Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Helpless in Gaza

Un articolo che illumina una delle tante miserie a cui è costretta la 
gente di Gaza per sopravvivere nel recinto in cui lo stato ebraico la 
tiene rinchiusa.
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MIDEAST:  Helpless in Gaza
By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERSUALEM, Feb 1, 2010 (IPS) - Scores of Palestinian women and their 
children carefully sift through the desert sands. They are looking for 
hard nuggets.
No gold rush here in the Gaza Strip – all they are putting into their 
sacks are pebbles and pieces of hard rock.
Even Israelis were moved when their main commercial channel, Channel 2, 
showed on prime time news on Thursday evening the scenes of despair in 
besieged Gaza.
The pebbles are sold for a pittance to Palestinian contractors who have 
no other building material with which to reconstruct the thousands of 
homes and buildings destroyed last year during Israel’s war on Hamas.
Beyond Gaza, the current United States diplomatic effort aimed at 
re-starting full peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian 
Authority has yet to yield results.
Now, a joint Palestinian-Israeli NGO has stepped in, seeking to fill the 
dangerous vacuum. In a policy paper, it puts forward recommendations to 
the international community on how the abysmal Gaza predicament might be 
resolved.
The paper, devised by the Palestine-Israel Journal (PIJ), was made 
available to IPS on Wednesday.
The assessments and recommendations of the special PIJ forum are part of 
a series of advisory papers solicited by the European Union (EU) on how 
to advance the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.
The premise of the PIJ paper on Gaza is two-fold: "Israel is the party 
which holds the primary keys to ending the current situation in Gaza. 
Without pressure from the international community, Israel will not hand 
over those keys."
The reports goes on to assert that "the siege imposed on Gaza by Israel 
and the international community is a collective punishment; it creates a 
hotbed for the breeding of extremism and violence; it serves the rule of 
Hamas; worsens the social structure of the Strip and creates an unstable 
and retarded economy that is based on non-production. In the medium and 
long term, this poses a significant risk to many parties, including 
Egypt and Israel."
With Israeli-Arab negotiations stalled since the Gaza war, the PIJ forum 
represents a unique initiative. It brings together Palestinian and 
Israeli politicians along with civil society activists, military and 
legal experts, and diplomats from the EU, the U.S., Egypt and Turkey.
To allow the participants to express their views as freely as possible, 
the policy paper was drafted under the Chatham House rule. No quotations 
stemming from the closed-door proceedings were made public.
Among the recommendations were:
- De-politicise aid and freedom of movement for people and goods and to 
enable the normalisation of living conditions in Gaza.
- Demand more robustly that Israel provide clarification of its closure 
policy and its refusal to accept the EU proposal for the re-opening of 
the Gaza seaport.
- Local and international civil societies must vocally and visibly call 
attention to the international community's obligation to end its 
participation in the blockade of Gaza.
Specifically, the PIJ forum calls for the launching of "public campaigns 
to put more pressure on Israel, with the goal of reflecting more 
accurately the situation on the ground and the aspirations of the 
population", in particular "the individual humanitarian aspects".
The forum also advises the international community to "examine its 
participation in the act of closing off Gaza and ask itself honestly if 
its goals are being achieved and at what cost."
Regarding the urgency of post-war reconstruction, the PIJ paper urges 
donors to "secure Israeli guarantees to ensure that the results of 
continued development aid will not to be destroyed again’’.
"The international community should regularly issue a public register of 
the damages, the delays and the destruction of projects built with the 
help of foreign financial aid as a consequence of Israeli governmental 
activity and should seek compensation for such damages."
A long-time supporter of the two-state solution, the PIJ does not steer 
shy of political recommendations.
It reaffirms the requirement of "the territorial integrity of the West 
Bank and the Gaza Strip as agreed upon in the Oslo peace accord (1993) 
by lifting the Gaza-West Bank access restrictions, which contribute to 
de-linking and isolating the two territories from each other and to 
making a future united statehood less likely."
Neither does the PIJ evade the devastating consequences on the 
Palestinian state-to-be of the self-inflicted domestic political and 
territorial schism; it insists on the need to "involve Hamas and other 
political factions in the political process".
For that purpose, it calls for a phased internationally-backed plan "to 
design and implement a full package that includes national 
reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas; the exchange of prisoners 
between Hamas and Israel and, new elections based on the Egyptian 
proposal for moving towards elections in June 2010."
There is no indication as to how immediate relief could be reached to 
the hard-pressed Palestinians of Gaza.
A report issued last week by the U.N. and compiled on the basis of work 
of 80 NGOs spoke of the impact of the blockade of Gaza on the health of 
the people and on health services in the densely populated Strip.
The U.N. report stresses that "the economy of Gaza is in virtual 
collapse with rising unemployment and poverty which will have long term 
adverse effects on the physical and mental health of the population. The 
environment is also in decline including water quality, sewage and waste 
disposal and other environmental hazards (including munitions and 
medical waste)’’.
"Hospitals and primary care facilities have not been rebuilt because 
construction materials are not allowed into Gaza. Operation ‘Cast Lead’ 
[the Israeli codename for its war on Hamas] damaged or destroyed 15 of 
Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 43 of its 110 primary healthcare facilities.
"Supplies of drugs and disposables have generally been allowed into Gaza 
– though there are often shortages on the ground. However, certain types 
of medical equipment, such as x-ray equipment and electronic devices are 
very difficult to bring in. Broken medical equipment is often not being 
repaired while spare parts are either unavailable or out of date," the 
report notes.
Israeli minister of welfare Isaac Herzog told IPS that, although the 
conditions in Gaza are "preoccupying", the "humanitarian situation is 
under control."
Responding to the PIJ recommendation to bring Hamas into the negotiating 
process, Herzog stressed that a more preferable approach would be for 
the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to "test 
[Benjamin] Netanyahu at the table."
In addition to the tight Israeli siege, there has been a further closing 
in on Gaza: Egypt is accelerating building of an underground wall on its 
border with the area to prevent Palestinian smuggling of weapons and all 
manner of goods barred by Israel.
The women and children combing Gaza’s wasteland may well be there for 
some time to come.
(END)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50179
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[Megaphone]
The Foreign Ministry itself is now pushing the idea, urging supporters 
of Israel everywhere to
become cyberspace soldiers "in the new battleground for Israel's image."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1162378505678&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 parties, including Egypt and Israel."
Quei paesi decideranno da se quali sono i possibili rischi.
Di certo l'Egitto ha gia' pensato a come tutelarsi da Gaza: un bel muro
sotterraneo.
-Stefano