As the Hamas team laughs- Joking about Palestinian suffering.

[Tom Joad]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/684258.html
(The subtitle is the one provided on the Haaretz home page)
By Gideon Levy
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.
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I will let folks find the rest of this clicking on the link.
This is a humanitarian disaster!

People should know that because of the occupation, Palestinian economy has been severely restricted.

“There is a humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza. It is not the result of a natural disaster. Instead, it is a crisis imposed by a powerful State on its neighbor”, a UN Report stated, this was published in 2003. Since then, things have only worsened. Aid groups, like the International Red Cross, see that the situation is due to the occupation, and insist that “Palestinians’ basic rights under international humanitarian law are respected” (International Red Cross).

See for example what Oxfam says about the situation in Gaza.
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/trade/euromed/ripples.htm

The point is, that Israel policy is to punish severely a whole civilian population for its political choices. It will even withhold taxes and customes revenue which it collects from Palestinians.

It would be good to review that the under the Geneva Convention:
I. The Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War enjoins the Occupying Power to:

Ensure food and medical supplies for the civilian population, especially if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate, employing the “fullest extent of the means available to it.” (Article 55)

Children will die from these decisions Weisglass laughs at. These policy choices will not bring peace, will not bring compliance to Israeli wishes, it will only bring more resistance, more hopelessness.