Amira Hass : Opinion Lieberman Is Right, There’s No Crisis in Gaza – This Is Disaster
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haaretz.com
In the disagreement between the military chief of staff and the defense minister over whether there is a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza
Strip, the defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is right. There is no
crisis. A crisis involves a breaking point of some kind that goes beyond
what is routine, striking like a meteor. That’s not the situation in
Gaza, where there is a constant and foreseen deterioration. Any given
point in the decline is a humanitarian disaster.
The
preceding paragraph and each sentence that follows could be the subject
of an entire article, but I don’t have the time. In the “Don’t Say You
Didn’t Know” column, pressing issues are piling up, and in the north
there is a danger of war. So we’ll stick to the main points.
Every few months an international or Palestinian organization warns that Gaza is on the verge of collapse.
They’re not lying. The warnings scratch up a little emergency aid that
doesn’t deal with the causes, and only slows the rate of deterioration.
It’s safe to assume that a few shipments of medicine as well as funds
for emergency fuel are now on their way.
The Palestinians of Gaza have become a community of beggars. It’s a disgrace. And the disgrace is not theirs.
The
Israelis and Americans are right, for all their outrageous hypocrisy,
when they ask Hamas why it has money for weapons but not to pay the full
salaries of medical personnel, or for hospitals and medications.
Hamas
is imitating Israel. Like Israel, it shifts the burden of looking after
Gaza’s civilians to the Palestinian Authority and the donor countries.
Like Israel, it wants to have it both ways: to control the Gaza Strip in
practice while evading responsibility for its population, but with one
basic difference: Israel is a cunning, wicked occupier that aims to use
economic and humanitarian disasters to force the Palestinians into
surrender and mass emigration. Hamas is the flesh and blood of the
special Palestinian community that is living in the Strip. Shifting
responsibility upon others while strutting like a peacock with its
weaponry and the armed struggle, only has weakened its people, 40
percent of whom want to emigrate.
When
senior officials of the Palestinian Authority, particularly Mahmoud
Abbas, speak about the “State of Palestine,” which has been recognized
by the United Nations, it includes the Gaza Strip. Gaza is needed for
their political narrative, but in practice those officials show
indifference to the fate of Gaza’s citizens.
A
shortage of 40 percent of the medicines in Gaza’s public health system
is not a divine decree. Hamas and Gaza’s residents are right to accuse
the Palestinian Authority of deliberately delaying shipments of medicine
to pressure Hamas. This is not politically wise, either. Gazans openly
criticize the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas.
The
delay of shipments of medicine is not economically wise. Instead of
patients being treated in the Gaza Strip, they are belatedly referred
for treatment outside. The Palestinian Authority pays, and the cost
comes to dozens of times the price of the medicines. What folly!
It’s
reasonable to assume that the rate of disease is skyrocketing in Gaza
due to water that is not fit for consumption, a dwindling underground
aquifer, untreated sewage that is directed into the sea, land that is
laden with chemicals left behind by the countless, relentless aerial
bombardments by Israel; the garbage that is so difficult to dispose of;
the constant state of fear; the numbers of wounded, disabled people and
the many who suffer from post-traumatic effects after losing loved ones
in Israeli attacks.
The
residents of Gaza have resiliency and stamina that are hard for us to
imagine. Surgeons from abroad who volunteer in Gaza are amazed at how
children there are on their feet two days after surgery. It takes
children in Madrid a week, I was told by Steve Sosebee, director of the
Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, which brings hundreds of volunteer
doctors to the occupied territories. Does it explain, then, the ability
of Gazans to deal with the collection of maladies listed in the
preceding paragraph?
of competing over who’s first at burning out medical personnel and
cutting their salaries, maybe the leadership of each of the two
Palestinian factions could engage in the opposite kind of competition:
over who’s first at raising the salaries of medical teams out of
recognition of the importance of their work, and their diligence and
dedication over the years, for which they have not been rewarded?
Sosebee
said a French volunteer physician came away with the impression that
all doctors in the Gaza Strip are depressed; Sosebee called it an
epidemic of depression. The doctors know exactly how to treat their
patients but they don’t have the means. It’s a depression that
unconnected to the partial salaries they receive, and it goes beyond the
depression of two million imprisoned residents who can’t come and go
from the Strip in freedom.
With
its policy of mass incarceration, which began in 1991 and was stepped
up in the 2000s, Israel hoped to pressure Egypt into annexing Gaza. This
failed. It’s time for Europe to demand something in return for its
funding. The Europeans should say that for every $1,000 they donate to
save the Strip, Israel must let 1,000 more Gazans leave for studies, for
work, for continuing education of doctors and teachers, and for travel
and visits to friends and relatives.
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This
should be said over and over again: The regular cycle of near-collapse
will only be halted when freedom of movement for people and goods is
restored. Let them work, including in Israel, as before. They will earn
an honest living, they will market and export goods, the Palestinian
treasury won’t have to collect handouts from the world, and people will
want to come home to Gaza because no one will prevent them from leaving.
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