear is that the situation is in flux.

The Egyptian media outlet Al Masry Al Youm‘s Baudouin Long speaks to analysts on “the future of Egyptian diplomacy in Palestine”:

Following the revolution, several experts believe Egyptian diplomacy in Palestine could shift slightly toward a more balanced approach than the traditional backing of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as opposed to Hamas.

Sayyed Amin Shalaby, executive director of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Relations, is convinced that “Egyptian diplomacy will be more assertive and supportive of the rights of Palestinian people.” He affirmed that “Egypt will be working more for the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. In the new regime, when a democratic government will be elected, the tension with Hamas will decrease…”

For Manuel Musallam, a member of the revolutionary council of Fatah who lived in Gaza for 15 years until 2009, Egypt must open the Rafah border. “It would be the first step to prove Egypt’s real determination to change its approach to the Palestinian issue… We will see if the new regime will open the border with Gaza,” he said.

But a Western diplomat in Cairo said the Egyptian military is not keen on complying with Hamas’ demand to open the Rafah border: “The Military is extremely concerned by the security in Sinai, especially after the explosion of the gas pipeline on 5 February. It won’t be keen on opening the border”.

Gaza expert Sara Roy, on Foreign Policy‘s Mideast Channel, comments:

Given the changing political landscape in neighboring Egypt, Gaza’s strategic importance may become even more vital for regional security. There are emerging indications in policy circles that the Egypt-Gaza relationship and how it may evolve are far more worrisome to the U.S. and Israel than is publicly acknowledged…

The power balance in the region is slowly but inexorably shifting in a manner that does not favor US-Israel dominance (with its acceptance and legitimizing of Israeli occupation and Palestinian dispossession). It is the Arab people — not their regimes — who have always supported Palestinian rights, and they may soon be in a position to insist on them. So, too, will Palestinians.

I interviewed some experts on this topic for a piece I wrote in the latest issue of the Indypendent:

Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies told The Indypendent that Egypt’s rulers fear any further opening of Rafah could provide impetus for Israel to throw Gaza into Egypt’s lap. Egypt occupied Gaza for nearly two decades starting in 1948. Following its sweeping victory over Arab states including Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel began the direct military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among other lands.

Israel has been hoping to rid itself of responsibility for Gaza for “a long time now, and I would think that the military would be very aware of that,” said Hijab. “The military will probably walk a fine line between loosening up the blockade without inheriting Gaza.”

Noura Erekat adds, “Given the considersations that this new regime will have, and the threats that it will face, it can’t [decide to lift the blockade] in a vacuum.” Those threats include Israel’s powerful military as well as the possibilities of  strict conditions on or cuts to U.S. military aid. The worst-case scenario, according to Erekat, could be Israeli forces threatening to police the border themselves on the Egytian side.

 

Cracks Appear in the Gaza Blockade

This piece originally appeared in the Indypendent’s latest issue.

The popular revolution that ousted Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has focused renewed attention on Egypt’s role in the blockade of the Gaza Strip. For nearly four years Egypt has aided Israel and the United States in strangling Gaza’s economy, but there are small signs that the siege may be easing.

“The world keeps watching as Gaza is blockaded,” said Mousheera Jammal, a Palestinian activist in Gaza who has been involved with organizing against the clampdown, but “there is hope because of the Egyptian youth.”

On March 6, a delegation organized by Tahrir 4 Gaza successfully crossed the Egyptian border into Gaza and delivered a “symbolic 50-pound bag of cement.” It was the “first bag of cement not approved by Israel” and that hadn’t come through smuggling tunnels, according to a press release from Tahrir 4 Gaza.

Organizers had to contend, however, with a recalcitrant Egyptian military which is currently running the show in Egypt. Posts by activists on tahrir4gaza.net claimed the military pressured them to “reschedule the event,” and that authorities warned bus companies against transporting delegation members to the border.

Organizers are now planning to bring 30 tons of cement into Gaza as part of a series of trips that would “eventually culminate in the permanent opening of the border to people and goods between post-revolutionary Egypt and Palestine,” according to delegation head Ahmed Elassy.

Since 2007, both Israel and Egypt have imposed a crippling siege on the 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to undermine the government led by Hamas, which won elections in January 2006 for the Palestinian parliament and the following year defeated a coup launched by the U.S. and Israeli-backed Fatah.

Cementing its role as junior partner in U.S. and Israeli dominance in the region, Egypt shut the Rafah crossing along Southern Gaza, closing a critical point of access for trade, goods and people.

Palestinian attorney and analyst Noura Erekat explains that Egypt’s cooperation with the blockade is largely due to pressure from the United States and Israel, as well as a view shared with Israel that the Islamist Hamas movement is a threat.

Yet the revolution in Egypt has altered this equation. Prominent Egyptian figures such as Arab League General Secretary Amr Moussa and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei have spoken out against the blockade. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, is also against the blockade. And Egypt’s Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi has called for an end to the siege.

The key player is Egypt’s military, however. It has close ties to Israel, receives $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid and is ruling the country by decree while elections are organized.

The Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported March 6 “getting out of Gaza is harder than ever.” The agency stated that the “blacklist” — Palestinians who are banned from entering Egypt — “has got longer since the Egyptian revolution, quashing hopes that the new regime would lift the siege.”

According to observers, the Egyptian military’s position on the blockade, and its insistence on allowing only 300 Palestinians per day to leave Gaza stems from various factors.

Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies told The Indypendent that Egypt’s rulers fear any further opening of Rafah could provide impetus for Israel to throw Gaza into Egypt’s lap. Egypt occupied Gaza for nearly two decades starting in 1948. Following its sweeping victory over Arab states including Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel began the direct military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among other lands.

Israel has been hoping to rid itself of responsibility for Gaza for “a long time now, and I would think that the military would be very aware of that,” said Hijab. “The military will probably walk a fine line between loosening up the blockade without inheriting Gaza.”

Noura Erekat adds, “Given the considersations that this new regime will have, and the threats that it will face, it can’t [decide to lift the blockade] in a vacuum.” Those threats include Israel’s powerful military as well as the possibilities of  strict conditions on or cuts to U.S. military aid. The worst-case scenario, according to Erekat, could be Israeli forces threatening to police the border themselves on the Egytian side.

“Fundamentally, the official position is the same for now,” wrote Issandr El Amrani, and Egyptian journalist, in a March 7 blog post on arabist.net. “Egypt has a moral responsibility to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza, as well as encourage the international community to pressure Israel into lifting the siege.”

The Palestine Cables: Egyptian VP Suleiman, Israel’s favorite, wants ‘Gaza to go ‘hungry’ but not ‘starve”

This is the latest installment of my column on WikiLeaks and Israel/Palestine at Mondoweiss.  You can read all the installments here.

The Israeli establishment is pleased to see that Omar Suleiman, the former head of Egypt’s intelligence services who was recently appointed to be Egypt’s first vice president, is angling to continue the Mubarak regime.  As reports circulate that Hosni Mubarak may step down tonight, examining Suleiman, Mubarak’s presumed successor, seems all the more important.  State Department cables released by WikiLeaks show that Suleiman directs Egypt’s policies on Israel/Palestine, policies that are in line with Israeli goals:   weakening Hamas, continuing the blockade of Gaza and halting Iranian influence.

In fact, Israel has explicitly voiced that Suleiman–spelled “Soliman” in the diplomatic cables–is their favored choice to assume the helm of the Egyptian presidency once Mubarak is gone.  An August 2008 cable from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv reads:

[Arab Affairs Adviser David] Hacham was full of praise for Soliman, however, and noted that a “hot line” set up between the MOD and Egyptian General Intelligence Service is now in daily use…Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim President if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated. (Note: We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.)

Egypt has been Israel’s chief partner in the devastating blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has caused Gaza’s economy to be on the “brink of collapse,” as a UN spokesman put it yesterday.  Suleiman is quoted in a December 2007 cable as wanting the blockade to cause “Gaza to go ‘hungry’ but not ‘starve.’”  80 percent of the people of Gaza rely on UN aid to survive.

The leaked “Palestine Papers” published by Al Jazeera provide more details on  Suleiman and Egypt’s complicity in the siege.  As Abdullah Al-Arian, writing in Al Jazeera, notes:

Throughout the documents, Suleiman in particular is singled out as the point person whom Israeli and American officials could count on to execute their agenda of dividing the Palestinian factions or pressing the PA for greater concessions…

In early 2007, as the siege on Gaza had crippling consequences on the lives of Palestinians, negotiators complained that Egyptian leaders were duplicitous, speaking publicly in support of allowing goods into Gaza, but in reality, “it remains blocked on the ground …. This is a general problem with the Egyptians”.

An internal report from April 2007 confirms these suspicions. The Agreement on Movement and Access states: “Although there has been political agreement by Omar Suleiman and President Mubarak on allowing exports through, this agreement has never been translated into operational reality.”

Suleiman, and the Mubarak regime, have also been intent on weakening Hamas in the wake of the party being democratically elected in the 2006 Palestinian elections.  The Dec. 2007 cable reports:

In their moments of greatest frustration, Tantawi and Soliman each have claimed that the IDF would be “welcome” to re-invade Philadelphi…Mubarak and his security chiefs viscerally want Hamas “to fail.”

A separate April 2009 cable reports:

On reconciliation, Soliman explained, the ultimate goal was to return the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, as “Gaza in the hands of radicals will never be calm.”

Suleiman’s viewpoint on Iran also lines up with Israeli goals.  An October 2007 cable reports that “Omar Soliman takes an especially hard line on Tehran and frequently refers to the Iranians as ‘devils.’”

A democratic Egypt may save Palestinian and Lebanese lives

When Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979, one of the big dividends for Israel was the removal of a major military threat on their doorstep.  Egypt had participated in wars against Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973.  But since the Camp David peace treaty, Israel has been able to wage war on the Palestinians and other Arab states like Lebanon without having to worry about Egypt’s military stepping in. 

That may change once again if a democratic Egypt emerges from the uprising shaking the Mubarak regime.  Israel has been watching the unrest in Egypt closely and has begun to publicly air their support for the Mubarak dictatatorship. 

The potential for a radical change in the regional status quo–one where Israel has shored up peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, making it the preeminent military power in the region with no contest–has Israel’s military worried.  Ethan Bronner’s latest report in the New York Times quotes Giora Eiland, “a former national security adviser and a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University,” as saying:

During the last 30 years, when we had any military confrontation, whether in the first or second Lebanon wars, the intifadas, in all those events we could be confident that Egypt would not try to intervene militarily

A democratic Egypt may make Israel more reticent about waging a reprise of the devastating assaults on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09, which has been openly talked about in the Israeli press and among Israeli officials.  A democratic Egypt that would reflect popular opinion in the country would also strike a blow against the Israeli/Egyptian siege of Gaza, as Eli Lake points out. 

And the importance of this, measured in human lives, cannot be underestimated:  An Israel that is afraid of an Egyptian response to their assaults could save Palestinian and Lebanese lives.

Two Years After ‘Cast Lead,’ and Six Months After Flotilla, Gaza Remains Ignored

The political and economic situation in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and the daily suffering of Palestinians living there due to a crippling blockade, only breaks into the headlines during wars or incidents like the Israeli raid on the “Freedom Flotilla.”  But other than that, Gaza remains ignored.

Events this past weekend brought no renewed attention to Gaza, and it seems as if no one wants to acknowledge the suffocation that Gazans feel after years of closures and blockades.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a much anticipated address on the “peace process” last Friday at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.  A mere three paragraphs were spoken about Gaza–with the qualification that the U.S. is “pleased with Israel’s recent decision to allow more exports from Gaza which will foster legitimate economic growth there.”  But Israel’s recent decision is limited in scope, and the changes to the blockade that were announced after Israel killed 8 Turks and 1 American on the May 31 aid flotilla have done little to change the situation in Gaza.

The news media has been no different.  Last Sunday, Christine Amanpour, the host of ABC’s This Week, had on Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni.  No one mentioned a word about Gaza.

Livni was foreign minister during Israel’s brutal 2008-09 assault on Gaza.  As such, she bears responsibility for the 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, who were killed by Israel during “Operation Cast Lead.”  Livni had to cancel a trip to Great Britain in December 2009 after an arrest warrant was issued for her complicity in what the U.N. and many other international organizations have called war crimes.

Will the two-year anniversary of Israel’s assault on Gaza continue to go unnoticed?

Is Israeli Decision to Have PA Supervise Exports Out of Gaza First Step in Plan Revealed by WikiLeaks?

Israel yesterday announced an expansion of exports out of the blockaded Gaza Strip, a small but welcome step in the ongoing efforts to break the crippling blockade.

But perhaps that’s not the most important news to come out of the announcement.  What could have more significance is that Palestinian Authority (PA) “inspectors will begin to work in the Kerem Shalom crossing, and oversee the collection of import taxes and the export of goods from Gaza to the West Bank,” according to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.  “This would mark the first return of Palestinian Authority officials to the Gaza Strip since the Hamas takeover in June 2007.”

The recently released State Department cables by WikiLeaks add important context behind the decision to have the PA return to Gaza.

Hamas, which runs Gaza, has not yet publicly reacted to this news.  But it’s sure to be unwelcome for the Islamist movement, who have so far resisted any suggestions that the PA be allowed to operate in Gaza.  Since the brief civil war between Hamas and Fatah in 2007, which came as a result of the U.S. arming and encouraging Fatah to take over Gaza despite Hamas having won the 2006 Palestinian elections democratically, reconciliation talks between the two sides have been ongoing.  They have so far failed.

At the same time of the reconciliation talks, both Hamas and Fatah have been arresting each other’s supporters and party members, further driving a wedge between the parties and the territories they govern, which has long been an Israeli priority.

What emerges in the WikiLeaks State Department cables is a realization that Israel and Egypt’s long-term plan for Gaza, backed by the U.S., is to have the PA return there.  Might the Israeli decision to allow exports out of Gaza and to have PA officials supervise the Kerem Shalom crossing be a first step in attempting that goal?

One of the most explosive revelations relating to Israel/Palestine that has come out of WikiLeaks is the cable that shows that, about five months after the end of the 2008-09 Israeli assault, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the U.S. that he had “consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas.”

Other cables show similar entreaties by interested parties, all of them wanting to strengthen the PA.  The head of Egypt’s intelligence services, Omar Soliman, told the U.S. in July 2009 that “Egypt’s three primary objectives with the Palestinians were to maintain calm in Gaza, undermine Hamas, and build popular support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”  Another cable from 2007, states that Benjamin Netanyahu said that “Israel and the U.S. should focus on ‘bringing down Hamas’ through an ‘economic squeeze.’”

The cables show an intent to subvert Palestinian democracy and strengthen the PA at the expense of Hamas.  The wishes of the PA returning to power in Gaza, expressed in the State Department cables, may now partly come true with the latest Israeli decision on exports out of Gaza–but only at the expense of the Palestinian people, who still find themselves politically divided while Israel’s occupation and land confiscation grinds on.  Unilaterally installing the PA at a Gaza crossing won’t help.

Coalition of Human Rights Groups Call Israel’s Gaza Bluff

View this document on Scribd

A large, international coalition of human rights groups released a report (embedded above) yesterday examining the ongoing and illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip and whether anything has changed post-”Freedom Flotilla.”  The answer is that not much has changed.

In the aftermath of Israel’s illegal attack on the Gaza-bound “Freedom Flotilla,” international attention was focused on the situation in Gaza.  In early July, responding to international pressure, the Israeli government announced an “easing” of the blockade.  The “easing” measures included promises of the allowance of more consumer products into Gaza and allowing the entry of construction materials for projects approved by the Palestinian Authority (which has no power in Gaza).  This new report has a handy chart looking at the promises made post-flotilla and how they match up to reality.

The report indicates that Gaza remains in dire straits, with an economy strangled to death, a lack of construction materials to build homes and schools that were destroyed by the 2008-09 Israeli assault, and a population “locked in” with no way to freely enter and exit the Gaza Strip as they please.

The human rights coalition concludes the publication with an urgent call to the international community:

The international community must do its part to ensure that its repeated appeals to end the blockade are finally heeded.

1) Launch a new, concerted diplomatic initiative for an immediate, unconditional and complete lifting of the blockade, including:
• allowing movement of people including humanitarian staff into and out of Gaza;
• allowing exports from Gaza;
• allowing entry of construction materials including those for the private sector;
• allowing entry of raw materials;
• expanding operations of the crossings;
• lifting restrictions on fuel imports;
• ensuring access to Gaza’s agricultural land and fishing grounds and the protection of civilians in these areas.

2) Convene a meeting of the UN Security Council to review the implementation of Resolution 1860 which emphasises “the need to ensure sustained and regular flow of goods and people through the Gaza crossings” and calls for “tangible steps towards intra-Palestinian reconciliation.” Further action necessary for its implementation should be considered.

3) Plan a visit to Gaza as part of every high-level visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

4) State explicitly that the ongoing blockade is illegal under international law.

5) Support genuine investigations into, and accountability for, violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law committed by all parties, including the Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups as a way to prevent future violations.

Gaza’s Ongoing Crisis Is Not News: Routine killing, hunger off TV’s agenda

The following article originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of Extra!, the monthly magazine of the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.  The trend highlighted in the article of corporate media completely ignoring the crisis in Gaza unless there are headline grabbing events like the raid on the Gaza aid flotilla continues to hold steady.

Since the Islamist movement Hamas won democratic elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, Israel has been waging what it has referred to as “economic warfare” (McClatchy, 6/9/10) to collectively punish Gazans for their choice. The economic sanctions increased after Hamas’ June 2006 capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit; a full-blown air, land and sea blockade was imposed by Israel (and Egypt) in June 2007 after Hamas routed an attempted coup by the rival, U.S.-backed Fatah party and took control in the Gaza Strip.

The blockade against the coastal strip has had devastating consequences for the one-and-a-half million Palestinians living in Gaza, including near-total economic collapse, and has been repeatedly condemned by international bodies (e.g., International Committee of the Red Cross, 6/14/10), but corporate media in the United States have largely ignored it. While Gaza gained some attention when Israel was pummeling the Strip in its 2008–09 assault, and again in the wake of the deadly Israeli raid on the Gaza aid flotilla in May 2010, the dire situation there got scant coverage in the period between those headline-grabbing events.

Despite Israel’s recent claim of “easing” the siege (6/10/10), the civilian population, over half of whom are children, remains trapped in what NBC reporter Tom Aspell (6/8/10), in a rare critical take, referred to as “a 140-square-mile prison.” Freedom of movement for Gazans is severely restricted, people still can’t export goods and the naval blockade remains in place. A May 2010 report on Gaza from the UN Development Program paints a disturbing picture: 75 percent of infrastructure damaged during the 2008–09 Israeli invasion remains unrepaired due to the near-total ban on imports of construction materials, more than 90 percent of Gaza’s drinking water is unfit for consumption, over 40 percent of people are unemployed and over a million Gazans depend on food aid.

Between February 2009 and May 2010—from just after the 2008–09 Gaza conflict until shortly before the Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla—there were 43 on-the-ground news reports related to the situation in Palestine from the television news outlets ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. Only eight stories dealt specifically with the humanitarian crisis and the effects of war in Gaza: four on CNN, three on ABC and one on NBC.

The rest largely focused on the Israeli/Palestinian “peace process” and the short-lived U.S./Israeli tensions over illegal Israeli settlements. CNN also aired three reports critical of what it portrayed as Islamist indoctrination of Gazan children, depicting summer camps and children’s TV as promoting suicide bombing and terrorism. None of these segments mentioned the nearly 1,000 Gazan children killed by Israel in the past 10 years, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, as a possible motivation for violent resistance.

None of the outlets ran a report on the UN’s Goldstone report, which accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during the 2008–09 conflict. Nor did these outlets mention any of the 67 Israeli killings in Gaza counted by B’Tselem during this time period—including 23 civilians, eight of whom were children.

Despite the sparse coverage, there was no lack of compelling stories in this 14-month period—like that of Ahmad Suliman Salem Deeb, the 19-year-old Gaza City resident who was killed by Israeli soldiers during a non-violent demonstration against the Israeli “buffer zone” that prevents 30 percent of Gaza’s arable land from being farmed (International Solidarity Movement, 4/28/10). Or Mutassim Dalloul, whose dairy factory in Gaza was blown up not once but twice by U.S.-funded Israeli bombs—first during the Israeli invasion and again on April 1–2, 2010 (Electronic Intifada, 4/5/10)–continuing the targeting of Gaza’s means of sustenance that the Goldstone report deemed illegal.

Had such stories showing the blockade’s human effects been told, had Gazans been given names and faces, the commentary after the Israeli raid on the aid flotilla trying to break the blockade might have sounded much different. With so little attention paid to the humanitarian situation there, though, it’s unsurprising that one commentator after another (Extra!, 7/10) could contend, like Monica Crowley on Fox Business News (6/2/10), “There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza at all!”

Siege of Gaza Murders Two-year Old Girl (And There’s Nothing but Silence)

When Hamas gunmen killed four Israeli settlers near Hebron at the end of August, it made headlines around the world and drew swift condemnation from the United States.   

But when a two-year old girl is murdered by the Israeli blockade of Gaza, who will notice?  The girl isn’t Jewish; she happened to be born a Palestinian, so we won’t be hearing anything from the United States.

Via Jesse Bacon at Jewish Voice for Peace’s The Only Democracy? blog, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel reports on the death of Nasma Abu Lasheen:

Nasma Abu Lasheen died on Saturday, October 16, 2010 in Gaza. Israel failed to issue her an urgent entry permit for life-saving medical treatment at Ha-Emek Medical Center in Afula, Israel. She was two years old.

Abu Lasheen, a young resident of Gaza diagnosed with Leukemia, was referred for emergency treatment in Israel on October 6, 2010. When requests to the Israeli Army for an entry permit went unanswered for several days, by way of B’tselem, the family contacted Physicians for Human Rights- Israel (PHR-Israel) for additional help. That very same day, on October 13, 2010, PHR-Israel contacted the Gaza District Coordination Office (DCO) demanding a permit be issued immediately to the baby and her father to enable their entry into Israel. A military approval was finally granted the next afternoon, October 14, 2010.

Abu Lasheen’s medical condition had been deteriorating rapidly and by the time the permit was received, the treating doctor in Gaza, Dr. Mohammad Abu Sha’aban, said she was too sick to travel. Nasma died in the early morning hours of October 16, 2010.

PHR-Israel immediately lodged a complaint with the head of the Israeli DCO, demanding an immediate inquiry into those responsible for the delayed response.

Abu Lasheen’s death comes just days PHR-Israel testified to the Israeli Turkel Commission which investigates the Flotilla incident, on the humanitarian situation in Gaza Strip as a result of Israel’s closure policy. In their October 13th testimony, PHR- Israel pointed to the rising numbers of Gaza patients denied exit for treatment in hospitals outside the Strip, a phenomenon that has intensified since Israel’s tightened closure took effect June 2007. PHR-Israel emphasized that for the patients, a delayed or non-approved permit could mean the difference between quality of life and preventable pain and suffering, and in many cases, even the difference between life and death, as demonstrated by the Abu Lasheem case.

PHR- Israel calls on the Israeli authorities at Erez Crossing to investigate those responsible for delays involved in Nasma Abu Lasheen’s case. PHR- Israel reiterates its demand that Israel fulfill its obligations vis-à-vis the residents of Gaza by ensuring them full and timely access to medical treatment unavailable in the Gaza Stip.

The death of this two-year old girl due to what the International Committee of the Red Cross calls the “collective punishment” of Gaza is no anomaly.  Other residents of Gaza have died for similar reasons. 

Who will speak out?