October 17, 2012, +972 Magazine http://972mag.com (Israel)
After a three and a half year legal battle,
Israeli NGO Gisha has obtained the state’s ‘Red Lines’ documents, which detail
Israel’s severe restrictions on the amount of food that could enter the Gaza
Strip between 2007 and 2010, including calculations of Palestinians’ caloric
needs.
The “Red
Lines” document was based on research compiled by the security
establishment and the Israeli Ministry of Health, and aimed to “identify the
point of intervention for prevention of malnutrition in the Gaza Strip.”
According to Gisha, the
document “includes tables calculating the food consumption needs of people in
Gaza according to age and gender.”
The documents includes tables detailing Palestinians’
caloric needs according to age and gender. Following these calculations, as
well as estimations of how much food is being produced inside of Gaza, the
report concludes that Israel should allow 106 trucks a day into Gaza to supply
Palestinians with their “daily humanitarian portion” of food, medicine, and
other products. Between 2007 and 2010, however, Israel allowed an average of
only 67 trucks a day to enter the Gaza Strip–falling far short of the
recommended number.
Other Israeli governmental documents previously
obtained and published by Gisha detail which foods Israel allowed into the Gaza
Strip and which were forbidden. Among the prohibited products, Gisha reports,
were “hummus, fresh meat and ground coriander.”
Israel lifted food restrictions on the Gaza
Strip following the May 2010 flotilla incident. As part of a policy that
Israeli officials call “economic warfare,” however, Israel continues to
severely restrict exports from Gaza. The Israeli government also implements
what it calls a “separation policy” between Gaza and the West Bank. Thousands
of families have been split by this policy and Palestinian students from Gaza
who wish to study in the West Bank are prohibited from doing so.
Gisha’s Executive Director Sari Bashi remarks:
“Israel’s control over movement creates an obligation to allow free passage of
civilians and civilian goods, subject only to security checks – an obligation
that remains unfulfilled today.”
Although the media usually reports that the
closure of Gaza began in 2007, the current blockade is the culmination
of decades of movement restrictions that gradually shut the Gaza Strip and its
economy down.
Restrictions on both imports and exports have
been in effect since Israel occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967. By the time the
First Intifada began in 1987, the local economy was crippled. In 1991, Israel
began restricting Palestinians’ freedom of movement and many of those who
worked in Israel became unable to reach their jobs. Sporadic closures of the
Gaza Strip began in 1993, leaving Israeli employers feeling that they couldn’t
depend on Palestinian workers and leading some employers to replace Palestinian
day laborers with migrant workers from Eastern Europe and South East Asia.
A fence was erected around the Gaza Strip in
1995; students from Gaza who wished to pursue degrees in the West Bank were
subject to a blanket travel ban in 2000. By 2005–two years before the blockade
“began,” according to the Israeli government and the mainstream media–Israeli
human rights groups were already calling Gaza “one big prison.”
The capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and
the Hamas takeover served as excuses for the Israeli government to complete the
closure of Gaza it had begun decades before. The “Red Lines” document suggests
that the blockade of Gaza amounts to collective punishment and has little to do
with security.
*Mya
Guarnieri is a Jerusalem-based journalist and writer
whose work has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times,
The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Slate, Counter Punch, The Boston Review, and
Caravan. She was a stringer for The National and Al Jazeera English and has
been invited to serve as a commentator on Israel/Palestine on the BBC and Al
Jazeera, among others. More…
Mya holds a Master’s of Fine Arts in
Creative Writing from Florida State University. Her short stories have appeared
in The Kenyon Review, Narrative, and elsewhere.
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