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The Stench of Occupation

The situation of the people of Gaza continues to deteriorate steadily under continued Israeli occupation. While Israeli settlements within Gaza were removed in August 2005, Israeli military occupation has intensified, with the complete closure of Gaza to all external aid, food and visits in place for several months.

Earlier this month, five people were killed and dozens more seriously harmed when a sewage treatment plant in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza collapsed and 20,000 cubic metres of raw sewage flooded into the nearby Bedouin village of Um Al Nasser. Over sixty homes were completely destroyed in the collapse, with hundreds of others damaged. Following the collapse, the Palestinian Ministry of Health declared a state of emergency and warned that the sewage flood may result in long-term health complications for thousands living in the vicinity.

The Israeli government and its apologists have tried to use this catastrophe as proof that Palestinians are somehow incapable of self-government. The reality is the Palestinian Authority (PA) had identified several years ago that there were a number of sewage treatment centres in need of urgent attention in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. They had raised funds from the World Bank, European Commission, Sweden and other international donors specifically for upgrading faulty sewage treatment plants. However, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, this urgent infrastructure project has been put on hold “… for more than two years due to delays in importing pipes and pumps from abroad as a result of the closure imposed by IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] on the Gaza Strip.” The Centre also noted that even as work on the project got underway, “IOF military operations in the area prevented workers from free and safe access to the area to conduct their work.”

The head of the Palestinian environment ministry, Yousef Abu Safiya, told reporters that there are another 40 sewage cesspools in the Gaza Strip which desperately need renovation as they are also at risk of collapse.

Yet despite the Um Al Nasser disaster, the aid boycott against the PA remains intact. Since the election of Hamas in January 2006, the PA’s two largest western donors – the U.S. and EU – have withheld all aid, as has Canada, which was actually the first western country to suspend aid to occupied Palestine. The consequences of this boycott have been devastating for all Palestinians.

Since April 2006, the economic crisis has been exacerbated by the refusal of the Israeli government to transfer the tax and customs revenues it collects in the occupied territories to the PA, despite its obligation to do so under international agreements.

A report released by the UK-based NGO Oxfam International on April 13 outlines the economic impact of the aid boycott and Israel’s illegal transfer freeze.

Oxfam commissioned a survey, carried out by the Palestinian Centre for Public Opinion, which found that 80 per cent of Palestinian families have seen their income drop during the past year, with just fewer than 50 per cent of all the families surveyed saying they had lost more than half of their income. (A report released by the United Nations in early 2007 found poverty amongst Palestinians living under occupation increased by 30 per cent in 2006, with the hardest hit area being Gaza, where an estimated 80 per cent of people live below the poverty line).

Besides interviewing Palestinian families, the Centre also interviewed senior public officials responsible for running schools, hospitals and water surveys in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Ninety per cent said services had been negatively impacted by the aid boycott. Fifty per cent of the public officials interviewed reported they had slashed the provision of essential services to Palestinians by more than half due to lack of funds.

Based on the surveys, Oxfam concluded that Palestinians have suffered significant damage from the withdrawal of aid. According to Oxfam’s Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs, “international aid should be provided impartially on the basis of need, not as a political tool to change the policies of a government. … And in this case, it hasn’t worked. Instead, parents have been driven into debt, children taken out of classrooms and whole families deprived of access to medicine and healthcare.”

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