Gaza is predicted to be uninhabitable within five years.
The population of Gaza is 1.8 million people, approximately the combined total of the cities of San Francisco and San Jose California.
Through eight years of military blockade and three successive wars in 2008, 2012, and 2014, Israel has destroyed and degraded the Gazan infrastructure and economy. Unemployment in the Gaza strip is at 44 percent. Six in 10 households suffer from food insecurity.
Since 2007 exports from Gaza are banned and imports and transfers of cash are severely limited. Flow of all but the most basic humanitarian goods has been suspended. Per capita GDP in Gaza is 74% of what it was prior to the Oslo accords. The report indicates a real GDP per capita in constant 2004 dollars of ~$1,000–about $2.70/day.
Among young women the unemployment rate is 80%. The ramifications of persistently high unemployment will be devastating in the long term, says the report, as training and education among the long term unemployed become obsolete.
The latest military operation in 2014 has destroyed virtually all of what was left of the middle class in Gaza, says the report, relegating “almost all of the population into destitution and dependence on international humanitarian aid.”
During the military operation last summer, more than 500,000 Gazans were displaced, and more than 100,000 remain so as of mid-2015. A partial list of damage listed in the report includes:’
- 18,000 housing units destroyed or badly damaged
- 26 schools destroyed and 226 damaged
- 17 hospitals and 56 primary health centers damaged
- Gaza’s sole power plant severely affected by damage, lack of fuel, and extensive damage to power lines
- 20-30% of the water and sewage network damaged
- Water de-salination plant in Deir al-Balah damaged
- 220 agricultural wells destroyed or badly damaged
- 40,000 agricultural workers affected by damage to land and destruction of livestock
- 247 factories and 300 commercial establishments destroyed or badly damaged
I believe $1000 p/c GDP is less than post-earthquake Haiti.
And it’s occupied PALESTINE, dammit! Not some f’ing “territory.”
If you can do nothing else constructive on this issue, at the VERY least don’t aid the destruction of Palestinian identity by adopting Zionist terms. Should we call Palestinians “territorians?” I mean after all, they live in “territories” that no one seems to know the name of.
Or should we fully surrender and just call them Samarians?
Palestine is a country. It is occupied by Israel. Use the right words.
And yeah, it iS a big deal.
Over at CounterPunch, Jonathan Cook has done a review of the new book by Jeff Halper called “War Against the People.” This new book seems to me to be extremely relevant to the topic at hand as well as to the situation in the Middle East and, surprisingly, to the significant role Israel may play in one aspect of neoliberal globalization. Below I provide some excerpts with a link to the article which I highly recommend.
Halper’s main conclusion is disturbing. Israel, he says, is globalising Palestine.
After decades of controlling Palestinians under occupation, he notes, Israel is unrivalled in all these spheres. It uses the occupied territories as a giant laboratory for developing and testing new ideas, technology, tactics and weaponry.
It is no coincidence, he believes, that the US is talking up global terror threats at the same time as wealth and power have de-territorialised, creating an archipelago of elite interests that stretch from parts of the US and Europe to Singapore and the Virgin Islands.
Transnational corporations need secure corridors for the flow of capital and labour, he argues, as the much of the rest of the world turns into wastelands or slums.
The concern is how to maintain a social order conducive to capitalism as great swaths of the globe are impoverished and migrants try to escape their desperate plight.
This is where Israel has stepped in. The place where Israel has developed its ideas and tested them is the occupied territories, says Halper.
The control of Gaza, for example, offers a blueprint for other states concerned about domestic surveillance, border security, urban warfare, migration threats, and much more.
The Palestinians, in this sense, are an important resource for Israel. Without the occupied territories, Israel would be New Zealand. It would be a tourist destination, not a regional hegemon. (Jonathan Cook) http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/14/israel-securocratic-warfare-and-the-pacification-industry/
To say this is a scandal is an understatement. It’s absolutely sickening; the sheer viciousness is unbelievable . There is not one shred of humanity left in Israelis and they can only suffer as a result.