For 11 years Gaza’s population of 1.8m has been blockaded and starved by Israel – a state whose soldiers now shoot to kill unarmed civilian protesters. As of today, there are 1,799,983 civilians remaining in Gaza without adequate jobs, food or electricity, who demand justice.
They comprise families who have been forcibly dispossessed by Israel and who now demand the right of return to their land and homes. What would you do if you were a Palestinian whose home and livelihood had been stolen and whose essential supplies of food, medicines and building materials have been deliberately blockaded by a military force for over ten years?
Gaza once had an International Airport which was located in the Gaza Strip, in between Rafah and Dahaniya, close to the Egyptian border. The facility ceased operation during the Second Intifada on 8 October 2000 when the radar station and control tower were bombed by an Israeli attack. No planes now fly into or out of Gaza. There is an illegal air and sea blockade still in force which is, astonishingly, supported by Britain and America.
In 2007, following Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, Israel imposed a naval blockade on the pretext of preventing arms smuggling that has prevented all ships from docking at the port of Gaza; this, in a conspicuously failed attempt at regime change.
Thousands of Palestinians have been suffering from the effects of this illegal siege for over ten years which prevents them travelling or having their essential needs met. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has stated that the blockade is a violation of human rights and humanitarian law. The San Remo Manual on International Law applicable to armed conflicts at sea states that if the supplies essential for their survival are not reaching them, then the blockading party must provide them with these materials.
These conditions have never been met. On the contrary, the state of Israel has enforced a deliberate policy of keeping the entire population virtually without power and without essential food and medical supplies in an attempt at regime change.
The ‘United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ reported that the blockading party is depriving the Palestinians from their freedom of movement, employment, housing, and even from water.
This is, by any standard, persecution and is an integral part of Israel’s attempt at ethnic cleansing the entire area from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan from all indigenous Arabs, both Christian and Muslim. It is a crime under international law yet both the UK and US governments, of May and Trump, continue to trade and support the Netanyahu administration.
The overt agenda of the Likud Party is to expropriate all the land of former Palestine in order to construct a ‘Greater Israel’ ethnically cleansed of all indigenous peoples. This is the known objective of the Israeli government.
The U.N. Security Council and the international community need to act now as a matter of urgency. Killing unarmed civilians on the pretext of ‘state security’ is the first step towards war. And both nuclear and chemical war are both entirely possible for although the Israeli state has up to 400 (undeclared) nuclear weapons of mass destruction, it is, dangerously, not a party to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty nor to the Chemical or Biological Weapons Conventions to which the majority of the world – including Britain and America is firmly committed.
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Hans Stehling (penname) is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
