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The international Red Cross issued a dire warning on the state of basic services in Gaza on Tuesday, calling on Israel to lift a blockade it has imposed in response to increased rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.
Israel eased the siege for a day on Tueday, allowing in shipments of fuel and medicine. But the International Committee of the Red Cross said aid needed to be allowed into the territory on a regular basis to prevent a complete collapse of health and sanitary services.
A new fundamentalist player is emerging in Palestinian politics. The group sounds like Hamas – or even Al Qaeda – but doesn't support suicide bombings or secret militias. In recent months, it has shown it can put tens of thousands of supporters into the streets.
Yussef Al-Jayar jolted awake this week when gallons of raw sewage spewed out of the pumping station next door and started to seep under his door and into his mattress. "We had to grab buckets and get the neighbours to help bail us out," the 74-year-old Palestinian said at his house in Gaza City, pointing to a mark about a metre above the floor where the rancid water reached. "It stank." Jayar and his family have just about scraped all the black slime off their walls since the main pipe burst at Gaza City's water pump no.
PRESIDENT BUSH'S trip to the Middle East last week seems to have been an effort to blow some air into his sagging, anti-Iranian balloon. His Sunni allies in the region are indeed worried about the rising power and belligerency of Shi'ite Iran, but they also know that it was Bush's war in Iraq that empowered Iran, and they are not sure they trust him to come up with a solution.
The siege of Gaza has reached a vicious new intensity. Last Thursday, Israel blocked the delivery of fuel oil supplies to the Strip. The result is that Gaza's only power station has not functioned since the weekend. Hundred of thousands of homes in the territory have been left without power. Hospitals have been forced to rely on diesel generators. Bakeries and petrol stations have closed. International aid organisations working in the Strip have warned of a threat to sewage and water supplies if the blockade continues.
When it opened its doors seven years ago, the European Gaza hospital was one of the biggest foreign investments in the long-troubled Gaza Strip and one of the leading medical centres in the Palestinian territories. Yesterday, the 250-bed hospital was sliding rapidly into crisis, turning away patients for routine operations and struggling to manage emergency cases, as the sole power plant in Gaza halted electricity production after Israel stopped all fuel supplies.
Israel agreed under intense international pressure last night to allow a one-off delivery of fuel and medicines to Gaza to avert a humanitarian crisis.
Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, said that he would allow the emergency shipment after the Gaza Strip's sole remaining power plant shut down for lack of fuel and UN officials gave warning that they would be forced to stop food handouts to about a million Gazans if the total blockade, imposed last week, was not lifted.
Some of the condemnatory language flowing out of the international community is finally looking commensurate with the appalling tactics employed by Israel's government and military in the Gaza Strip. Direct reprisals against civilians and other forms of collective punishment are war crimes, after all, regardless of whether or not the perpetrator has deigned to sign that part of the Geneva Conventions defining them as such. But it is not enough for outside powers to summon the courage to speak out against Israeli abuses.
There is growing concern in Israel that the recent tightening of sanctions against the Gaza Strip will result in international pressure to transfer control of the border crossings into the Strip to the Palestinian Authority.
Defense Ministry officials yesterday pointed with satisfaction at the low number of Qassam rockets launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip in the past few days. Here was proof of the wisdom of Defense Minister Ehud Barak's decision last weekend to impose a total blockade on Gaza, in response to the ceaseless fire from Hamas. Just last week there were 42 launches a day on average, whereas in the past two days there were only four.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/5874
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/5874
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/5874
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/world_press_roundup/20080122t000000
[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012200952_pf.html
[7] http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0122/p01s03-wome.htm
[8] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L2268055.htm
[9] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/22/a_mideast_lesson_for_bush/
[10] http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article3359045.ece
[11] http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2244719,00.html
[12] http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3227950.ece
[13] http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=88234&categ_id=17
[14] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/946895.html
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/946854.html
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