Doh! The Israeli blockade's in the headlines again

Posted by Kromey at 10:45pm Aug 11 '08
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The BBC has just posted a great guide to the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza strip, listing out in surprising detail all the things that Israel has done here. Here's some excepts:

Only basic humanitarian items have been allowed in, and virtually no exports permitted, paralysing the economy. Reduced fuel supplies and lack of spare parts have had heavy knock-on impacts on sewage treatment, waste collection, water supply and medical facilities.

Innocent men, women, and children are living without clean water, and more than one village lies in the [private] of a earthen-walled pond of sewage because there's nowhere else to put it.

The UN survey found more than half Gaza's households had sold their disposable assets and were relying on credit to buy food, three-quarters of Gazans were buying less food than in the past, and almost all of them were eating less fresh fruit, vegetables and animal protein to save money.

Power cuts and shortages of fuel for back-up generators have meant Gaza's three sewage plants have been unable to secure the 14 days uninterrupted power supply required to treat sewage. Gaza's sewage treatment body has had less than 40% of the fuel it needs for much of the past year, and estimates it has been releasing 50-70m litres of raw or poorly-treated sewage into the sea daily during 2008.

Hooray! We're teaching those terrorist fish a real lesson now!

In January 2008, Israel's Supreme Court dismissed a challenge by human rights groups to the practice of restricting fuel supplies.

The court set minimum thresholds that fuel deliveries should not fall below - compared with before the restrictions, these were 63% of industrial diesel supplies, 18% of petrol and 57% of diesel imports.

But figures monitored by international agencies show fuel deliveries dropped even below these minimums at several points in the first half of 2008.

So much for the rule of law - Israel is now defying their own courts in maintaining this blockade!

There's a whole lot more in the article, including graphs that really illustrate the restrictions Israel has imposed upon the Strip. Definitely worth a read.

This is the part that really gets to me:

Aid agencies say medical institutions have been largely unable to import spare parts for equipment. The UN said that by December 2007, the majority of diagnostic equipment, such as X-ray machines and MRI scanners, in municipal facilities was no longer functioning. But Israel says it has never limited access to spare parts for medical equipment and blames any lack of equipment on funding shortages on the Palestinian side. [That couldn't have anything to do with the collapse of the economy due to the harsh blockade!]

PHR says the inability to send staff outside Gaza for training is also a problem, giving the example of a new radiotherapy facility that could not be used because there were no trained staff to use it.

Fuel shortages have also affected hospitals, with ambulances running out of fuel at points in early 2008, and back-up generators - needed during power cuts - running low on fuel and lacking spare parts.

Patients in need of urgent medical care are allowed through Erez crossing points, but PHR says the number of patients being granted permits has dropped from 89% in January 2007 to just over half in June 2008. Rafah crossing has been closed since June 2007, although urgent cases are sporadically allowed to pass through it. A few hundred patients have left Gaza since then, and more than 3,000 Gazans have returned, according to PHR.

PHR says 200 patients died while waiting for permits in the past year. The WHO attributes at least 20 such deaths, in a two month period, to the fact the patients could not leave the Strip for treatment.