Hear the Left : .....
Seeing Gaza through the eyes of an Israeli Dr. Strangelove
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon is right; no one is dying of starvation in Gaza. Cattle feed is indeed being supplied to the biggest pen in the world.
By Gideon Levy
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said there is no humanitarian distress in Gaza. The defense minister also said that the situation in Gaza “isn’t pleasant.” If that’s his definition of the situation in Gaza, then it’s not pleasant to live in a country in which Ya’alon is defense minister.
Ever since Dov Weisglass, an adviser to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, spoke of tightening the blockade on Gaza and putting its residents “on a diet,” we haven’t heard such inhumane remarks about everything that’s going on only an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv. Ya’alon, the newest (and strangest) friend of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, said that there is no siege on Gaza, and in the same breath said he would not allow the recently launched flotilla to enter the (unbesieged) Strip. But his remarks about the lack of humanitarian distress reveal the true world of this Dr. Strangelove from the cowshed of Kibbutz Grofit.
Ya’alon is right; no one is dying of starvation in Gaza. Cattle feed is indeed being supplied to the biggest pen in the world. There is no humanitarian disaster. But something else is happening in Gaza, something apparently unique to its residents; they aren’t satisfied with just food. These are strange people who have needs other than just a pita with onion and tomato. For example, sometimes they need water, which is becoming increasingly polluted at a shocking pace; it’s no longer possible to drink the salty water coming out of the taps. Ya’alon would surely be willing to send bottles of mineral water through the transit points, but it’s not certain that everyone in Gaza can afford to live off bottled mineral water.
Gaza’s sewage is flowing directly into the sea – the same sea as Israel’s – and its groundwater is becoming filthy at an alarming rate. Gaza’s residents also need electricity – can you believe such a thing? In the upscale community of Maccabim-Reut they’ve never heard of such people, but that’s Gaza’s spoiled population for you. And they only get electricity for a few hours a day, in this heat. Ya’alon surely remembers that Israel bombed the only power plant in Gaza and destroyed it, but even this is not a (humanitarian) disaster.
Even before the horrors of Operation Protective Edge, a report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency stated that by 2020 Gaza would be unfit for human habitation. But who knows what could happen by 2020 – God is great, and so is Ya’alon. Meanwhile, the residents of Gaza, some two million people, if we are permitted to call them that, have a few other needs. Some 100,000 survivors of the warrior Ya’alon’s last campaign have yet to return to their destroyed homes, not one of which has been rebuilt. They are homeless, crowding into the homes of relatives, taking shelter in the rubble or in UNRWA shelters (which house around 10,000 of them). But what are they complaining about? They’re not on the street.
Around a thousand of their children have been left disabled for life from that war, but that’s not a tragedy, either. One can of course live with the poverty and unemployment data that have no parallel: 43 percent unemployment among the adults and 60 percent among young people, with 80 percent receiving welfare and 40 percent beneath Gaza’s poverty line, which is not the same poverty line as in Maccabim-Reut. A disaster? No.
Nor is it a disaster that all the university and college graduates there have no chance of ever finding work in their fields. Another lost Gaza generation – no picnic, but no tragedy, either.
Neither is the siege a picnic. Eight years without anyone but the privileged few able to leave Gaza – not to study, not to work, not to visit anyone, not to attend funerals or family celebrations. Not even to just take a break from the inferno. This isn’t considered a disaster, or even a siege.
Ya’alon has a solution: Let them export strawberries instead of Qassam rockets. That’s an idea. Earlier this year, Israel for the first time allowed Gaza to export a certain amount of agricultural produce. The number of trucks that left the Strip was less than five percent of the number that used to leave before the non-blockade. Unpleasant, but no disaster.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.663979
= new reply since forum marked as read
