Newspaper report: Blockade on Gaza gives rise to smuggling and corruption in Israel
Marian Houk
June 13, 2009
An inside look at how the Israeli blockade against Gaza operates is revealed in brilliant and sensational article in Thursday's edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, entitled The Gaza Bonanza.
Indeed.
Because Israel regards Hamas as a bitter enemy, it has imposed a very strong-arm policy including severe sanctions against Gaza. This has not changed even after the devastation caused by the unprecedented Israeli military´s Operation Cast Lead (27 December – 18 January). The result is a crisis, teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
What the just-published article in Haaretz reveals is how utterly haphazard the sanctions are, and how corruption and smuggling has flourished as a result – in Israel.
"It is obvious that two years into the blockade, the restrictions on civilian goods entering Gaza are only hurting 1.5 million civilians, but providing no solution to regional problems", the Executive Director of the Israeli human rights organization GISHA, Sari Bashi, commented in a phone interview on Friday. "Almost nothing is allowed into Gaza ... and there is no security rationale for that ... This is not serving Israel's security interests. Two years since the closure, none of the declared security or political goals have been achieved".
GISHA's Bashi led a grouping that varied between nine and ten Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations that valiantly struggled in the Israeli Supreme Court -- but failed -- to stop the military-administered sanctions against Gaza on the grounds that it was an illegal act of collective punishment.
Bashi added that "the absolute ban on reconstruction materials entering Gaza has made a cruel joke out of the $4.5 billion dollars in reconstruction aid that was pledged by the international community [n.b., after the years of sanctions and then the devastation wreaked by the IDF's Operation Cast Lead], and 1.5 million people are being prevented from living any kind of normal life".
The UNRWA spokesman, Christopher Gunness, said Friday that "it's an interesting article, but it's a great shame that it ignores the legal and humanitarian context of the blockade -- which is a violation of international humanitarian law".
Until the Haaretz article was published, it seemed that the smuggling into Gaza was conducted only through the tunnels that are dug, at great risk to human life, under the border between Gaza and Egypt.
Israel regularly bombards these tunnels -- which are not at all hidden, see one report here. Since the Israeli bombardments are selective "precision" attacks, it can now be reasonably assumed that they know exactly whose tunnels they are attacking (which family or group of investors is behind any particular tunnel), and exactly what goods they are preventing from entering the Gaza strip, at least temporarily. Over 100 desperate young Palestinian desperados have already lost their lives while trying to earn a living, and to supply their families and their communities via these tunnels.
What makes it worse is that this utterly immoral policy was unfortunately condoned by the Israeli Supreme Court on 27 January 2008. The only condition that the Supreme Court put on this blockade of Gaza is that it should not lead to a "humanitarian crisis".
The blockade is based on an Israeli cabinet decision taken on 19 September 2007 that Gaza, under Hamas (whether the civilians in Gaza liked it or not), was an "enemy entity" or "hostile territory".
The Israeli Ministry of Defense unilaterally began, at the end of October 2007, to put this cabinet decision into effect, administering tightened sanctions against a population of 1.5 million souls, without any effective government oversight and – as confirmed by the Haaretz article – this decision has been managed to maximize Israeli commercial and other economic interests.
While shady entrepreneurs are getting rich because of it, the situation in Gaza has clearly been a humanitarian crisis for many months – though the Israeli Ministry of Defense and some others in the Israeli government still deny it, with a straight face.
Just after the Israeli Supreme Court hearing on 27 January 2008, Kenneth Mann, GISHA's founder and its legal adviser, said that he thought that the Israeli government's definition of "humanitarian crisis" would require human deaths. Now, there have been deaths -- among the chronically ill, who were not permitted to leave the Gaza Strip for medical care that is not available (or no longer available) there, due to the closure. There have been deaths among those who are trying to bring the necessities of daily life in through the tunnels. And, of course, there were many deaths during Operation Cast Lead -- including an unusual spike in maternal and neo-natal deaths due to lack of care, as the UN has reported. It is not as if nobody knew. Many experts have stated that this policy of collective punishment against an entire civilian population under a belligerent military occupation is illegal under international law
The day after his speech in Cairo, U.S. President Barack Obama said in Germany that there was a "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza, as reported here. This was earlier affirmed by the most recent UN Security Council resolution (1860), adopted on 8 January, during the IDF's Operation Cast Lead.
It is now perfectly clear, from this article, that the smuggling which sustains life and prevents a complete humanitarian catastrophe is taking place not only across the Egyptian-Gazan border, but also across the Israeli operated, and IDF-controlled, crossings, as well – where, by comparison with the Rafah tunnels, it offers enormous illegal profits on a much greater scale of magnitude, with virtually no risk at all.
Asked about the smuggling and corruption that the Haaretz article revealed, GISHA's Sari Bashi (a lawyer) took a deep breath, then replied: "We don't have any specific information about corruption", she said. Then, she added: "The regulations regarding the entrance of goods to Gaza are arbitrary, unpredictable, and mostly unwritten. That creates a climate not just for deprivation, but also for foreign interests to enter the equation".
The Haaretz article describes some kind of manipulation of "permits obtained from aid organizations" to bring items into Gaza, and some kind of falsification in a system of taking "turns" for delivery allotments.
UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said on Friday that this information is wrong. "I am not aware of shippers obtaining permits from us", he said. "There is no system by which UNRWA issues permits to Israeli truckers". He explained that when goods destined for UNRWA arrive, either by sea in Israel's Ashdod port, or overland from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge crossing administered by Israel, "the items are stuck on a truck, and when the trucks get to Gaza the Israeli authorities take everything all off, and pile it up at the crossings. The lists are checked off at every stage. Then, Palestinians come to the Gaza side of the crossings to pick up the goods for distribution in Gaza".
There may have been some confusion between the international organizations, and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who may have a permit system, or a system of taking "turns", but this is not totally clear. This needs further research.
Meanwhile, the article reveals, "COGAT [Coordinator of (Israeli) Government Activities in the Territories, an office in the Israeli Ministry of Defense] officers are in regular contact with international organizations, listen to their complaints and examine their requests to bring in various goods, in both official and unofficial meetings. For example, Amos Gilad has dinner from time to time with an official from the UNRWA delegation in Israel. [n.b., This too is wrong. UNRWA has its West Bank headquarters in East Jerusalem. But it has no delegation to Israel.] The Israeli officers repeat the following phrase in their meetings with organization officials: 'No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis'."
But, while Brigadier-General Amos Gilad is dining with an UNRWA official, the population of Gaza continues to eat ... well, garbage in many cases, because some families have had to consume feed that was intended for animals, while it has been publicly known for at least two years, following earlier reports in the Israeli media, that a great deal if not all of the fruits and vegetables that Israel has been sending into Gaza for years are blemished, under-sized, or in other ways unsuitable for sale in Israeli supermarkets. Some families have gone for extended periods of time without being able to cook at all, due to a shortage of cooking gas in Gaza resulting from the Israeli miliary-imposed sanctions.
Brigadier-General Amos Gilad apparently pays the bill for these dinners, and his guest is UNRWA´s Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd.
The article continues: "A senior COGAT officer explains to Haaretz that it's not a siege policy, but rather the restriction of entry of luxury products. The decision as to which products qualify as 'luxury' changes from week to week, and sometimes from day to day. Some of these changes are the result of international pressure exerted upon Israel. For example, when he visited Gaza last February, U.S. Senator John Kerry was stunned to discover that Israel was not allowing Palestinians to bring in trucks loaded with pasta. Following American pressure, on March 20 the cabinet decided to permit the unrestricted transfer of food products into Gaza. Incredibly, the COGAT personnel do not see any contradiction between this decision and the serious restrictions that are nevertheless imposed on the entry of various food items".
The Haaretz article reported that "The policy is not fixed, but continually subject to change, explains a COGAT official ... Sources involved in COGAT's work say that those at the highest levels, including acting coordinator Amos Gilad, monitor the food brought into Gaza on a daily basis and personally approve the entry of any kind of fruit, vegetable or processed food product requested by the Palestinians. At one of the unit's meetings, Colonel Oded Iterman, a COGAT officer, explained the policy as follows: 'We don't want Gilad Shalit's captors to be munching Bamba [a popular Israeli snack food] right over his head'."
This, of course, will probably not do Gilad Shalit any good. Shalit, a then-19-year-old IDF Corporal, was seized by Palestinians in what reportedly was a cross-border raid at what should have been a heavily-fortified Kerem Shalom Crossing (at the tri-point where the borders of Israel, Egypt, and the south-eastern Gaza Strip meet). In retaliation for his capture, Israel -- among other things -- bombed the only Gaza Power Plant, knocking out electricity supplies for the six summer months to at least half a million Gazan residents. Israeli spokesman Mark Regev said at the time that knocking out the Gaza Power Plant would make it difficult for Gilad Shalit's captors to move him around in the dark...
The Israeli government's security cabinet met on Wednesday and confirmed the post-Operation Cast Lead decision of the previous government (led by Ehud Olmert) not to open the border crossings or lift the sanctions against Gaza until Gilad Shalit is free -- notwithstanding big pressure from the United States and other major donor countries.
UN Security Council resolution (1860), mentioned above, which was adopted about half-way through the Israeli military operation, calls for "unimpeded provision" and "sustained delivery" of humanitarian aid, as well as for the "sustained reopening of the crossing points". It also calls on UN member states to support "international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza".
On Thursday evening in West Jerusalem, the protest tent calling for Shalit´s release was still in place outside the Prime Minister's office, where a lone volunteer, a young woman was speaking to a couple of inquiring passers-by, in the dark, under a sign that indicated it was Shalit's 1082nd day in captivity. Today, former President Jimmy Carter met Shalit's parents at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, and agreed to take a letter with him when he travels to Gaza in the coming days, in the hopes of passing it on so that it will eventually reach Shalit. Last year, though vilified as usual in some of Israeli press reports, Carter did manage to pass a letter from Shalit's family via Hamas in Gaza, and then later did pass on some kind of reply, apparently from Shalit, in return.
One of the reasons this Haaretz article is so compelling is that its authors – Israeli journalists -- have done a great job of getting the Israeli Army to talk, as one observer noted this morning.
The Haaretz article reports that in COGAT´s "Red Lines" document, "After four pages filled with detailed charts of the number of grams and calories of every type of food to be permitted for consumption [by] Gaza residents (broken down by gender and age), comes this recommendation: ´It is necessary to deal with the international community and the Palestinian Health Ministry to provide nutritional supplements (only some of the flour in Gaza is enriched) and to provide education about proper nutrition´. Printed in large letters at the end of the document is this admonition: 'The stability of the humanitarian effort is critical for the prevention of the development of malnutrition'. These quantities allow a very slim margin for error or mishaps ... 'This analysis does not take distribution in the field into consideration'," says the 'Red Lines' document. [A] COGAT official says that he assumes that food distribution within Gaza is not equal. If some are receiving more, others are necessarily receiving less than the required minimum. So it is hard to reconcile this information with the claims of the defense minister and COGAT officers that there is no real food shortage in Gaza".
It is not easy, without a large and devoted-to-detail staff, to keep up with COGAT's announcements of what gets into Gaza, via what crossing, and when. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead, on some days the deliveries into Gaza were reaching nearly the 150 truckloads a day minimum that humanitarian NGOs said must get into the Gaza Strip. This is of course nowhere near the 400-600 truckloads a day that were getting in before the sanctions against Gaza were tightened by the Israeli military. But it is more than were getting in from late 2007 until Operation Cast Lead was over. But, over the last week or so, the figures have often dropped again to the 44-75 truckloads per day range.
The Haaretz article also reports that an unnamed "senior officer who was serving in COGAT when the blockade was imposed" said that: "If you go back two years, you see that it was utter foolishness ... There was a vague, unclear policy, influenced by the interests of certain groups, by this or that lobby, without any policy that derived from the needs of the population. For example, the fruit growers have a powerful lobby, and this lobby saw to it that on certain days, from 20-25 trucks full of fruit were brought into Gaza. It's not that it arrived there and was thrown out, but if you were to ask a Gazan who lives there, it's not exactly what he needs. What happened was that the Israeli interest took precedence over the needs of the populace."
The Israeli interest appears to involve the complete subjugation of the Gazan economy. The figures are numbing: some 90% of the population is now said to be dependent on humanitarian aid, and almost all of Gaza's own factories and small enterprises have now been destroyed or run out of business.
GISHA's Bashi noted that "Israel is also not allowing new materials needed for production into Gaza, but rather -- on a limited basis -- is only allowing Gaza's residents to buy goods from Israel. One example: we're in touch with an importer from Gaza who purchased several dunams of tomato fields (in Gaza) with the aim of making tomato paste. But the tin cans he needs to package the tomato paste are not locally available, so he purchased them from Israel. And, he cannot now get these tin cans delivered into Gaza (they are not on the list of items permitted), so, the tomato he invested in are rotting. This means that Gazan residents can purchase Israeli-made tomato paste, but they are prevented from packaging their own. People in Gaza have a right not just to consume but also to produce -- and to earn a livelihood", Bashi said. She added, "My hope is that responsible decision-makers will put an end to this drastic and foolish policy".
Indeed.
Because Israel regards Hamas as a bitter enemy, it has imposed a very strong-arm policy including severe sanctions against Gaza. This has not changed even after the devastation caused by the unprecedented Israeli military´s Operation Cast Lead (27 December – 18 January). The result is a crisis, teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
What the just-published article in Haaretz reveals is how utterly haphazard the sanctions are, and how corruption and smuggling has flourished as a result – in Israel.
"It is obvious that two years into the blockade, the restrictions on civilian goods entering Gaza are only hurting 1.5 million civilians, but providing no solution to regional problems", the Executive Director of the Israeli human rights organization GISHA, Sari Bashi, commented in a phone interview on Friday. "Almost nothing is allowed into Gaza ... and there is no security rationale for that ... This is not serving Israel's security interests. Two years since the closure, none of the declared security or political goals have been achieved".
GISHA's Bashi led a grouping that varied between nine and ten Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations that valiantly struggled in the Israeli Supreme Court -- but failed -- to stop the military-administered sanctions against Gaza on the grounds that it was an illegal act of collective punishment.
Bashi added that "the absolute ban on reconstruction materials entering Gaza has made a cruel joke out of the $4.5 billion dollars in reconstruction aid that was pledged by the international community [n.b., after the years of sanctions and then the devastation wreaked by the IDF's Operation Cast Lead], and 1.5 million people are being prevented from living any kind of normal life".
The UNRWA spokesman, Christopher Gunness, said Friday that "it's an interesting article, but it's a great shame that it ignores the legal and humanitarian context of the blockade -- which is a violation of international humanitarian law".
Until the Haaretz article was published, it seemed that the smuggling into Gaza was conducted only through the tunnels that are dug, at great risk to human life, under the border between Gaza and Egypt.
Israel regularly bombards these tunnels -- which are not at all hidden, see one report here. Since the Israeli bombardments are selective "precision" attacks, it can now be reasonably assumed that they know exactly whose tunnels they are attacking (which family or group of investors is behind any particular tunnel), and exactly what goods they are preventing from entering the Gaza strip, at least temporarily. Over 100 desperate young Palestinian desperados have already lost their lives while trying to earn a living, and to supply their families and their communities via these tunnels.
What makes it worse is that this utterly immoral policy was unfortunately condoned by the Israeli Supreme Court on 27 January 2008. The only condition that the Supreme Court put on this blockade of Gaza is that it should not lead to a "humanitarian crisis".
The blockade is based on an Israeli cabinet decision taken on 19 September 2007 that Gaza, under Hamas (whether the civilians in Gaza liked it or not), was an "enemy entity" or "hostile territory".
The Israeli Ministry of Defense unilaterally began, at the end of October 2007, to put this cabinet decision into effect, administering tightened sanctions against a population of 1.5 million souls, without any effective government oversight and – as confirmed by the Haaretz article – this decision has been managed to maximize Israeli commercial and other economic interests.
While shady entrepreneurs are getting rich because of it, the situation in Gaza has clearly been a humanitarian crisis for many months – though the Israeli Ministry of Defense and some others in the Israeli government still deny it, with a straight face.
Just after the Israeli Supreme Court hearing on 27 January 2008, Kenneth Mann, GISHA's founder and its legal adviser, said that he thought that the Israeli government's definition of "humanitarian crisis" would require human deaths. Now, there have been deaths -- among the chronically ill, who were not permitted to leave the Gaza Strip for medical care that is not available (or no longer available) there, due to the closure. There have been deaths among those who are trying to bring the necessities of daily life in through the tunnels. And, of course, there were many deaths during Operation Cast Lead -- including an unusual spike in maternal and neo-natal deaths due to lack of care, as the UN has reported. It is not as if nobody knew. Many experts have stated that this policy of collective punishment against an entire civilian population under a belligerent military occupation is illegal under international law
The day after his speech in Cairo, U.S. President Barack Obama said in Germany that there was a "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza, as reported here. This was earlier affirmed by the most recent UN Security Council resolution (1860), adopted on 8 January, during the IDF's Operation Cast Lead.
It is now perfectly clear, from this article, that the smuggling which sustains life and prevents a complete humanitarian catastrophe is taking place not only across the Egyptian-Gazan border, but also across the Israeli operated, and IDF-controlled, crossings, as well – where, by comparison with the Rafah tunnels, it offers enormous illegal profits on a much greater scale of magnitude, with virtually no risk at all.
Asked about the smuggling and corruption that the Haaretz article revealed, GISHA's Sari Bashi (a lawyer) took a deep breath, then replied: "We don't have any specific information about corruption", she said. Then, she added: "The regulations regarding the entrance of goods to Gaza are arbitrary, unpredictable, and mostly unwritten. That creates a climate not just for deprivation, but also for foreign interests to enter the equation".
The Haaretz article describes some kind of manipulation of "permits obtained from aid organizations" to bring items into Gaza, and some kind of falsification in a system of taking "turns" for delivery allotments.
UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness said on Friday that this information is wrong. "I am not aware of shippers obtaining permits from us", he said. "There is no system by which UNRWA issues permits to Israeli truckers". He explained that when goods destined for UNRWA arrive, either by sea in Israel's Ashdod port, or overland from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge crossing administered by Israel, "the items are stuck on a truck, and when the trucks get to Gaza the Israeli authorities take everything all off, and pile it up at the crossings. The lists are checked off at every stage. Then, Palestinians come to the Gaza side of the crossings to pick up the goods for distribution in Gaza".
There may have been some confusion between the international organizations, and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who may have a permit system, or a system of taking "turns", but this is not totally clear. This needs further research.
Meanwhile, the article reveals, "COGAT [Coordinator of (Israeli) Government Activities in the Territories, an office in the Israeli Ministry of Defense] officers are in regular contact with international organizations, listen to their complaints and examine their requests to bring in various goods, in both official and unofficial meetings. For example, Amos Gilad has dinner from time to time with an official from the UNRWA delegation in Israel. [n.b., This too is wrong. UNRWA has its West Bank headquarters in East Jerusalem. But it has no delegation to Israel.] The Israeli officers repeat the following phrase in their meetings with organization officials: 'No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis'."
But, while Brigadier-General Amos Gilad is dining with an UNRWA official, the population of Gaza continues to eat ... well, garbage in many cases, because some families have had to consume feed that was intended for animals, while it has been publicly known for at least two years, following earlier reports in the Israeli media, that a great deal if not all of the fruits and vegetables that Israel has been sending into Gaza for years are blemished, under-sized, or in other ways unsuitable for sale in Israeli supermarkets. Some families have gone for extended periods of time without being able to cook at all, due to a shortage of cooking gas in Gaza resulting from the Israeli miliary-imposed sanctions.
Brigadier-General Amos Gilad apparently pays the bill for these dinners, and his guest is UNRWA´s Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd.
The article continues: "A senior COGAT officer explains to Haaretz that it's not a siege policy, but rather the restriction of entry of luxury products. The decision as to which products qualify as 'luxury' changes from week to week, and sometimes from day to day. Some of these changes are the result of international pressure exerted upon Israel. For example, when he visited Gaza last February, U.S. Senator John Kerry was stunned to discover that Israel was not allowing Palestinians to bring in trucks loaded with pasta. Following American pressure, on March 20 the cabinet decided to permit the unrestricted transfer of food products into Gaza. Incredibly, the COGAT personnel do not see any contradiction between this decision and the serious restrictions that are nevertheless imposed on the entry of various food items".
The Haaretz article reported that "The policy is not fixed, but continually subject to change, explains a COGAT official ... Sources involved in COGAT's work say that those at the highest levels, including acting coordinator Amos Gilad, monitor the food brought into Gaza on a daily basis and personally approve the entry of any kind of fruit, vegetable or processed food product requested by the Palestinians. At one of the unit's meetings, Colonel Oded Iterman, a COGAT officer, explained the policy as follows: 'We don't want Gilad Shalit's captors to be munching Bamba [a popular Israeli snack food] right over his head'."
This, of course, will probably not do Gilad Shalit any good. Shalit, a then-19-year-old IDF Corporal, was seized by Palestinians in what reportedly was a cross-border raid at what should have been a heavily-fortified Kerem Shalom Crossing (at the tri-point where the borders of Israel, Egypt, and the south-eastern Gaza Strip meet). In retaliation for his capture, Israel -- among other things -- bombed the only Gaza Power Plant, knocking out electricity supplies for the six summer months to at least half a million Gazan residents. Israeli spokesman Mark Regev said at the time that knocking out the Gaza Power Plant would make it difficult for Gilad Shalit's captors to move him around in the dark...
The Israeli government's security cabinet met on Wednesday and confirmed the post-Operation Cast Lead decision of the previous government (led by Ehud Olmert) not to open the border crossings or lift the sanctions against Gaza until Gilad Shalit is free -- notwithstanding big pressure from the United States and other major donor countries.
UN Security Council resolution (1860), mentioned above, which was adopted about half-way through the Israeli military operation, calls for "unimpeded provision" and "sustained delivery" of humanitarian aid, as well as for the "sustained reopening of the crossing points". It also calls on UN member states to support "international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza".
On Thursday evening in West Jerusalem, the protest tent calling for Shalit´s release was still in place outside the Prime Minister's office, where a lone volunteer, a young woman was speaking to a couple of inquiring passers-by, in the dark, under a sign that indicated it was Shalit's 1082nd day in captivity. Today, former President Jimmy Carter met Shalit's parents at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, and agreed to take a letter with him when he travels to Gaza in the coming days, in the hopes of passing it on so that it will eventually reach Shalit. Last year, though vilified as usual in some of Israeli press reports, Carter did manage to pass a letter from Shalit's family via Hamas in Gaza, and then later did pass on some kind of reply, apparently from Shalit, in return.
One of the reasons this Haaretz article is so compelling is that its authors – Israeli journalists -- have done a great job of getting the Israeli Army to talk, as one observer noted this morning.
The Haaretz article reports that in COGAT´s "Red Lines" document, "After four pages filled with detailed charts of the number of grams and calories of every type of food to be permitted for consumption [by] Gaza residents (broken down by gender and age), comes this recommendation: ´It is necessary to deal with the international community and the Palestinian Health Ministry to provide nutritional supplements (only some of the flour in Gaza is enriched) and to provide education about proper nutrition´. Printed in large letters at the end of the document is this admonition: 'The stability of the humanitarian effort is critical for the prevention of the development of malnutrition'. These quantities allow a very slim margin for error or mishaps ... 'This analysis does not take distribution in the field into consideration'," says the 'Red Lines' document. [A] COGAT official says that he assumes that food distribution within Gaza is not equal. If some are receiving more, others are necessarily receiving less than the required minimum. So it is hard to reconcile this information with the claims of the defense minister and COGAT officers that there is no real food shortage in Gaza".
It is not easy, without a large and devoted-to-detail staff, to keep up with COGAT's announcements of what gets into Gaza, via what crossing, and when. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead, on some days the deliveries into Gaza were reaching nearly the 150 truckloads a day minimum that humanitarian NGOs said must get into the Gaza Strip. This is of course nowhere near the 400-600 truckloads a day that were getting in before the sanctions against Gaza were tightened by the Israeli military. But it is more than were getting in from late 2007 until Operation Cast Lead was over. But, over the last week or so, the figures have often dropped again to the 44-75 truckloads per day range.
The Haaretz article also reports that an unnamed "senior officer who was serving in COGAT when the blockade was imposed" said that: "If you go back two years, you see that it was utter foolishness ... There was a vague, unclear policy, influenced by the interests of certain groups, by this or that lobby, without any policy that derived from the needs of the population. For example, the fruit growers have a powerful lobby, and this lobby saw to it that on certain days, from 20-25 trucks full of fruit were brought into Gaza. It's not that it arrived there and was thrown out, but if you were to ask a Gazan who lives there, it's not exactly what he needs. What happened was that the Israeli interest took precedence over the needs of the populace."
The Israeli interest appears to involve the complete subjugation of the Gazan economy. The figures are numbing: some 90% of the population is now said to be dependent on humanitarian aid, and almost all of Gaza's own factories and small enterprises have now been destroyed or run out of business.
GISHA's Bashi noted that "Israel is also not allowing new materials needed for production into Gaza, but rather -- on a limited basis -- is only allowing Gaza's residents to buy goods from Israel. One example: we're in touch with an importer from Gaza who purchased several dunams of tomato fields (in Gaza) with the aim of making tomato paste. But the tin cans he needs to package the tomato paste are not locally available, so he purchased them from Israel. And, he cannot now get these tin cans delivered into Gaza (they are not on the list of items permitted), so, the tomato he invested in are rotting. This means that Gazan residents can purchase Israeli-made tomato paste, but they are prevented from packaging their own. People in Gaza have a right not just to consume but also to produce -- and to earn a livelihood", Bashi said. She added, "My hope is that responsible decision-makers will put an end to this drastic and foolish policy".
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