- 06 Mar 2008 13:33
#1470078
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I noticed the following words: apartheid, colonialism, occupation, illegal, disaster, humanitarian, crisis, blockade, deterioration, 106, implosion, indefensible, obligations, bloody, destructive. I noticed that Tony Blair is completely fucking useless as a peace envoy. I noticed Israel blaming Hamas.
I didn't notice much action.
Last Updated: Thursday, 6 March 2008, 09:15 GMT
Gaza conditions 'at 40-year low'
Gaza's humanitarian situation is at its worst since Israel occupied the territory in 1967, say UK-based human rights and development groups.
They include Amnesty International, Save the Children, Cafod, Care International and Christian Aid.
They criticise Israel's blockade on Gaza as illegal collective punishment which fails to deliver security.
Israel says its military action and other measures are lawful and needed to stop rocket attacks from Gaza.
Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, but retains control over Gaza's airspace and coastline, and over its own border with the territory.
Israel's Defence Ministry rejected the criticism in the report, blaming the Hamas militant group which controls Gaza.
"The main responsibility for events in Gaza is the Hamas organisation, to which all complaints should be addressed," a statement read.
'Disaster'
The groups' report, Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion, says the blockade has dramatically worsened levels of poverty and unemployment, and has led to deterioration in education and health services.
More than 1.1 million Gazans are dependent on food aid and of 110,000 workers previously employed in the private sector, 75,000 have now lost their jobs, the report says.
"Unless the blockade ends now, it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace in the region will be dashed," said Geoffrey Dennis, of Care International UK.
Last week Israeli forces launched a bloody and destructive raid in northern Gaza, in which more than 120 Palestinians - including many civilians - were killed.
Israel says the measures are designed to stamp out frequent rocket fire by Palestinian militants.
Recent rocket attacks have hit deeper into southern Israel, reaching Ashkelon, the closest large Israeli city to the Gaza Strip.
Occupying power
The UK-based groups agree that Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, urging both sides to cease unlawful attacks on civilians.
But they call upon Israel to comply with its obligations, as the occupying power in Gaza, to ensure its inhabitants have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care, which have been in short supply in the strip.
"Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible," said Amnesty UK Director Kate Allen.
"The current situation is man-made and must be reversed."
Other recommendations from the groups include international engagement with the Hamas movement, which rejects Israel's legitimacy and has been shunned by Israel's allies, and the Fatah party of Palestinian West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas.
"Gaza cannot become a partner for peace unless Israel, Fatah and the Quartet [the US and UN, Europe and Russia] engage with Hamas and give the people of Gaza a future," said Daleep Mukarji of Christian Aid.
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Sanctions causing Gaza to implode, say rights groups
Ian Black, Middle East editor The Guardian, Thursday March 6
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living through their worst humanitarian crisis since the 1967 war because of the severe restrictions imposed by Israel since the Islamist movement Hamas seized power, a report says today.
Movement is all but impossible and supplies of food and water, sewage treatment and basic healthcare can no longer be taken for granted. The economy has collapsed, unemployment is expected to rise to 50%, hospitals are suffering 12-hour power cuts and schools are failing - all creating a "humanitarian implosion", according to a coalition of eight UK humanitarian and human rights groups.
The data was collated before the recent escalation in Hamas rocket fire and Israel's incursion, which saw 106 Palestinians, at least half of them civilians, killed in five days alone. One Israeli civilian and two soldiers were killed in the same period.
The situation in Gaza is "man-made, completely avoidable, and with the necessary political will can be reversed", say the groups, which include Oxfam, Amnesty and Save the Children.
In Jerusalem yesterday the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said she had received assurances from Israeli and Palestinian leaders that they would resume the peace negotiations suspended by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, after the Gaza offensive. Rice gave no time frame but said Abbas had not made the resumption conditional on a ceasefire.
The NGOs said that while Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians had seen a "long-term pattern of deterioration" stemming from decades of occupation and from sanctions on Hamas, "the severity of the humanitarian situation has increased exponentially due to the Israeli government's imposition of the blockade in response to indiscriminate rocket fire against Israel".
The depth of the crisis was underlined by last month's mass breakout across the border into Egypt and by the latest violence. Israel has reportedly asked UN agencies to examine opening up "humanitarian corridors", possibly anticipating further large-scale military action to suppress Palestinian rocket fire.
The report challenges the Israeli argument that Israel is no longer bound by the laws of occupation since it "disengaged" from Gaza in summer 2005.
It also urges the UK and EU to condemn the blockade and calls on Tony Blair, representing the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers (the US, EU, UN and Russia), to make a statement on the extent of the humanitarian crisis. Israel and the Palestinians should agree to reopen the crossings into the strip and both sides should halt attacks, the report says.
Geoffrey Dennis, chief executive of Care International UK, said: "The escalation in violence, from rocket attacks and military strikes, will make life even more unbearable in Gaza. Unless the blockade ends now it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace will be dashed."
The appeal follows a report by John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories, in which he described Palestinian terrorism as the "inevitable consequence" of Israeli occupation and laws that resemble apartheid. Palestinian terrorist acts are to be deplored but "must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation", wrote Dugard, whose report accused Israel of acts and policies consistent with all three. Israel dismissed his conclusions as one-sided and inflammatory.
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I noticed the following words: apartheid, colonialism, occupation, illegal, disaster, humanitarian, crisis, blockade, deterioration, 106, implosion, indefensible, obligations, bloody, destructive. I noticed that Tony Blair is completely fucking useless as a peace envoy. I noticed Israel blaming Hamas.
I didn't notice much action.