Over the weekend, the Palestinian legislature approved the new Fatah-Hamas unity government that had been hammered out in principal in Mecca last month. Israel’s cabinet voted on Sunday to block any steps toward peace negotiations
until the new Palestinian government recognizes Israel and renounces violence.
In officially rejecting the Palestinian unity government that was sworn in over the weekend, the cabinet also stated that “Israel expects the international community to maintain the policy it has taken over the past year of isolating the Palestinian government.”
Here is a snapshot what the international aid boycott has done to Palestinian society. I hope that readers - whatever their opinion of the unity government - will take a few moments to imagine what life is like right now for ordinary people in Gaza and the West Bank.
Oxfam reports:
Two thirds of Palestinians now live in poverty, a rise of 30 per cent last year. The number of families unable to get enough food has risen by 14 per cent. More than half of all Palestinians are now ‘food insecure’, unable to meet their families’ daily requirements without assistance. The health system is disintegrating.
Public servants, such as doctors, nurses, teachers and police officers, are worst hit. They haven’t had a regular income since February 2006. Their poverty rate has risen from 35 per cent in 2005 to 71 per cent in 2006.
A paper by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East notes:
Deep consumption poverty is defined as inability to meet basic human consumption needs… In 2005, the last full year of the household surveys, there were an average of 820,000 deep poor Palestinians in the oPt (occupied Palestinian Territories)…
The PA fiscal crisis resulted in an estimated decline of more than USD 500 million in oPt household income in first-half 2006. As a result, real per capita consumption levels (including external assistance) declined by about 12 percent, with food consumption down by 8 percent and non-food consumption down 13 percent relative to second-half 2005. This increased the number of deep poor from an average of 650,800 in second-half 2005 to an average of 1,069,200 in first-half 2006–a 64.3 percent increase.
The International Crisis Group, in a February 28 report, offered some accounts of daily life from interviews conducted over the past few months:
Palestinians describe levels of poverty “that we never experienced nor even imagined would ever befall us”.
In the central Gaza Strip, a housewife relates the veritable transformation of the local fruit and vegetable market, “in which produce has become more scarce and expensive because of the closure, while people are poorer and buy less because of the sanctions”.
“Those who used to buy a ratl [three kilos]”, adds her daughter-in-law, “today settle for a kilo. Those who used to buy a kilo now buy only an uqiyya [250 grammes]. You always see people who inspect the produce, haggle with the vendor, then walk away because they arrived penniless – as if they came only to relive memories of better days”.
A charity worker in the same region relates the perceptible increase in beggars: “You almost never saw them, now you can’t go to the mosque without being approached by at least several. It’s heartbreaking”. Previously, he adds, “when I used to distribute cash during the holidays, some families that I know to be poor were too proud to accept anything and could at least scrape by without help. Now if I offer $20, they respond as if I’ve given them a bar of gold. And some go so far as to come to me”.
My association is to the scene in II Kings (6:24-25):
King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and marched upon Samaria and besieged it. There was a great famine in Samaria, and the siege continued until a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of sliver, and a quarter of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels.
Because what we are conducting is, essentially, a siege. Our goal is to force the Palestinians to capitulate, disarm, and accept the terms of surrender that we dictate to them.
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories John Dugard, cited in the International Crisis Group report, calls it “the first case in which an occupied people have been subjected to international sanctions”.
Some readers may feel that all this is justified, necessary to protect Jewish lives, to ensure Israel’s security. This rationale seems to outweigh any harm we might do to innocent Palestinians.
I fear we will suffer the consequences. As the institutions of Palestinian governance slowly collapse and poverty, despair and lawlessness increase, there may soon really be no one left with whom to negotiate.
In any case, when I give thanks to the Almighty this shabbos for good wine, a wonderful meal, and a day of rest, I will think for a good, long time about Palestinian children sitting down to a nearly empty table. I will pray for their deliverance; and I will pray to God to uncover our eyes and ears, and give us the wisdom to make peace.
That the boycott of the PA and the other facets of the occupation have produced serious poverty is not news to me: I’m sure you recall, Andrew, our sad encounter with the furniture store owner in Ramallah who, even two years ago, had seen his business fall off drastically and his income drop precipitously. But the particular descriptions and the up-to-date statistics you give bring the situation home very vividly. Haaretz frequently has ads for appeals regarding the poverty in Israel (which is in itself disgraceful), but there is little or no coverage of the effects on innocent Palestinians of the aid boycott.
I have wondered why I agonize over this so much when, in fact, there are people all over the world living in equally dire, perhaps even worse, circumstances. But I suppose that although all poverty should theoretically be preventable, alleviating it worldwide is a highly complex task. But the cause of the poverty in Gaza and the West Bank is absolutely clear and the way to alleviate it is obvious. Besides, it’s being perpetrated in my name as a Jew, so it is that much more painful to me.
I’ve been involved in an ongoing set of debates about how we talk about the Israel/Palestine “conflict.” What’s become clear to me is that even using the word “conflict,” much less “war” or any other term, serves only to perpetuate the lie that the problem is two warring, if mis-matched sides. That is, to say that this is a conflict, rather than to say it is an Occupation, is an inherently Zionist statement, one which pretends that the problem comes from some source other than the creation of a Jewish-only “democratic” state on top of another people.
Along with that conversation goes another, about the necessity of divestment, sanctions, boycotts, whatever it takes to make real to Israel the costs of its actions. And one of the direct-from-the-ZOA blowbacks to raising this issue is that “the Palestinians are also/mainly responsible for the violence too, so it is anti-Semetic to hold only Israel accountable.” Which is such an astounding reversal fo the truth, isn’t it? After all, even if one agrees that that the PA or new Unity government is in some way accountable for the situation, the US government HAS ALREADY COMPLETED DIVESTED FROM THE PALESTINIAN GOVERNMENT. The stats Andrew has listed are exactly the fall out of this divestment policy. Even those who want to see this as a war or conflict should be able to get that divestment is already a strategy being used to control one side, so why not also use it to control or influence the other?
And of course I know why — because Israel is the victim, the “only democracy,” our ally, our Special Friend (is like that Special Ed??).
If you haven’t yet seen the excellent materials that the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has produced on Apartheid in Israel, I strongly suggest a visit to their site: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?list=type&type=167
Elliott