Earlier this week, a group of human rights activists from around the world successfully broke the siege of Gaza for a second time. Defying Israeli threats, the SS Dignity docked safely in Gaza on Thursday morning.
The ceasefire agreed between Hamas and Israel in June has been largely successful in halting the violence, despite occasional violations on both sides (Palestinian fisherman, for example, have been frequently targeted). Despite this Gaza remains, quoting UNICEF, in a state of "virtual siege" (.pdf) in which "[s]hortages of electricity, fuel, safe water and sanitation frame daily life." The illegal blockade, which has inflicted upon Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants what leading humanitarian organisations (.pdf) describe as a "humanitarian implosion" of "unprecedented" proportions, "dwarf[ing] earlier calamities", remains largely intact. There has been virtually "no improvement in the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza". "If anything", reports UN special rapporteur for human rights in Occupied Territories Richard Falk, "existing evidence discloses a harsher regime of confinement and siege imposed on the Gazan population" [my emph.]. Consistent with long declared official policy, Israel currently permits just enough food and other humanitarian goods to enter the Strip to avoid mass death, but not enough to enable any form of economic or social development. One consequence of this is that, with 98% of Gazan factories no longer functioning, the official unemployment rate in Gaza is one of the highest in the world at approximately 45% (as Prof. Falk notes, "even that figure understates the true level").
The situation in the West Bank is only slightly better. Israeli policy post-Annapolis has been characterised by a sharp acceleration of settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; further increases in the number of checkpoints and roadblocks (in the context of a more than 60% increase (.pdf) in checkpoints and closures since the Agreement on Movement and Access was signed in 2005) that serve to fragment the West Bank and suffocate the Palestinian economy; and continued construction of the annexation wall, which when complete will isolate East Jerusalem on the Israel's side of the barrier and annexe roughly 10% of the West Bank, including (.pdf) dozens of Palestinian villages, tens of thousands of Palestinians and, crucially, "some of the [area's] most valuable agricultural land and ... richest water resources".
Nearly 40% of the West Bank has been made inaccessible to Palestinians, including virtually the entire Jordan Valley, which has been effectively annexed. Beyond the physical barriers - "segregated roads" built to serve the settlers, checkpoints, roadblocks, 'closed areas', 'nature reserves', the wall and of course the settlements themselves - Israel has also developed a complex system of administrative restrictions that combine (.pdf) to "form an impermeable barrier against the realization of Palestinian economic potential."
For example, the World Bank reports (.pdf) that Israeli regulations "tend to limit [Palestinian] development to within the confines of existing villages, with too little suitable space for demographic growth". Meanwhile, the land set aside for the future expansion of the settlements far exceeds the requirements of the "fastly growing" settler population, such that while the total number of settlers grew by 150% between 1987 and 2005, the area of land allocated to the settlements increased by more than 400% during the same period. Similarly, while the permit system "slows down or halts altogether" Palestinian construction, illegal construction in the settlements has continued throughout Olmert's term in office, and indeed - as noted above - has sharply accelerated since the Annapolis summit last year. This sort of thing is rarely reported, because it simply cannot be explained through reference to Israel's purported "security needs", however tenuous. The intentional restriction of Palestinian construction in the West Bank, together with support for increased settlement expansion, can only be explained as part of a plan to permanently subjugate the West Bank.
The Israeli government's reluctance to freeze settlement construction or to demolish the so-called "outposts" is matched only by its eagerness to demolish Palestinian homes, usually under the pretext that they have been built without a permit and are therefore 'illegal' - a purely semantic point since, as the World Bank and others report, Israel systematically refuses to issue permits to Palestinians. This week approximately 130 Palestinians were made homeless after Israeli military bulldozers demolished their houses, an act condemned by the UN Middle East envoy. Some of the victims were in the process of appealing the demolition orders they had been issued when their houses were torn down (evidently, the authorities felt they had a reasonable chance of winning).
Where bureaucratic regulations don't do the job, Israel can always rely on its virtual monopoly on force. The UN special rapporteur, for example, describes how over the past year "Israel has used force continuously against the civilian population of Nablus without even claiming justification on the basis of prior resistance activities". Israeli military action, including the "destruction of property belonging to several charitable organizations, including schools, clinics and an orphanage that had been providing necessary services to the population" and the "arbitrary clos[ure]" of the Nablus Mall, has "generated an atmosphere of fear" and "reduced by some 50 per cent the economic activity of the city, which previously had been regarded as the commercial centre of Palestine."
The World Bank concludes that the cumulative effect of the policies outlined above has been the "further fragmentation" of the West Bank "into a multitude of enclaves, with a regime of movement restrictions between them" and, sometimes, within them. Prof. Falk warns that this "cantonization of Palestinian daily life" sends a message to Palestinians that "the two-State solution to the conflict is no longer viable" - surely no accident, at least if the term refers to a genuine two-state settlement rather than the 'one-state-plus-bantustans' model Israel has been prepared to offer in the past and that, indeed, it is in the process of unilaterally implementing on the ground.
Upon the SS Dignity's arrival in Gaza one of the expedition's organisers, tireless Palestinian-American activist Huwaida Arraf, declared:
"Once again we've been able to defy an unjust and illegal policy while the rest of the world is too intimidated to do anything. Our small boat is a huge cry to the international community to follow in our footsteps and open a lifeline to the people of Gaza."
Arraf was here being too kind on the "international community": malice and indifference rather than intimidation more plausibly explain U.S. and EU complicity in the blockade of Gaza.
While the World Bank and all the leading humanitarian NGOs emphasise that Palestinian economic revival is predicated on "a fundamental shift in Israeli policy" towards the creation of "an integrated economic entity with freedom of movement between the West Bank and Gaza and within the West Bank", the response from the U.S. and EU has been merely to increase aid while facilitating precisely the destructive policies described above. This has had predictable (and indeed predicted) results: according to the World Bank, "foreign aid has succeeded in doing little more than slowing down the deterioration of the economy, despite ever larger volumes".
Yet, there appears to be little else on the horizon. Soon-to-be President Obama has made clear, both verbally and, more significantly, through his choice of Dennis Ross as advisor, that he will not pressure Israel to accept the international consensus two-state settlement. The looming Israeli elections, meanwhile, will leave either Livni or Netanyahu as Prime Minister. About the latter nothing more needs to be said. Regarding Livni, while there is a lot of hopeful speculation about her stance vis-a-vis the Palestinians, she has generally adopted hawkish positions since the beginning of the Kadima primaries, for example opposing a plan to pay settlers to move to Israel and declaring that Syria must cut its ties to Iran before Israel will withdraw from Syrian territory. Her record thus far suggests that she will not depart significantly from the Sharon line, at least not to the extent required in order to reach a settlement. Reports that she refused to accede to Shas' demand to keep Jerusalem off the negotiating table offer a glimmer of hope (Barak's sudden willingness to talk about the 2002 Arab peace initiative really doesn't), but even if she were a secret dove, upon winning the election she would have to form a coalition with right-wing, conservative parties that would block any serious moves towards peace.
Overall, then, the diplomatic picture looks bleak. Which makes the Free Gaza Movement and other initiatives like it all the more important.
Cross-posted at The Heathlander