{"id":22940,"date":"2012-10-25T11:46:44","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T07:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=22940"},"modified":"2012-10-25T11:46:50","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T07:46:50","slug":"how-israel-starves-gaza-the-facts-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/how-israel-starves-gaza-the-facts-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"How Israel Starves Gaza: The Facts Revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Six and a half years go, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian national elections and took charge of Gaza, a senior Israeli official described Israel\u2019s planned response. \u201cThe idea,\u201d he said, \u201cis to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Dov Weisglass was adviser to Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of the day, few observers treated his comment as more than hyperbole, a supposedly droll characterisation of the blockade Israel was about to impose on the tiny enclave.<\/p>\n

Last week, however, the evidence finally emerged to prove that this did indeed become Israeli policy. After a three-year legal battle by an Israeli human rights group, Israel was forced to disclose its so-called \u201cRed Lines\u201d document. Drafted in early 2008, as the blockade was tightened still further, the defence ministry paper set forth proposals on how to treat Hamas-ruled Gaza.<\/p>\n

Health officials provided calculations of the minimum number of calories needed by Gaza\u2019s 1.5 million inhabitants to avoid malnutrition. Those figures were then translated into truckloads of food Israel was supposed to allow in each day.<\/p>\n

The Israeli media have tried to present these chilling discussions, held in secret, in the best light possible. Even the liberal Haaretz newspaper euphemistically described this extreme form of calorie-counting as designed to \u201cmake sure Gaza didn\u2019t starve\u201d.<\/p>\n

But a rather different picture emerges as one reads the small print. While the health ministry determined that Gazans needed daily an average of 2,279 calories each to avoid malnutrition \u2013 requiring 170 trucks a day \u2013 military officials then found a host of pretexts to whittle down the trucks to a fraction of the original figure.<\/p>\n

The reality was that, in this period, an average of only 67 trucks \u2013 much less than half of the minimum requirement \u2013 entered Gaza daily. This compared to more than 400 trucks before the blockade began.<\/p>\n

To achieve this large reduction, officials deducted trucks based both on an over-generous assessment of how much food could be grown locally and on differences in the \u201dculture and experience\u201d of food consumption in Gaza, a rationale never explained.<\/p>\n

Gisha, the organisation that fought for the document\u2019s publication, observes that Israeli officials ignored the fact that the blockade had severely impaired Gaza\u2019s farming industry, with a shortage of seeds and chickens that had led to a dramatic drop in food output.<\/p>\n

UN staff too have noted that Israel failed to factor in the large quantity of food from each day\u2019s supply of 67 trucks that never actually reached Gaza. That was because Israeli restrictions at the crossings created long delays as food was unloaded, checked and then put on to new trucks. Many items spoiled as they lay in the sun.<\/p>\n

And on top of this, Israel further adjusted the formula so that the number of trucks carrying nutrient-poor sugar were doubled while the trucks carrying milk, fruit and vegetables were greatly reduced, sometimes by as much as a half.<\/p>\n

Robert Turner, director of the UN refugee agency\u2019s operations in the Gaza Strip, has observed: \u201cThe facts on the ground in Gaza demonstrate that food imports consistently fell below the red lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

It does not need an expert to conclude that the imposition of this Weisglass-style \u201cdiet\u201d would entail widespread malnutrition, especially among children. And that is precisely what happened, as a leaked report from the International Committee of the Red Cross found at the time. \u201cChronic malnutrition is on a steadily rising trend and micro-nutrient deficiencies are of great concern,\u201d it reported in early 2008.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s protests that the document was merely a \u201crough draft\u201d and never implemented are barely credible \u2013 and, anyway, beside the point. If the politicians and generals were advised by health experts that Gaza needed at least 170 trucks a day, why did they oversee a policy that allowed in only 67?<\/p>\n

There can be no doubt that the diet devised for Gaza \u2013 much like Israel\u2019s blockade in general \u2013 was intended as a form of collective punishment, one directed at every man, woman and child. The goal, according to the Israeli defence ministry, was to wage \u201ceconomic warfare\u201d that would generate a political crisis, leading to a popular uprising against Hamas.<\/p>\n

Earlier, when Israel carried out its 2005 disengagement, it presented the withdrawal as marking the end of Gaza\u2019s occupation. But the \u201cRed Lines\u201d formula indicates quite the opposite: that, in reality, Israeli officials intensified their control, managing the lives of Gaza\u2019s inhabitants in almost-microscopic detail.<\/p>\n

Who can doubt \u2013 given the experiences of Gaza over the past few years \u2013 that there exist in the Israeli military\u2019s archives other, still-classified documents setting out similar experiments in social engineering? Will future historians reveal that Israeli officials also pondered the fewest hours of electricity Gazans needed to survive, or the minimum amount of water, or the smallest living space per family, or the highest feasible levels of unemployment?<\/p>\n

Such formulas presumably lay behind:<\/p>\n