High Court orders state to delay power cuts to Gaza - Haaretz, November 30, 2007

The High Court of Justice on Sunday ordered the state to delay its reduction of power supplies to the Gaza Strip by at least a week, pending a full presentation detailing the proposed operation.

The court’s interim decision follows petitions by 10 human rights groups against the state’s plan to reduce supplies of electricity, gasoline and diesel fuel to the coastal territory.

Nevertheless, the justices upheld the state’s plan to reduce fuel transfers to the Strip, as long as the humanitarian needs of Gaza’s residents were given primary consideration.

Dancers at Cosmos club in the West Bank.

Credit: Katherine Kiviat

Nissenbaum Blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem, November 26, 2007

Ladies up in here tonight
No fighting, no fighting
We got the refugees up in here
No fighting, no fighting
- Shakira, featuring Wyclef Jean, “Hips Don’t Lie”

In theory, the 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank are brothers and sisters with the 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

In reality, the gap between the two has probably never been wider.

Most Palestinians who live in the West Bank have never been to Gaza, and most Palestinians in Gaza have never been to the West Bank.

Gaza, now under Hamas control, is substantially more conservative than the West Bank.

That reality hit home Saturday night around 2 a.m. while grooving to Shakira on the dance floor at Cosmos, the West Bank’s only real disco.

The dance floor was packed. Women in short leopard-skin mini skirts and thigh-high leather boots with spiked heels were doing the shimmy-and-shake with their partners as strobe lights and smoke swept across the club. Two, young, thin gay Palestinians with spiked punk rock-style hair and matching black t-shirts felt free enough to get their groove on on the dance floor.

The DJ unartfully careened from Shakira to classic Egyptian dance tunes to Nancy Ajram to cheesy American disco classics, but no one really seemed to mind.

The bar served up a steady stream of vodka and Red Bull, Taybeh (the only Palestinian beer), and a traditional selection of cocktails.Cosmos

You see this across the Middle East in places like Beirut and Dubai. But not so much here in the West Bank. And certainly not these days in the Gaza Strip.

Being at Cosmos 48 hours after attending a sparsely-attended rap show in Gaza City made me acutely aware of the growing psychological gap between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The chances for couples to dance together in Gaza are virtually nil. And forget about serving alcohol. There are no restaurants in Gaza that serve booze and even those that serve non-alcoholic beer sometimes get stern looks from customers who think it’s really the Devil’s Brew.

The rift between the West Bank and Gaza has become more pronounced in the nearly six months since Hamas seized control of Gaza.

Scores of Palestinians, the few allowed out by Israel, fled to the West Bank where they became refugees again in their own nation.

Many were scorned as traitors or cowards for fleeing. Others from Gaza were shocked by the sight of Palestinian girls dressed in tight jeans and pink DKNY tops seen shopping every day in downtown Ramallah.

On the eve of Annapolis, Gaza remains under effective lock-down. And there is little reason to believe that things will get better after the peace conference.

If Annapolis leads to ongoing peace talks, there will be no incentive for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to renew talks with Hamas and create a new unity government - a move that would no doubt scuttle negotiations with Israel.

If Hamas decides to renew attacks on Israel after Annapolis, Israel is certain to respond with overpowering force in Gaza that would probably have at least the tacit backing from Abbas.

In a few days, Israel is planning to turn the screws again on Gaza by rationing power - a move widely viewed as a violation of international law.

“This is our life,” a friend of mine in Gaza told me last week. “Your life was better than your father’s, and your father’s life was better than his father’s life, yes? Here, my father’s life was better than mine, and my life will be better than my son’s.”

Maher Najjar - Fire and Water in Gaza - washingtonpost.com, November 27, 2007

GAZA CITY — On Sept. 19, the Israeli government declared the Gaza Strip “hostile territory” and authorized steps to punish its civilian population. It decided that every Qassam rocket fired into Israel would carry a price tag: cutting the supply of electricity and fuel that Israel sells to Gaza. This assumes that disrupting civilian life in Gaza will have positive political results for Israel.

Gaza’s 1.5 million residents have been living with collective punishment for some time. We have endured years of border closures, aerial attacks and military operations — measures Israel has always explained as militarily necessary. But now, Israeli politicians claim it is legitimate to deprive all of Gaza’s civilians of basic needs.

A goat is rescued from a sewage flood after a cesspool embankment collapsed in Gaza in March.

Israel controls Gaza’s borders and the movement of all people and goods. Since Hamas came to power in June, Israel has tightened its siege. It has banned raw materials for manufacturing and construction; only basic foodstuffs are permitted into Gaza, and exports have been halted. Gaza’s economy is suffocating: Since June, 85 percent of its factories and 95 percent of its construction projects have been paralyzed. More than 70,000 people have lost their jobs. A million and a half people are locked in a pressure cooker in one of the world’s most densely populated areas.

Hamas: Abbas has no right to give up one inch of Palestine, Haaretz, November 27, 2007

Hours before the start of a U.S.-hosted Middle East peace conference, Gaza’s Hamas rulers stepped up their attacks on Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, calling him a traitor and saying they would reject any decisions that come out of the international gathering.

“The Land of Palestine … is purely owned by the Palestinians,” senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar said in a speech. “No person, group, government or generation has the right to give up one inch of it.”

“Anyone who stands in the face of resistance or fights it or cooperates with the occupation against it is a traitor,” he added. He spoke at a conference, held in Gaza City, attended by some 2,000 activists from local militant groups opposed to the U.S. conference.

Hamas and other militant groups have been holding a series of protests this week against the U.S. peace conference, underscoring the challenges Abbas faces at home as he tries to make peace with Israel.

A Palestinian farmer feeds carnations to sheep at his farm in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip (AP).

Israel okays renewal of flower, strawberry exports from Gaza,

Haaretz, Nov. 21, 2007

The government has decided to permit the renewal of flower and strawberry exports from the Gaza Strip to Europe from agricultural export terminals inside Israel.

Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, both of Labor, approved the move after Palestinian farmers and Israeli exporters appealed to the High Court of Justice against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Simchon and Barak.

The exports came to a halt after the security cabinet declared the Gaza Strip a ‘hostile entity’ in response to ongoing militant Qassam fire on the western Negev.

Simchon is to send the details of the decision to Palestinian Authority Agriculture Minister Mahmoud Habash.

The export of flowers and strawberries from the Gaza Strip to the European Union is carried out with the cooperation of Israeli exporters and European buyers, and amounts to roughly NIS 100 million each year. Of that sum, NIS 45 million comes from the sale of carnations.

Gaza: Israel Blocks 670 Students from Studies Abroad (Human Rights Watch, 20-11-2007)

Egypt, Palestinian Authority and Hamas Share Blame

(New York, November 20, 2007) – The Israeli government is arbitrarily blocking some 670 students in Gaza from pursuing higher education abroad, Human Rights Watch said today. Israel is denying exit permits that the young men and women need to leave Gaza for university programs in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Germany, Britain, and the United States. The students are among roughly 6,400 Gazans with foreign citizenship, permanent residency, work permits, student visas or university admissions abroad, who have been trapped in Gaza since June, when Hamas took control of the territory by force.

Israel has near total control of Gaza’s borders – land, air, and sea. Since June, it has mostly allowed only extreme medical emergencies, some journalists, and employees of international organizations to leave.

“Israel seems determined to punish all Gazans, including students, for the behavior of Hamas,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Israel should not make young people seeking education pay the price for its conflict with a political or military group.”

Universities in Gaza do not offer degrees in a variety of subjects, including undergraduate degrees in languages other than Arabic, English and French, and master’s degrees in law, journalism and information technology. Doctoral degrees are not offered at all in Gaza or the West Bank.

Israel forbids Gaza residents from studying in Israel or the West Bank, and rarely permits foreign professors and lecturers to visit Gaza to teach.

Most of the students are waiting for permission to leave Gaza, either to get visas for the countries where they have been admitted to universities or to travel to those countries directly. Many started their studies in previous years and were trapped in Gaza when they returned home for the summer.

In some cases, Israeli authorities have given students exit permits but then refused to let them leave via the passenger crossing at Erez due to unspecified “security concerns.”

Among the roughly 670 students, some 400 are trying to pursue their studies in Egypt. The southern crossing from Gaza to Egypt at Rafah has been closed since June 9, 2007, at Israel’s insistence. Reopening it requires the participation of Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, under the terms of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access. Israel has declared its opposition to reopening Rafah. Both Egypt and the Palestinian Authority appear to have acquiesced to Israel’s demand, and have not pressed for the crossing to reopen.

Nissenbaum Blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem, Nov. 20, 2007

The cashier at the Unity Market in Gaza City pulled up video of last week’s deadly Arafat memorial rally on his computer and cursed the Hamas gunmen who opened fire on the crowd, killing at least seven.

“I went to the rally not to support Fatah or Yasser Arafat, but to send a message to the whole international community that we don’t want Hamas,” said the shopkeeper who gave his name only as Ala’. “I hate them because of what they did at the rally.”

Then, suddenly, the man went quiet, put his finger to his lip and shook his head.

In walked a thin man with a black shirt, black jeans and a well-cropped red beard. The store owner kept quiet until the Hamas member bought his bottle of cooking oil and left. Then he returned to cursing Hamas.

“How do you want me to love or respect Hamas?” said Ala’, who voted for Hamas in last year’s election. “It’s only a matter of fear.”

Across the Gaza Strip, there is growing frustration and resentment as life for the 1.5 million Palestinians remains mired in a swamp of economic and political despair.

More than five months into its unilateral control of Gaza, Hamas is slowly losing its grip on the main thing the Islamist forces brought when they took power in mid-June: Security.

IDF: Gaza fuel cuts don’t violate humanitarian duty - Haaretz, November 19, 2007

Israel’s decision to cut fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip does not violate its responsibility to provide humanitarian services to residents of the coastal territory, an Israel Defense Forces official maintained on Monday.

Shlomi Muchtar of the IDF Coordination and Liaison Office, which coordinates Palestinian civilian affairs, wrote in an affidavit to the High Court of Justice that the cuts do not “harm the humanitarian minimum to which Israel is committed.”

The affidavit was submitted after High Court justices last week ordered the State Prosecution to present data affirming that Israel’s move would not affect the humanitarian needs of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

The affidavit said that Israel intends to cut diesel fuel supplies for transportation purposes from 1.4 million liters per week to 1.2 million, and diesel fuel supplies for power stations from 2.2 liters per week to 1.75 liters.

According to IDF calculations, humanitarian needs require 800,000 liters of diesel each week. “And that’s a strict estimate,” the affidavit said.

The High Court hearing is in response to the petition of ten Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations against the state’s decision to cut fuel and electricity supplies in response to constant Qassam rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into western Israel.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

ON EDGE A woman passes under the watchful eye of a member of Hamas’s security forces outside the Parliament building in Gaza City. In June, Hamas prevailed against its rival, Fatah.

Erlanger, Under Siege, Life in Gaza Just Shrinks - NYT, November 18, 2007

IT’S a miserable time to be a Gazan.

A Tightened Grip, Multimedia Feature, Photos by Ruth Fremson

Hopes were high in 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and 9,000 Jewish settlers, and the international community lined up to help the Palestinians make Gaza a model for their potential state.

But happy endings are rare in this part of the world. In the last year, life in Gaza has been plagued by criminal gangs as well as fighting among Palestinian groups. Some rocket barrages aimed at Israel fall on Gaza itself, and Israeli retaliation for the rest ranges from military strikes to economic quarantine.

Months of battling between the main political factions, Fatah and Hamas, culminated in a Gazan civil war in June, with 160 people killed and 800 wounded, many of them civilians. Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union, was the winner.

The struggle is hardly finished, with Fatah trying to consolidate in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Just last week, a large Fatah demonstration on the third anniversary of Yasir Arafat’s death ended in violence when Hamas police fired into a rock-throwing crowd and killed six people, while beating others.

Hamas is under siege, and with it, the people of Gaza.

It’s not just that Hamas is shunned by the West and Israel, which has declared Gaza “a hostile entity” and is moving to restrict supplies of gasoline, diesel fuel and electricity. Gaza is also shunned by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who is a ready accomplice in the effort to punish and pressure Hamas.

After the Israelis pulled out in 2005, Gazans complained that they lived in a big prison, since Israel still controlled their airspace, sea coasts and principal border crossings. Such claims had an element of propaganda, but now, with the crossing into Egypt for people also shut, by Egypt, the accusation is much closer to reality.

A trickle of the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza can now leave their tiny coastal strip for any reason whatsoever. The streets are ghostly, with little traffic, and the private economy is dying, lacking needed imports and unable to export.

Gaza is a deeply conservative society, but Hamas’s growth has been reflected in the increasing number of women not only covering their hair, but also their faces. Israel says that it will ensure that no one starves in Gaza, and that the essentials of life will be provided.

But Israel also wants to see that Hamas suffers, by making Gazans suffer, to impress on them that the best path lies in accommodation and negotiation with Israel for a Palestinian state. Fatah backs that strategy, not the violent, religious and national struggle against Israel that Hamas advocates and practices.

Raji Sourani, director of Gaza’s Palestinian Center for Human Rights, is himself stuck in Gaza. No friend to Hamas, he has a new metaphor.

“At least in prison, and I’ve been in prison, there are rules,” he said. “But now we live in a kind of animal farm. We live in a pen, and they dump in food and medicine.”

Amira Hass, Like on the first Land Day - Haaretz, November 14, 2007

“Armed Hamas policemen who were stationed in the streets and watching the masses of people marching toward the square, gazed down at the ground. Out of shame. They saw themselves the way the marchers to the memorial rally for Yasser Arafat saw them - like Israeli policemen on the first Land Day in Israel. It was women whose votes had led to the defeat of Fatah in 2006, so it was significant now that many women came to the rally. I saw one woman go up to an armed policeman and dare him: Kill me, you Shi’ite.”

This was related by a devout Muslim, a Hamas adherent who left the movement because of disagreements over matters of principle. The killing on Monday of six participants in the Gaza City rally by gunfire from Hamas police immediately raised questions concerning the strength and weakness of the Gaza Strip government and its rival - the Fatah movement in Gaza. The extent to which this is not a matter of absolutes can be learned from the viewpoints of two devout Muslims.

“The masses who came to the rally did not come for Abu Amar [Arafat] or for Mohammad Dahlan, or because they were promised NIS 200 or a phone card. They came out of hatred for Hamas,” says the former movement activist. A friend of his, who has remained a Hamas activist, agrees: “There has been a consolidation among some of the Fatah activists, because of anger and hatred for Hamas, after mistakes of ours that are impossible to ignore.” He himself approached policemen and asked them to conduct themselves with restraint and not to react to insults. He is convinced that what happened was caused by a loss of control by inexperienced young policemen - not part of a policy. He swears that the leadership’s intention is to reduce repressive ruling measures by the government. And he is convinced that Ramallah told Fatah supporters to initiate provocations and that the Hamas police indeed fell into the trap.
Advertisement
It is all lies, says the former activist, like the claims that the first to have opened fire were Fatah supporters who had prepared for a confrontation. He supports his claim, inter alia, on the basis of a scrupulous examination of the direction in which the shots were fired. The Hamas police, he says, received a clear order to act with full force in response to any Fatah demonstration of strength.

ANALYSIS: Hamas losing grip on Gaza, Fatah gaining support, Haaretz, November 13, 2007

The Hamas gunmen who sought to disperse the crowd at the rally Monday in Gaza marking the third anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat did not use rubber-coated bullets or tear gas; they simply opened fire on the crowd, leaving seven dead and dozens injured. In so doing, they added to the pressure under which the Islamic organization is laboring five months after it took over the Gaza Strip from Fatah forces.

Some people in the West Bank Monday were recalling the “million-man rally” held by the anti-Syrian faction in Beirut after the assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, and the wave of protest that brought about the ejection of the Syrian army from Lebanon. Hamas will not give up Gaza so easily - they have nowhere to go - but senior Fatah members believe the rally might mark the beginning of the end of the bloody Hamas regime in Gaza.

Opposition to Hamas in the Strip, and concomitantly renewed support for Fatah, are on the rise, and the recent violence is expected to reduce Hamas’ status further on the Palestinian street, as people in Gaza see Hamas using its terror tactics against its own people.

Abid Katib/Getty Images

Palestinians inspected their homes for damage after the earthen embankment around a sewage reservoir filled and collapsed on March 27, 2007, flooding Umm al Nasser, a village in the northern Gaza Strip.

Steven Erlanger, Gaza’s Reflection in a Foul Threat - New York Times, November 6, 2007

UMM AL NASSER, Gaza, Oct. 30 — Fahmi al-Abrak, 70, was at home on March 27 when a lagoon of human waste broke through its sand embankment and hurtled downhill, inundating this poor village of Bedouins in northern Gaza. “It rose to here in 15 seconds,” he said, pointing to a discolored line on the walls, four feet above ground.

Residents of Umm al Nasser pulled belongings from their homes after the wave of sewage struck their village in March.

Five people died, drowned in the wave of waste, along with scores of goats, sheep and chickens. Nearly 1,000 people had to be taken out of the village. Now, Mr. Abrak said, “I’m afraid to go to sleep at night.”

The lagoon disaster seemed a sort of metaphor for Gaza — overcrowded, lacking in resources, coping with makeshift answers to long-term problems. But the lagoon, which held more than 150,000 cubic yards, is dwarfed by the huge lake of sewage it was built to reduce.

Amira Hass, A moment before the lights go out - Haaretz, November 7, 2007

Alan Johnston, the BBC corresponded kidnapped in Gaza, related in an interview that at a relatively early stage, he started suffering from all kinds of aches because of the water he drank. This was the same water that the kidnappers drank, but Johnston’s unaccustomed body sent warning signals: This is not water that is fit for drinking. And this is the water that reaches most of the taps in the Gaza Strip. Salty, in a few places brackish to contaminated, with an oily consistency. That is clearly felt when bathing.The reason is an ancient one: overpumping because Gaza must make do with the waters from its aquifer alone. It is as if we were to say to the residents of Be’er Sheva: make do with the water that flows nearby. The water sources in the rest of the country are not for you.

Over the last few years, there have been some improvised private and public solutions. Private water purification plants in homes and commercial companies that sell purified water.
Advertisement
The municipalities, for their part, set up large brackish water desalination facilities and several central taps. Thousands of people go there daily to fill up jerry-cans with water that will not taste like it came from a puddle and will not cause diarrhea, infections, kidney problems and who knows what else.

The electricity and fuel supply to Gaza has already been reduced to below the level of basic human needs. An additional reduction will affect the above solutions to the water problem, and beyond. “To darken Gaza,” as some of the security experts among us have recently proposed, does not end merely with darkened homes at night. You don’t have to be an expert in public health to realize that it would create an endless chain reaction of public health problems and environmental blights.

Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad at his home in Rafah, Gaza Strip

Dion Nissenbaum’s Blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem, October 31, 2007

One of the first Hamas leaders I ever met in the Gaza Strip was Ghazi Hamad, who was then working as editor of a pro-Hamas newspaper in Gaza City.

Among journalists, Hamad was a favored barometer. He was a Hamas confidante who steered clear of some of the standard revolutionary rhetoric you would get from the more stalwart Hamas leaders.

Within Hamas, Hamad is a relative pragmatist and realist who has tried, with some success, to nudge the movement towards political moderation.

Hamad was among those who urged Hamas to run in last year’s legislative elections and ran as an unsuccessful candidate himself. When Hamas took power, Hamad became a spokesman for the new government and public face for PA PM Ismail Haniyeh.

But it now appears that Hamas moderates are being silenced as hard-liners re-assert their dominance.

Hamad has been quietly pushed aside after delivering a caustic critique of Hamas in an open letter to Hamas leaders.

Saladin Sultan and one of his five children stand in the bare family living room in Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip. Dion Nissenbaum/MCT.

Dion Nissenbaum, Conditions worsen in Gaza as Israel tightens grip, McClatchy Washington Bureau | 10/29/2007 |

“The situation is so bad that you really prefer to die,” Sultan said. “I prefer to die rather than to live a life like this.”

In the four months since Hamas seized effective control of the Gaza Strip in a brutal military takeover, Israel has cut off the desolate region from the outside world and created a political crisis for the Islamist militant group now leading the government here.

Popular support for Hamas appears to be dwindling as frustration builds.

While Hamas managed to restore a semblance of safety to the Gaza Strip, it has failed to do much more. The Hamas-led government enjoys virtually no international recognition. Israel and the United States have rushed to shore up Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has championed the international campaign to marginalize Hamas.

Now Hamas is confronting intense internal fissures.

Ghazi Hamad, one of the best-known Hamas pragmatists in the Gaza Strip, has been effectively sidelined after criticizing the militant group for leading the Palestinians into an international political ambush.