Gaza’s deepening crisis:
humanitarian, economic and environmental disaster

The Gaza
Strip, 365 square kilometers enclave, has been under a blockade by
Israel since 2007 through land, air and sea. By maintaining the total
control over the land and all aspects of Palestinian life in Gaza,
Israel exercises its most extreme form of occupation there. In this
densely populated area about 2 million people have been kept captive,
denied of basic human rights for 15 years.

This blockade impacts all the
aspects of the population’s daily life and it consolidates the
fragmentation of the territorial and political Palestine, undermining
dignified life and self-determination for the people.

Severe
restriction on freedom of movement for people and goods, loss of
agricultural land arbitrary declared “buffer zone”, tight
restrictions over the fishing zone, severely affected economic
activities, and led Gaza’s economy to a sharp decline without means
to recover and develop¹.
Egypt’s restriction on its border with Gaza made the blockade even
tighter. Most of the people in Gaza lost their activities and
livelihood, while farmers and fishermen also routinely got shot while
trying to access their land and sea.

This dire
condition was aggravated by a periodic pattern of military attacks.
Four major military attacks (2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2021) caused a
staggering human and material loss (Annex). Very basic human rights,
such as right to life, freedom and safety are denied to the Gaza
population. The human toll and the destruction of livelihood,
civilian infrastructure such as power plants, water and sanitation
facilities, housings and business affect every aspect of the daily
life of the whole population, leading to a collapse of essential
services such as health care and education, of the living standard
and of the environment. The combined impact of unprecedentedly
lengthy period of blockade, aggravated by cyclical military
offensives on the economic, social and environmental aspect, has been
catastrophic. This
disaster has been documented in numerous reports by the UN and NGOs.
Already in 2015, the UN warned that Gaza would be uninhabitable by
2020 ².

All these
consequences were not unexpected to the Israeli government, but
openly sought for as a systematic and deliberate policy to maintain
political and territorial fragmentation of Palestine³,
and to provoke the collapse of Gaza as a part of Israel’s strategy
including “demographic engineering”
⁴.

The May
2021 assault was particularly devastating, as it hit Gaza crippling
under the shadow of COVID-19
pandemic and still suffering from previous round of traumas.
Hospitals were already strained in a middle of a chronic crisis with
shortage of medicines, equipment, resources, and training. Numerous
reports emphasize the cumulative effects of prolonged traumas
particularly inflicted upon children that constitute 50% of Gaza’s
population. Aid agencies including the World Bank issued
unprecedented statements, emphasizing the need for systematic policy
efforts⁵,
which reflect their acknowledgement for an urgent need for a new
political approach.

War crimes and crimes against
humanity

The
blockade and indiscriminate military attacks on Gaza constitute a
collective punishment, forbidden by international law (1977
Additional Protocol II), and a war crime under the 1949 Geneva
convention. It is an integral part of the Israeli policy to
perpetuate ethnic dominance, defined as crime of Apartheid and crime
of persecution, which both fall under category of crimes against
humanity and are documented in recent reports of human rights
organizations ^{6, 7}.

During the
four military operations, hospitals, schools, medics and journalists
were also targeted, which constitute war crimes. In addition to these
major offensives, unarmed protesters demanding the end of blockade
from March 2018 to 2019 were met with brutal military repression
again resulting in high mortality and injuries, again including
children, women, elders, and clearly labeled medics and press ⁸.
These war crime allegations are described in volumes of reports
including those by the UN ⁹.
Currently the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates
numerous allegations¹⁰.
That all is to be added to the disregard by Israel of its obligation
as the occupying power to guarantee the safety of people under
occupation.

Israel
tries to justify its policy citing “security concern”. However,
depriving 2 million civilian population of their basic human rights,
destroying public infrastructures and private properties and sources
of livelihood, shooting civilians, farmers and fishermen have nothing
to do with security, but are clearly meant as punitive measures.
Their narrative of “self-defense” is not backed by legal
standard. The international human rights norms prohibit the
use of lethal force except in situations
when it is necessary to prevent an imminent threat of death or
serious injury¹¹.
Indiscriminate aerial attacks on
residential area, intentional targeting of civilians and civilian
infrastructure, killing during popular protests unarmed protesters,
even disabled persons, clearly marked medics and journalists at work,
cannot be justified as “self-defense”.

There is no
justification to those acts of war crime and crimes against humanity
committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza. All these
are clear violations of international law, while total impunity has
been enjoyed by the government of Israel and by those directly
responsible in perpetuating the injustice. This status quo of the
blockade cannot remain crystallized after 15 years and is
incompatible with the prospect of right-based solution.

An urgent need for a change of
perspective from the international community

The alarming conditions,
finally acknowledged as not repairable under the blockade, need a
change in perspective from the “support for emergency” to an
end to the chronic man-made disaster. Current vicious
circle of destruction by Israel and emergency reconstruction by
international donors has proven to be futile under the exacerbating
blockade and amounts to a continuing denial of freedom and
self-determination of the population.

Although needed, emergency
relief alone cannot grant long term viability and reconstruction.
Worse, it makes the international donors as an unwilling partner in
crime by contributing to the perpetuation of this vicious cycle by
paying the repair to be destroyed again. UN institutions, rapporteurs
and numerous NGOs have expressed the need for “tackling the root
cause”, identified in the blockade and relentless persecution and
called for “serious political effort” ^{12, 13}

The
intolerable suffering inflicted upon Palestinians trapped captive in
Gaza has reached its breaking point. The matter of urgency is
paramount and justifies no further delay in taking political
decisions. The Israeli rhetoric of
blaming “the terrorists” does not conveniently wipe out these war
crime allegations.

Time
has passed for the international community to blindly accept the
deceptive excuse of “Security of Israel” that lacks legal basis
according to numerous documentation¹¹.
Security of Israel can only be achieved when the security of
Palestinians is also guaranteed. This means the end to injustice and
repression. 15 years of failure on Gaza (or 54 years regarding the
OPT) compels international community to adopt a radical paradigm
shift guided by principles of international law. This is the path
also suggested by the UN expert group¹⁴.

Our demands and recommendations to
EU and member states

We demand the EU and its
member states to uphold their moral and legal obligations to work
towards the immediate and unconditional lifting of the blockade
guided by the principles of international law, and therefore:

1. Acknowledge a paradigm shift
   regarding the blockade of Gaza: the situation of the Palestinian
   people in Gaza is so catastrophic that no condition can be accepted
   from the occupying power, Israel, to lift the blockade. It is
   necessary to recall that the blockade has brought no security,
   neither for Israel, nor for the Palestinians.

2. Demand to the government of
   Israel, as the occupying power, an immediate and unconditional
   lifting of the blockade.

   1. Unrestricted passage of
      people and goods between Gaza and West Bank and the rest of the
      world,

   2. Removal of the buffer-zone
      and restriction on fishing zones.

3. Set these demands as
   conditions in all agreements in the field of political, diplomatic,
   cultural and economic relation with Israel. Prepare a mandatory time
   frame for a complete relief of the blockade with verifiable
   intermediate steps; adopt the principle of sanctions if the
   timeframe is not respected.

4. Call the Egyptian authorities
   to stop the limiting measures to circulation of persons and goods,
   agree on compulsory steps on Egypt’s side.

5. Establish discussion channels
   of direct interlocution with all the Palestinian counterparts to
   facilitate the furthering of the process.

6. Support the International
   Criminal court and the other investigations into war crimes and
   crimes against humanity, including those by the UN rapporteurs and
   by the special commission of UNHRC.

References:

1. https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/a75d310_en_1.pdf

2. https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/tdb62d3_en.pdf

3. https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Netanyahu-Money-to-Hamas-part-of-strategy-to-keep-Palestinians-divided-583082

4. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/sharon-maintains-control-in-face-of-demographic-shift-1.482484

5. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/westbankandgaza/publication/the-gaza-2021-rapid-damage-and-needs-assessment-june-2021

6. https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

7. https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

8. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj1j8fn-urzAhXkCmMBHSE8CV4QFnoECAIQAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unrwa.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fcontent%2Fresources%2Fgaza_gmr_one_year_on_report_eng_final.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1Elmxwvz5mbJodpGS4keA9

9. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/two-years-on-people-injured-and-traumatized-during-the-great-march-of-return-are-still-struggling/

10. https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=210303-prosecutor-statement-investigation-palestine

11. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/03/israel-gaza-killings-unlawful-calculated

12. https://unsco.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/security_council_briefing_-_30_august_2021_0.pdf

13. https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/end-the-violence-in-occupied-palestinian-territories/

14. https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27102&LangID=E

Annex

Summary of the military attacks on
Gaza

	December 2008-January 2009		November 2012	July -August 2014		May 2021*
The Duration (days)	22	8			55		12
Palestinians killed	1,409	167			2,251		254
Unarmed Palestinian civilians killed	1,172	87			1,462		at least 129
Palestinian children killed	348	32			551		66
Palestinians injured	5,380	5,000			11,231		2.212 (610 children, 398 women)
Israeli soldiers killed	10	Na			67		na
Israeli civilians killed	3	Na			6		12 (2 children)
Houses damaged/destroyed in Gaza	14,000	2,174			18,000		2.000/15.000
Displaced persons	28,000	10,000			500,000		107,000
Ppeople without access to municipal water	Na	Na			450,000		800,000

*https://www.ochaopt.org/content/gaza-strip-escalation-hostilities-10-21-may-202