Gaza

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Place.png Gaza
(Prison, City)
  Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
People in Gaza.jpg
An enclave of Palestine in the south west corner of Israel

Gaza is a narrow, 25-mile-long stretch of Palestinian land located on the eastern Mediterranean coast with Egypt to its west and Israel to its south and east. The territory comprises five districts (North Gaza, Gaza City, Dier Al Balah, Khan Yunis and Rafah) with a combined population of 2,215,000 and is controlled by Hamas, which took power in 2007.[1]

The Gaza Strip's border with Israel is about 36 miles long and its border with Egypt is about eight miles. Gaza's 25-mile coastline has been blocked by the Israeli Navy since 2009 and is closed to all maritime traffic.[2]

Described as the world’s largest ‘open-air prison’ with 2.2 million people, 40% of whom are children, densely-populated Gaza has been under a 16-year-long siege mounted by Israel.[3]

Origin

Gaza's Secret Smuggling Tunnels - BLACK MARKET DISPATCHES - Vice News

Early

Gaza was part of the Ottoman Empire, before it was occupied by the United Kingdom from 1918 to 1948, Egypt from 1948 to 1967, and then Israel, which in 1993 granted the Palestinian Authority in Gaza limited self-governance through the Oslo Accords. The territory is still considered by the United Nations, international human rights organisations, and the majority of governments and scholars to be under occupation by Israel.[4][5]

Hamas takeover

After Hamas' June 2007 takeover, it ousted Fatah-linked officials from government positions, security services, universities, newspapers and strove to enforce law by removing guns from the hands of militias, clans, and criminal groups, and gaining control of supply tunnels. According to Amnesty International, under Hamas, newspapers were closed down and journalists were abducted and beaten. Fatah demonstrations were forbidden or suppressed, as in the case of a large demonstration on the anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death, which resulted in the deaths of seven people, after protesters hurled stones at Hamas security forces.[6]

Israeli Major General Giora Eiland, who headed Israel's National Security Council, has argued that after the disengagement and Hamas takeover, the Gaza Strip became a de facto state for all intents and purposes, writing that "It has clear borders, an effective government, an independent foreign policy and an army. These are the exact characteristics of a state", even though Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade of the Gaza Strip.[7][8]

Drone testing

Gaza's water polluted due to Israeli siege

Israel used Gaza as a testing ground for development of drones.[9]

Water

Israel has been accused of carrying out a "systemic and wilful campaign to deny Palestinians access to clean water" in Gaza.

It has been called "a comprehensive violation of one of the most basic human rights and consists of a two-pronged approach:

"the visible mass destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure;

"reinforced by invisible policies of closure and occupation, siege and confiscation that block the repair of infrastructure.

"Together, these tactics prevent the existence of sustainable Palestinian communities, driving people from their land, their homes, and communities."[10]

Project censored wrote in October 2014 that "In Gaza, 1.7 million Palestinians currently live without clean drinking water. With no perennial streams and low rainfall, Gaza relies on a single aquifer for all of its fresh water" and predicted that it could become unusably contaminated by 2016.[11]

Gas reserves

US and Israeli companies are working with Israeli approval to syphon natural gas from Gaza's territorial waters, even though this is illegal according to international law, says TRNN's Shir Hever

Nafeez Ahmed noted that Gaza has large reserves of natural gas, which no doubt play a part in Arab-Israel matters: "The Israel-Palestine conflict is clearly not all about resources. But in an age of expensive energy, competition to dominate regional fossil fuels are increasingly influencing the critical decisions that can inflame war."[12]

2024 Deterioration

Full article: 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War

Following the 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War, buildings and infrastructure in the Gaza strip became damaged to such an extent that the return is made impossible; with Gazan officials saying mid January 2024 that "more than 50% of housing units in Gaza have been destroyed, left uninhabitable or damaged".[13]

The state of Gaza is furthering the negative view on Israel in the middle east,[14] the outcome of which could be a war in the region. The Mediterranean Man (an Egyptian posting on Telegram) reported on the remarks by Eli Dekel who in an interview on an Israeli radio station in January 2024 pointed out that Egypt has taken steps in preparation of a land war against Israel.[15]


 

Related Quotations

PageQuoteAuthorDate
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War“UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said after a key Hamas operations center was discovered right beneath his headquarters that he had no idea. That's absurd. There was a very advanced tunnel with electrical cables, which supplied a Hamas server center with power. That came directly from UNRWA's electricity grid. Moreover, a few years ago, UNRWA staff noticed that an entire parking lot above it was starting to subside. So what do you mean, we couldn't have known anything?”Hillel Neuer2024
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War“Last year, after Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, the military’s Gaza division drafted its own intelligence assessment of this latest invasion plan.

Hamas had "decided to plan a new raid, unprecedented in its scope," analysts wrote in the assessment reviewed by The Times. It said that Hamas intended to carry out a deception operation followed by a “large-scale maneuver” with the aim of overwhelming the division. But the Gaza division referred to the plan as a “compass.” In other words, the division determined that Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived there yet. On July 6, 2023, the veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to a group of other intelligence experts that dozens of Hamas commandos had recently conducted training exercises, with senior Hamas commanders observing.

The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan, she wrote in the email exchanges viewed by The Times. The analyst warned that the drill closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out. The colonel in the Gaza division applauded the analysis but said the exercise was part of a “totally imaginative” scenario, not an indication of Hamas’s ability to pull it off.

“In short, let’s wait patiently,” the colonel wrote.”
Ronen Bergman
Adam Goldman
2023
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War“There had already been a significant increase in violence by Israeli settlers this year, even before the Hamas attack, according to UN data, with more than 100 incidents reported each month and about 400 people driven from their land between January and August.

Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem told the BBC that since the attack, it had documented "a concerted and organised effort by settlers to use the fact that the entire international and local attention is focused on Gaza and the north of Israel to try to seize land in the West Bank". Partial data compiled by B'Tselem, covering the first six days after the Hamas attack, recorded at least 46 separate incidents in which it said settlers threatened, physically attacked or damaged the property of Palestinians in the West Bank.

"A lot of shepherding families and communities have fled because they were threatened in the past week by settlers," said Roy Yellin, a spokesman for B'Tselem. "Settlers have been giving residents a deadline to leave and telling them if they don't they will be harmed. And some villages have been totally emptied out."”
BBC
Joel Gunter
2023
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War“When I was first asked to work there [at Shifa], I was told there was a part of the hospital I was not to go near, and if I did, I’d be in danger of being shot. No, but implicit was that it was being used for non-medical purposes. I stayed away, but I saw a few dodgy-looking non-medical characters going in and out all the time. It was a ward leading to a basement. As I said, I didn’t go there; so I behaved myself. I was welcome everywhere else, and as I say the doctors and nurses there were very welcoming and very kind and the hushed tones under which this was said was very consistent with all the other hushed tones with which Hamas was discussed. You know people were genuinely fearful. I cannot emphasise too much, the air of collective paranoia that existed there. If hospital staff were 10 per cent frightened of possible Israeli airstrikes, they were 90 per cent frightened of being persecuted by Hamas.’”Daily Mail
Nick Pisa
2023
UNRWA“UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said after a key Hamas operations center was discovered right beneath his headquarters that he had no idea. That's absurd. There was a very advanced tunnel with electrical cables, which supplied a Hamas server center with power. That came directly from UNRWA's electricity grid. Moreover, a few years ago, UNRWA staff noticed that an entire parking lot above it was starting to subside. So what do you mean, we couldn't have known anything?”Hillel Neuer2024

 

Events

EventDescription
2018 Gaza MassacreA massacre of at least 135 unarmed protestors including many women and children, and the wounding of many thousands more by Israeli IDF sniper teams, during the Palestinian 'Great March of Return' and the weeks following its end on 15 May 2018
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas WarHamas attack on dozens of illegal Israeli settlements in Southern Israel provoking mass retaliatory killings by Israel. Corporate media call it the Israeli "9-11",<a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a>while critics of Israel refer to "10-7" as a staged, military operation in order to manufacture consent for a disproportionate response.<a href="#cite_note-2">[2]</a>
Gaza War (2008–09)Three weeks of assault launched against Gaza by Israel, including the use of white phosphorus, leaving over 1000 people dead and over 5000 injured.
Suez Crisis

 

Group

GroupStartDescription
Hamas1987"Terrorists" according to the West, largely founded, financed and brought to power by Israel, Hamas has led Palestine into becoming an enemy image to the western world since 2006.

 

Related Documents

TitleTypePublication dateAuthor(s)Description
Document:Al Quds Day letter to Tony Blairletter3 September 2010Lauren BoothLauren Booth writes a scathing open letter to her brother-in-law, Tony Blair...
Document:Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothingWikispooks Page8 March 2024Jonathan CookPresident Biden needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for. He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
Document:British Jewish Zionist MP Gerald Kaufman says Israel acting like Nazis in GazaSpeechJanuary 2009Gerald Kaufman"However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis' real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools."
Document:Ex-Israeli Supreme Court chief Aharon Barak appointed as ICJ judge for genocide caseArticle8 January 2024The New Arab StaffAharon Barak argued that the rules of collateral damage permit the killing of Palestinian fighters even if led to the deaths of children. This was approved by Barak himself in a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, as cited in a report by a Canadian news outlet.
Document:Former Labour leader honoured by Palestinian ForumArticle19 December 2021Steve WalkerJeremy Corbyn receives award for ‘remarkable efforts’ to support Palestinians against oppression
Document:Gaza - is annexation Israel's 'permanent solution'Article31 July 2014Oliver TickellThe UN Security Council stands supine, knowing that the US will veto any attempt to hold Israel and its military accountable. We are not in the "realm of accountability", but precisely where we have always been as far as Israel's crimes are concerned - in the realm of impunity.
Document:Goliath's Revenge - Israel and Apartheid South AfricaArticle5 January 2024Christopher Nicholson"During the apartheid years I practised as a human rights lawyer and one of my colleagues defended a young boy, charged with assaulting a police officer. He had thrown a stone at the man, who was on board a tank-like military vehicle, but had arrogantly left his helmet off. A law in force with regard to firearms required a warning shot to be fired in certain circumstances. The prosecutor then demanded of the latter-day David: ‘Why did you not throw a warning stone?’"
Document:International justice: the South African complaint against Israel for “genocide” in GazaArticle10 January 2024United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe
Document:Jeremy Corbyn says “I Condemn Violence Against All Civilians, Why Can’t Keir Starmer?”Article12 October 2023Jeremy CorbynIn an interview with LBC, Keir Starmer was asked whether “cutting off power and water” to 2 million people, half of whom are children, was appropriate. He agreed that Israel “has that right”. Where is the empathy for Palestinians who have lost their loved ones, their homes and their futures? What happened to the universal application of international law?
Document:Meeting the Gaze of the Ghost in the RubbleArticle28 February 2024George GunnMeanwhile the ghost still looks out from the rubble of Gaza. Her stare searches across the ocean of our conscience like the beam of a lighthouse. The ghost in the rubble asks of us all: why can we not stop this madness and feed the people?
Document:Putting Palestinians on a DietarticleUnknownAbout the Israel blockade of Gaza and the manner in which the Western commercially-controlled media contrive to ignore it.
Document:The tears of Gaza must be our tearsspeech5 August 2010Chris Hedges
Document:What is Left for Palestine?blog post17 May 2021Craig MurrayIt was a beautiful day in Glasgow yesterday for the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign demo, and it was great to be able to meet up again with so many magnificent and public-spirited people. It was an especially young crowd, which was excellent, and I was able to meet many Palestinians who drew comfort from the public support at a traumatic time.
Document:Why I No Longer Stand with Israel, and Never Will AgainArticle15 October 2023Scott Ritter"I stand with Palestine, because I stand for the children of Israel and Palestine, knowing full well that the only chance they have of a future where they can live together as neighbours united in peace, instead of enemies united in war, is for a free and independent Palestine to exist." (Scott Ritter)
Document:Your Man in the Hague (In a Good Way) Part 1blog post11 January 2024Craig MurrayThe fact of genocide is incontrovertible and had been plainly set out. But several of the Judges are desperate to find a way to please the USA and Israel and avoid countering the current Zionist narrative, the adoption of which is necessary to keep your feet comfortably under the table of the elite.
Document:Your Man in the Hague (In a Good Way) Part 2blog post14 January 2024Craig Murray"These two days in the Hague were absolutely crucial for deciding if there is any meaning left in notions of international law and human rights. I still believe action by the Court could cause the US and UK to back off and provide some measure of relief. For now, let us all pray or wish, each in our way, for the children of Gaza."
File:Attack when the world is not watching.pdfpaper1 May 2015Ruben Durante
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya
An analysis of the timing of Israeli military attacks on Gaza relative to important breaking news in the US and Europe
File:UN-Gaza-monitor-2010-04.pdfreportApril 2010
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References