Genocide?

As Gaza Dries Out, Israel Turns Off

Fresh Water Spigot
Rather than heeding the warnings from the UN to open up Gaza’s blockade and
allow vital aid, what we have witnessed over the course of the last decade is a
periodic all-out Israeli assault on Gaza’s vital infrastructure.

by Darius Shahtahmasebi-February 15th, 2018

GAZA (Analysis) — Near the end of last month, Haaretz reported that, according
to an expert hydrologist, 97 percent of Gaza’s drinking water has been
contaminated by sewage and salt. The UN also confirmed that this was the case
early last year, and clearly, the situation has remained unchanged even up until
2018. Robert Piper, the UN’s local coordinator for humanitarian and development
activities, has called the situation “really very serious” and stated that “[w]e are
falling far behind the demand for clean drinking water for Gazans.”

This kind of mistreatment is part and parcel of an overall package of deprivation

that continues to plague the Palestinian people. There are some 2 million
residents in Gaza affected by this egregious policy, famously one of the most
densely populated areas on the planet. Gaza’s water resources are fully controlled
by Israel and the division of groundwater is something that was provided for in
the Oslo II Accord. However, despite the fact that under the Accord Israel
is allocated four times the Palestinian portion of water resources, it has been
revealed that Israel has been extracting 80 percent more water from the West
Bank than it agreed to.

In 2009, the World Bank wrote that the responsibility was on the government of
Israel to recognize that water and sanitation is a central component of the Gaza
Strip humanitarian crisis and make arrangements to facilitate fuel distribution to
some 170 water and sewage pumps in Gaza; maintain the Beit Lahiya Sewage
Lake; and restore regular electricity supply in order to reduce dependence on fuel
for generators.
According to the World Bank, at the time, almost all of Gaza’s population was
without running water and was dependent on stored water supplies. The World
Bank also noted that nearly all sewage and water pumps were out of operation
due to lack of electricity and diminished fuel supplies, something that we will
address below. But once again, these deficiencies fall squarely on the shoulders of
the Israeli government, which is wholly responsible for Gaza’s electricity and
water supply.

In order to rectify the issue, the Deputy UN Special Coordinator for the Middle
East Peace Process, Maxwell Gaylard, called for the immediate opening of Gaza’s
crossings to allow the entry of spare parts and materials critical to the restoration
of Gaza’s water and sanitation services. Israel famously closed Gaza’s crossing
points in June 2007 and the local population has been suffering ever since.
However, there are many other factors that have helped to create this
humanitarian catastrophe. Israel routinely unleashes bombing campaigns on the
Gaza Strip every few years, targeting vital infrastructure, including destroying
Gaza’s only power plant in 2014. The blockade single-handedly prevents vital
materials and equipment from making its way into Gaza, making redevelopment
impossible, even some four years later.

Electricity supply

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the Gaza
Strip endures dry, hot summers that are subject to drought.

Exploiting these conditions, Israel has used electricity as an inventive point of

leverage to torture the Palestinian people, while the international community has
stayed largely silent. This is the same international community that cites human
rights abuses in Syria, Iran, and North Korea to promote military intervention and
regime change to suit its geopolitical needs, yet stays silent as 2 million Gazan
residents are suffering immensely in what is widely regarded as an open-air
prison and the world’s largest ghetto.
On a good day, residents in Gaza over the last six months have been
receiving three to four hours of electricity per day, the flow of which is controlled
by Israel. However, according to the Times of Israel, Gazans were only able to
obtain four hours’ worth of electricity thanks mainly to fuel supplies sent from
Egypt. On a bad day, some estimates cite that Gazans have been receiving as little
as two hours electricity per day if any at all.

After the Palestinian Authority said it would begin resuming payment for Israeli
electricity flows to the Gaza Strip (at a cost of some $2.8 million per month), Israel
announced it would restore its share of the electricity supply. However, this will
increase Gaza’s electricity supply only to approximately six hours’ worth of
electricity per day. The outage of electricity is expected to last for 12 hours a day
at least, according to the Electronic Intifada.

One should bear in mind that, with a Gazan population of around 2 million
residents, the effects of this stringent electricity supply are felt far beyond just the
average household. In August of last year, Gaza’s children’s hospitals also
warned of a health “catastrophe,” as power cuts routinely take place during four-
hour-long dialysis treatment.

For years, Israel has attempted to shed blame from its inhumane policies and
instead point to the debacle solely on an internal Palestinian issue between the
Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Last year, Human Rights Watch’s director for
the region, Omar Shakir, told the right-wing pro-Israel publication Algemeiner that
because Israel is “legally the occupying power,” it bore the brunt of the
responsibility for this crisis. “Israel controls the borders, the airspace, the waters
of Gaza, so Israel has an obligation that goes beyond merely responding to a
request from Palestinian authorities,” Shakir reportedly said.

The Electronic Intifada also notes that Israel has been using electricity as a
politically viable blackmail tool, with Israel’s Coordination of Government
Activities in the Territories (COGAT) stating it would restore electricity after Israeli
prisoners held in Gaza were returned, as well as the bodies of two Israeli Defense
Forces (IDF) soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul. It is also worth noting that
Egypt, too, shares a great deal of the blame for this horrific treatment of the
Palestinian people

Assaults on Gaza

Rather than heeding the warnings from the UN to open up Gaza’s blockade and
allow vital aid, what we have witnessed over the course of the last decade is a
periodic all-out assault on Gaza’s vital infrastructure.

Since the blockade was enforced, there have been three major IDF operations in
Gaza: Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, and
Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
Following Operation Cast Lead, the World Bank reported that there had been
severe damage to the water and sanitation infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

After Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the UN reported that more than 20,000
Palestinian homes, 148 schools and 60 healthcare centers in Gaza were damaged
or destroyed. Israel even bombed a disability center at the time. Gaza has no air
force, no air defenses, and no substantive military to defend its people.
While most pro-Israeli pundits would point to Hamas rocket fire as an excuse for
the interventions, the truth on the ground tells a different story.

The Submission to the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the

2014 Gaza Conflict, published by Truthout, quite clearly demonstrates that Israeli
airstrikes and ground attacks preceded Hamas rocket fire; and that Hamas rocket-
fire had been nonexistent since Israel’s previous assault in 2012. In other words,
Hamas had been abiding by its terms of the ceasefire — even while Israel had
been starving Gaza of basic human rights, as argued and outlined above.

Further, in July 2014, The Guardian published a blog by investigative journalist

Nafeez Ahmed, which claimed Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza in 2014 was rooted
in a desire to control Palestinian gas off the coast of Gaza and had nothing to do
with concerns about Hamas rocket fire. The Guardian axed his blog not long after.
The Jerusalem debacle

Israel modus operandi has been to attack Gaza by punishing the civilian
population with these heavy sanctions affecting its basic life necessities. It is
almost as if the Israeli government has been attempting to provoke a response
from the Gaza Strip, which could then be used again to justify yet another
intervention — given it has been proven that Israel has lied about its stated
reasons for intervention in the past. This response, however, never came in the
form that Israel might have hoped for.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally declare Jerusalem the
capital of Israel, inflaming an already tense situation, was the political icing on the
cake of Palestinian suffering. Regardless of one’s views on the Israel-Palestine
conflict, which continues to divide people all along the political spectrum, the fact
remains that this decision alone pushed an already volatile situation to a point of
outright violence. According to Reuters, since Trump’s infamous decision, at least
13 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces.
Further, it wasn’t long after Trump’s announcement that Israel began resuming
air strikes in the Gaza Strip. Perhaps this is a sign of things to come in the not-too-
distant future. While tensions are heating up between Israel and Syria, Lebanon
and Iran, it has been largely overlooked that Hamas and Israel are preparing for
an imminent war even as we speak.
Gaza in crisis
In 2015, the UN predicted that Gaza would become uninhabitable by 2020. Not
pulling any punches, the UN concedes the cause of this crisis is based on two
important factors: Israeli military operations and the decades-long blockade that
has crippled Gaza’s economy and infrastructure. Reportedly, Gaza has
an unemployment rate of some 50 percent, the highest unemployment rate in the
world, with a youth unemployment rate of at least 60 percent.

According to The New York Times, UN officials are warning that Gaza is facing a
total collapse. Rather than exporting some much-needed freedom, human rights
and democracy, the Trump administration instead announced that it would
withhold $65 million from UNRWA — vital money required for providing basic
necessities for some 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza. The Times also wrote:
Still, whether out of bluster or desperation, Gazans both in and out of power have
begun talking openly about confronting Israel over its blockade in the kind of
mass action that could easily lead to casualties and escalation.”
No matter how one cuts it, whether Israel has been intentionally trying to elicit a
response from Gaza or not, the fact remains that the Israeli government is
intentionally pursuing a long list of policies that will almost certainly lead to a
hostile escalation, as the international community continues to turn a blind eye to
the everyday suffering of the Palestinian people. Israeli policies indeed border on
a systematic genocide that will, if unchecked, completely erode the Gaza Strip to
nothingness in just a few short years.

Top Photo | Palestinian children fill their bottles with water from a UNICEF tap in
Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. (Photo: UNICEF)

Darius Shahtahmasebi is a practicing attorney with an interest in human rights,

international law, and journalism. He is a graduate of the University of Otago,
where he obtained degrees in Law and Japanese. Follow him on Twitter
at @TVsLeaking.
Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of
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produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the
author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
Posted by Thavam