Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: report from Gaza: "Where's the humanitarian crisis?"

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/06/danish-report-from-gaza-wheres.html
Judging from the media, the situation in Gaza is desperate, everything 
is about to collapse, and the community is on the brink or at the level 
of a third world country.
The Palestinian community's immediate downfall has been prophesied 
numerous times in the media. People have nothing to eat, we sometimes 
know. The UN must from time to time to stop food distribution, either 
because their stocks are running low, or because they can not get diesel 
for their trucks, and therefore can not carry food in. And so on.
Yesterday I drove into the Gaza Strip. I don't do this as often as 
before [because it takes much longer to get through the checkpoints now.]
This time, I had expected to see real suffering, because with all the 
fuss in recent days about bringing tons of humanitarian relief in - so 
much that people actually sacrificed their lives for it - there 
certainly had to really be a deep, desperate situation in the Gaza 
Strip. No food. Long queues in front of UN food stocks. Hungry children 
with food bowls.
But this was not the picture that greeted me.
When I yesterday morning drove through Gaza City, I was immediately 
surprised that there are almost as many traffic jams as there always has 
been. Is there not a shortage of fuel? Apparently not. Gasoline is not 
even rationed.
Many shops were closed yesterday, Hamas has declared a general strike in 
protest against Israel's brutal and deadly attack on the Turkish 
flotilla with pro-Palestinian activists on board. So it was difficult to 
estimate how many products were on the shelves. Therefore I went over to 
the Shati refugee camp, also known as Beach Camp. Here is one of Gaza's 
many vegetable markets that sell much more than just fruits and vegetables.
I will not say whether, in better times has been a larger product range 
than there was yesterday. But there was certainly no shortage of 
vegetables, fruits or any other ordinary, basic foods. Tomatoes, 
cucumbers, corn, watermelons, potatoes - mountains of these items in the 
many stalls.
I must admit I was a little surprised. Because when I call down here to 
my Palestinian friends, they tell me about all the problems and 
deficiencies, so I expected that the crisis was a little more clear.
And the first woman we interviewed in the market confirms this strange, 
contradictory, negative mindset:
"We have nothing," she said. We need everything! Food, drinks ... 
everything! "
It disturbed her not at least that she stood between the mountains of 
vegetables, fruit, eggs, poultry and fish, while she spun this doomsday 
scenario.
Yousuf al-Assad Yazgy owns a fruit and vegetable outlet here in the 
market. All his fruit is imported from Israel.
"Not all fruit and all vegetables come from Israel. Ours does. They come 
from Israel. But in the Gaza Strip there is not very much fruit 
cultivated. Mostly tomatoes, potatoes and vegetables. So here with me 
are the vegetables and watermelon were from Gaza. All the fruit comes 
across the border from Israel," he explains, but also says that there 
can be long periods when the border is closed, and which therefore fruit 
does not come in.
On the way out of the Shati camp we stop at a small grocery store. Not 
any fancy, expensive business. Just a small, humble local store. The 
proprietor Sun Mohammed Abu Nada says they would not be able to do 
business if it were not for contraband goods from Egypt.
He takes us on a brief tour of the shelves and shows everything that 
comes from Egypt. It turns out to be much more than half of the goods. 
75-80 per cent. I would estimate. Several other products - including 
long-life UHT milk - comes from Israel, but is also smuggled through 
tunnels from Egypt.
The products are more expensive, he says. Many people cannot afford to 
buy them, or only to buy certain things sometimes. But all the while 
that even such a small, poor-looking grocery store on the outskirts of a 
refugee camp still has so many relatively expensive smuggled goods on 
the shelves shows nevertheless that many of the customers at least be 
able to afford to buy them. Otherwise, the merchant of course could not 
even afford to invest in unsold inventory.
This story I have written to postulate that there are problems in the 
Gaza Strip, because that would be untrue. There are problems. Many 
problems indeed. But it is not lack of food, which primarily concern 
people down here. The biggest problem is the lack of jobs and a 
sustainable domestic economy.

9 MORTI A ZERO. Che è il posto dove stanno le chiacchiere di
mr.filmato del '99