International aid agency: 80 percent of Gazans now rely on food aid

[Doondoo]

Eighty percent of Gazans receive food aid from the World Food Program or from UNRWA, WFP spokesperson Kirstie Campbell says, "and without it they are liable to starve."

The dozens of laborers who used to cross into Israel every day to work also found themselves unemployed as a result of laws prohibiting them from working and the construction of the separation barrier.

.......

"We are seeing more and more children who come to school without eating breakfast and without the ability to buy breakfast," Campbell says. "Many families can only give their children one meal a day. The problem is particularly severe in Gaza, but it occurs in the West Bank as well."

Campbell says that while in the past food shortages were generally limited to rural areas, it now affects urban residents, traders and people who own small workshops, among others.

"The Palestinian economy is becoming an 'island' economy," Campbell explains, "small areas where residents trade among themselves." The WFP defines food insecurity as income of less than $1.60 per person per day, since this is the minimum required to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet. In Gaza, many people eat nothing but tomatoes and bread. Their neighbors and relatives may try to help, but it is not enough.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/832936.html

[acmavm]

1. Well, that's one way for Israel to get ahold of Gaza and the West Bank.

Isolate and starve them all to death.

[breakaleg]

2. Completely outrageous.

[Tom Joad]

3. It is a crime against humanity. Nothing less. Olmert's plan is working.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9785

As the Hamas Team Laughs
by Gideon Levy

February 22, 2006
Ha'aretz
Printer Friendly Version
EMail Article to a Friend

The Hamas team had not laughed so much in a long time. The team, headed by the prime minister's advisor Dov Weissglas and including the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, the director of the Shin Bet and senior generals and officials, convened for a discussion with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on ways to respond to the Hamas election victory. Everyone agreed on the need to impose an economic siege on the Palestinian Authority, and Weissglas, as usual, provided the punch line: "It's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die," the advisor joked, and the participants reportedly rolled with laughter. And, indeed, why not break into laughter and relax when hearing such a successful joke? If Weissglas tells the joke to his friend Condoleezza Rice, she would surely laugh too.

But Weissglas' wisecrack was in particularly poor taste. Like the thunder of laughter it elicited, it again revealed the extent to which Israel's intoxication with power drives it crazy and completely distorts its morality. With a single joke, the successful attorney and hedonist from Lilenblum Street, Tel Aviv demonstrated the chilling heartlessness that has spread throughout the top echelon of Israel's society and politics. While masses of Palestinians are living in inhumane conditions, with horrifying levels of unemployment and poverty that are unknown in Israel, humiliated and incarcerated under our responsibility and culpability, the top military and political brass share a hearty laugh a moment before deciding to impose an economic siege that will be even more brutal than the one until now.

The proposal to put hungry people on a diet is accepted here without shock, without public criticism; even if only said in jest, it is incomparably worse than the Danish caricature. It reflects a widespread mood that will usher in cruel, practical measures. If until now one could argue that Israel primarily demonstrated insensitivity to the suffering of the other and closed its eyes (especially the stronger classes, busy with their lives of plenty) while a complete nation was groaning only a few kilometers away, now Israel is also making jokes at the expense of the other's suffering.

[Scurrilous]

4. Poverty Follows Palestinians' Sanctions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6450857,00.html


Unforeseen Five at Al Shifa, Gaza's Main Hospital

http://bbsnews.net/article.php/20070227000206242

'Perhaps those newborn babies will enjoy a safe and unoccupied Palestine'

<snip>

"A 25 year old mother lies down, recovering after giving birth to quintuplets, a highlight of Gazan news amidst the internal family disputes occurring in the Khan Younis refugee Camp in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

In Al Shifa’s Cesarean department, Laila Abu Nofal delivered four baby boys and a fifth unexpected gift: a baby girl.

Mohammed Nofal, the 28 year old father of the newborn babies, mentions in an interview that while his wife had taken hormone treatments to get pregnant, they never expected to have five babies at once."

<snip>

"The crucial question remains whether Mohammed Nofal will be able to raise their five new babies, especially as they will require special care. Mohammed works as a policeman in Gaza, and like the rest of Palestinians working for the Palestinian Authority, he has not received his salary for many months, since sanctions were imposed by the US, Israel and the EU. Even if he is receiving his salary, $460 is not enough money for milk and other expenses for all his children. He wonders how he is going to raise his quintuplets, when, additionally, his parents also need help.

Only if the sanctions imposed on Palestinians by the international community are lifted will the challenge of providing for his extensive family become more feasible. The extreme poverty of most Palestinians in Gaza is so severe that in addition to the lifting of the sanctions, humanitarian funding is necessary, so that the new born babies can count on a bottle of milk, and malnourished children throughout the Strip can avoid irreparable damage.

On one side of Gaza, in Gaza City, new babies are born; but in Khan Younis, another five people were killed in a family dispute. And, according to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, another 45 Palestinians were injured.

Everyday, people are killed in the Gaza Strip, but people are still getting married, despite the grave situation; people are still having children, as all believe this appalling situation can’t last forever. Perhaps those newborn babies will enjoy a safe and unoccupied Palestine. But only if ‘civilized’ countries want them to; only if the international community truly wakes up and takes decisions to end the embargo on Palestinians, restore our right to earning a livelihood, and compensate the great losses we have suffered as a result both of the sanctions and Israel’s ban on fishing and exporting."

[Scurrilous]

5. Israel harms Palestinian workers, says B'Tselem report

Human rights organization presents comprehensive report on how Israel harms Palestinians' economy, livelihood. Gives testimonies of abuse at checkpoints, claims complaints are ignored

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3372966,00.html

<snip>

"Israel prefers to ignore the abuse and humiliation Palestinian workers undergo in their encounters with Israeli security forces on a daily basis, stated a B'Tselem report released Tuesday.

The report, titled: "Beyond Legal Boundaries," composed by the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories claimed that Israel harms the dignities, bodies, and property of illegal workers.

Offering detailed testimonies of Palestinians who claim to have been mistreated by soldiers and police officers, the report stated that only about 1.5 percent of the complaints filed led to the soldiers being tried in criminal court.

According to B'Tselem, each year Israel places a closure on the Palestinian territories for long periods of times, preventing workers to enter its territory, and in 2005, entrance was denied for a total of 132 days of the year.

In 2000, 150,000 Palestinians were issued permits to work in Israel; however, the report presented data showing that there has been a continuous drop in this number, to about half in 2006."