Gaza

The Gaza Strip - quite literally a strip of land, about 25 miles long and four miles wide, crammed to bursting with 1.4 million Palestinians whose olive groves, their primary source of income, have been systematically destroyed by Israeli troops, and whose fishermen are shot at by Israeli soldiers when they set out in their boats to catch an alternative source of food.

The Gaza Strip was invaded in 1967 by Israeli troops and subjected to a 38 year brutal military occupation, which included the 'settling' of Israelis in Gaza as a key strategy of the occupation, and in contravention of international law.

In 2005, Israel withdrew the settlers from Gaza, which allowed it to then hermetically seal off the tiny strip of land, trapping the population inside, and placing severe restrictions on those seeking to deliver aid, including food, water and medical supplies to its impoverished people.

Over the next two years, Israel fired around 16,000 artillery shells into Gaza, killing 120 of the increasingly malnourished civilian population.

In 2004, Professor Arnon Soffer, one of the architects of the 2005 'settler' withdrawal, explained the Israeli government's reasoning for the forthcoming siege and entrapment of Gaza.

'In a few years' time, when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today.

'It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.'

He added: 'The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.' (Interview in The Jerusalem Post, 21 May 2004)

Between October 2001 and November 2008, nearly 3,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza by those Israeli boys and men (a further 2,000 killed in the West Bank), and another 1,300 were massacred in 22 days between December 2008 and January 2009, trapped with no hope of escape. The shelling and killing has continued daily since then, unreported in the Western media.

Israeli spokespeople have admitted that the January assaults on Gaza were planned eight months before Israel broke a six-month ceasefire, negotiated with Hamas - the supposed catalyst for the massacre.

In the same 2001 to 2008 period, Israel has suffered 13 fatalities from home-made Qassam rockets. The Palestinians have no army, no other weapons.

At Israel's disposal are US F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships, Merkava tanks and naval gunships. Israel's right-wing foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has also urged the Israeli government to use its nuclear arsenal against the people of Gaza.

The UN permits an occupied people to resist their occupation; small comfort to a civilian population in the iron grip of the world's fourth-largest military power.

Sources: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Electronic Intifada

Link: International Solidarity Movement