Israel slow-motion genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza

Written by Greta Berlin

E-mail received: 10th September 2009

Source: GazaFriends

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As Israel continues to commit slow-motion genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, saying they let in 150 trucks a day of food and medical aid (when they people of Gaza need 500-600 trucks a day), and B’tselem, the Israeli Human Rights group writes that more than 50% of the people of Gaza Israel killed were civilians, the world stands silent.

No building supplies are allowed into Gaza. Not one penny of the $4.5 billion to rebuild Gaza has been spent to rebuild.

Israel continues to occupy 1.5 million people, crushing them beneath their boots and their tanks. Farmers cannot farm, fishermen cannot fish.

Israel says they have ‘allowed’ some humanitarian supplies into Gaza, as though they have the right to control the destinies of the population. And now children are going back to school with no crayons, no paper, no books and no windows.

The Free Gaza movement is determined to deliver a cargo ship of building supplies and educational supplies this year. Israel can ram our boats, hijack them and kidnap our passengers and throw them into prison, but they cannot stop our determination to sail to Gaza. Palestinians do not need hand-outs from the world. They are perfectly capable of determining their own destinies. They need their civil rights.

Coming in by sea is the only possible way to begin to break Israel’s stranglehold on this small sliver of land.

And this struggle for justice is not just in Gaza, but in all of Palestine, as children begin to go back to schools, faced with either the racist regime in Israel or the draconian Israeli rule in the occupied territories and Gaza.

Rebuilding the Strip

A Palestinian woman and her child, a panic cry over the left rubble of their blown up house, north Gaza. [Abunawaf ]

Gaza is surrounded by rubbles caused by torrential outpouring of the Israeli bombs  Where everything was destroyed they have destroyed the souls and hearts of Gazans, affected by the destruction of the trees and stones. This destruction reached every single Palestinian house in the Gaza Strip.

The war ended, but left behind destruction like what we say about the horrors of the Day of Resurrection  Gaza today needs be to build at full on various levels, “the economical, socio-political and psychological, etc.”

Many different international voices appealed for the reconstruction of the Strip. Some Arab’ and Western states contributed for this reconstruction, there are conferences devoted to it, like the most recent conference held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

The  participating countries at the donors’ conference for the reconstruction of Gaza, which was held in Sharm El-Sheikh, declared more than five billion dollars for the implementation of reconstruction and support for the Palestinian economy, while the Palestinian Authority  plan is worth a total of 8.2 billion.

Saudi Arabia confirmed its earlier position on the allocation of one billion dollars would be through the Saudi Development Bank for the Gaza Strip, while Qatar said its provision will be of 250 million dollars. The British Government announced it would provide 30 million pounds sterling for the reconstruction of Gaza, and the United States announced it would provide 900 million dollars in aid to the Palestinians, including a total 300 million that will go directly to the Gaza Strip .

In spite of all these promises funding the rebuilding of the whole sector, is only money  what would  be able to rebuild Gaza without  the establishment of institutions governing the reconstruction?  Will the reconstruction process be finished without a strategy for its implementation? Will the reconstruction be successful under the current political situation?

The siege on the Gaza Strip must end

Start from where it ended, which is to convene a conference of donors for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in which the participant leaders agreed and stressed the need to end the siege on the Gaza Strip and emphasised the need for the Palestinian reconciliation in the process of working to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Aid cannot be separated from peace

In this regard,  U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton told the conference that American aid to the Gaza Strip “cannot be separated from the broader efforts to reach a comprehensive peace.” She added, “We have also try through providing the aid to the Strip to promote the conditions that should be available in order to achieve the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Destruction and reconstruction

The economic expert (Omar Shaban) President of Pal Think for Strategic Studies says “many of the published statistics from the civil and international organizations to assess the magnitude of the losses and damages caused by the aggression on Gaza, unfortunately are full of contradictions, there are many institutions working hard to assess the damage, but did not give  any hint of the final results of their studies”. He added “But one thing certainly is that  the losses caused by the aggression on Gaza are over more than 3 billion dollars distributed to all sectors and this amount includes: the contents of houses and factories and other losses, as well as loss of property rights of the individual papers and the ownership of land”.

With respect to the reconstruction of Gaza, multiple aspects of the reconstruction are not limited to only rebuilding the houses. Hany Habeb, a political expert, said that “There are multiple points of view in this regard and there is no particular Economical building able to be conceived in isolation from the development of perceptions of isolation from the political developments”. He added “There are many who see that reconstruction is just rebuilding and restoring  houses on the other hand. There are those who felt that the reconstruction is a real opportunity to reorganize the economic infrastructure and population of the Palestinian community”. And he continued saying  ” he reconstruction of Gaza is not in accordance with Gaza as it has been in the past as they are reorganized in a more civilized side to meet the needs of the Palestinian community an alternative to the slum and in accordance with the previous system takes a set of circumstances, for example: there are many victims of this war who have become disabled limbs missing . (···) As a result, the construction process must take into account the necessities of such movement and the ability to change what was not significant in the past”.

The world is heavily talking about the need to rebuild Gaza, but no further steps were taken on the ground up until now, as long as the siege is still taking part in all aspects of the Palestinian life inside Gaza.

Destruction

The War was not enough to demolish their house but the rain and winds came off and uprooted their vulnerable tent where he and his family got refugee after the end of the last Israeli war in Gaza. Most of the people who lost their homes have suffered the ravages of the recent war and the bitter cold in their tents, however, they are still having hope of rebuilding the war-ravaged houses.

If you thought about having a walk in the streets of Gaza these days you will see the numbers of camps that were set up after the end of the war, and this clearly indicates the horror of the Israeli war against the innocent people and civilians. Not even their homes were able to protect them and their children from the Israeli shells and the heavy machine guns.

We must remind that the reconstruction of Gaza did not start yet, and this augurs well for the true disaster that will occur on the sector over the next few days.

“In Gaza today, building, and rebuilding, is needed for everything. Not just houses.”

Palestinian girls look out from the balcony of their damaged house in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip (March 23, 2009). REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Written by Jawad Harb

Published on 25th March 2009

Source: Reuters AlertNet

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Jaward Harb talks about the need to give response to the psychological trauma that Gazans, especially children, are experiencing as a result of the massacre.

Before the war, most action plans of the women’s groups we work with weren’t focused on psychosocial support; most were talking about income-generating projects for women such as rabbit-raising, supporting female farmers, sewing. But after the war, the priorities changed. People need an immediate response to the psychological trauma.

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But they don’t talk much, still. I try to sit with them when I have time, but they are becoming silent people. They are traumatized. They don’t know what to say. I try to take them outside, but we can’t leave Gaza; they are surrounded by it, every day. We go walking in the city, or go out for lunch, and they can talk and smile, but then they see the destruction. We can’t escape it.