Reopening of Rafah border crossing with Gaza.

Restores Egypt’s dignity

Relief to starving Palestinians   

By Latheef Farook

On Saturday 28 May 2011 Egypt reopened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza. This marks yet another sign of ending Hosni Mubarak’s shameful tyranny, restoring Egypt’s dignity and bringing relief to 1.6 million starving Palestinians in Gaza.

Gaza strip of around 365 sq miles, sandwiched between Egypt and Israel by the Mediterranean Sea, is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Most of the inhabitants are refugees whose lands were grabbed by migrant Jewish terror gangs with the assistance of the British mandatory authority, to set up the racist state of Israel in Palestine in 1948. 

During the June 1967 war of aggression Gaza was brought under Israeli occupation. Since then the people there were subjected to untold oppression, cruelties and miseries besides daily killings, arbitrary arrest and torture. Decades of Israeli oppression and humiliation produced angry young men most of whom are fighting back the occupation and oppression as any people would do.

Israel withdrew its forces after 38 years from Gaza in 2005 and handed over control of the Rafah border, Gaza's sole contact with the outside world, to Egypt while Palestinian forces, monitored by European Union officials, too were stationed. 

Elections

In a spotless democratic election in January 2006, held under the supervision of former US President Jimmy Carter who described it as free and fair, Hamas was elected with an overwhelming majority. 

However Israel and its blind supporters in the US and Europe wanted their stooge Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestine Authority. Thus to eliminate Hamas, Israel, United States and Europe stopped all donations and cut off the flow of all money   to starve Palestinian into submission. However, the Hamas controlled Palestinian Authority – both in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip – needed this money to keep body and soul together.

The task of overthrowing the Hamas government was entrusted to Mahmoud Abbas who was bribed, armed and   trained  by the US which claim to promote democracy.

Israel   cut off air, sea and land routes to the Gaza Strip preventing basic requirements like medicine and food from getting in. Supplies of electricity and water remained irregular and insignificant. The Israeli killing of Palestinian men, women, children and the aged continued on a daily basis.

Adding to this misery and sufferings Israel attacked in June 2006  with F-16 fighter planes and helicopter gunships and turned Gaza into a virtual slaughter house. Within days roads, bridges, power plants, water supply, universities, schools, hospitals, play grounds, mosques  and even tombs and ministry buildings were bombed and destroyed causing untold misery to the  people already starving. In an unprecedented lawlessness, and the violation of international law, Israel started mafia-style abduction of Hamas cabinet ministers, mayors and 

parliamentarians. 

Collective punishment beneath a blanket of worlds, especially Arab and Muslim, silence and ignorance.

Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery said “the message of Jews, the US and Europe to Palestinians is that “you will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the Hamas government and elect candidates approved by Israel and the US. You must be satisfied with a Palestinian state consisting of several enclaves, each of which will be utterly dependent on the tender mercies of Israel.” .

Since June 2007, more than 90 percent of Gaza’s local industries were forced to shut down, leaving 70,000 laborers jobless. There was no fuel to keep the plant running because Israel imposed a complete lock-down with no movement in or out of the Gaza Strip for people, or any kind of shipments in of vital food, fuel supplies and medicines. It was a slow death. Palestinians in Gaza and even in the West Bank were made virtual prisoners in their own homes and in a dire economic situation while Israel continued its frequent air strikes in the densely populated city. This was a grave war crime and it should be pointed out that in the aftermath of World War II German leaders were sentenced to death for lesser crimes.   

Adding   to this misery on 17 January 2008 Israel imposed a complete blockade and shut down Gaza’s only power plant, plunging the entire territory into chaos. They were only allowed to breathe the air which Israel could not blockade. 

People started queuing for bread,but there was no bread as it cannot be made without electricity. Connections with the outside world started fading as mobile phones and laptops ran out of battery power. There was no water because the pumps needed electricity. People could not go to work because there was no fuel for cars and buses. Hospitals with generators ran out of fuel to power them, halting all surgery procedures.

In desperation, Palestinians tried to enter Egypt through the Rafah crossing, but the Egyptian border guards drove them out. Over 1000 Palestinians went out to the streets begging the world to end this cruel enforced starvation to death.

Princeton academic Richard Falk described Israel’s siege as “a prelude to genocide” while John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories described it as serious violations of international law and in complete violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention which governs Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The fuel shortage has affected every aspect of life in Gaza. Patients’ hospital attendance has dropped because of lack of transport and universities were forced to shut down before the end of the school UN Special Rapporteur Prof Richard Falk

year as students and teachers could not continue to travel to them.  Fuel-powered pumps for wells and water distribution networks are often not working.

In addition, hospitals are now under ever greater pressure, as they face shortages of equipment, spare parts and other necessary supplies as a result of the blockade. 

Palestinian wait to cross to Egypt from the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip as a bulldozer destroys a section of the border wall.  

Unable to bear the suffocation, Hamas demolished the towering iron and concrete border wall that Israel erected since 2003 and broke open the Rafah border allowing hundreds of thousands to burst out and shop for desperately needed supplies in Egyptian border towns. Gazans crossed into Egypt. In this unbelievable movement of joy and freedom they traveled by foot, car, truck, and donkey cart and the highway was jammed with packed taxis and pick-up trucks whose beds were filled beyond capacity and racing from Egyptian Rafah to al-Arish. Some journalists have called it a huge “jail break” and Gazans felt a deep exhale of relief and some joy – both rare commodities in this forsaken land

World Response

However 12 days of Palestinian freedom of movement ended when Egyptian forces, under Israeli pressure, started to close Rafah border crossing with  metal barriers and rolls of barbed wire on Sunday 3 February 2008.  Almost the entire international community failed to lift a finger, and the UN’s obsequious Secretary-General, who surpassed all his predecessors in obedience to the US government,   pathetically paid only lip service?  

Morality aside, sinking Gaza into a sea of darkness, poverty, death and despair cannot bode well for Europe. The US and European elites  and guardians of Israel were determined never to oppose Israel, no matter what crimes it commits. 

While the whole world including the Arab and Muslim countries did nothing to help Palestinians, around 40 activists, including Laura Booth, sister in law of War Criminal Tony Blair, departed Cyprus in August 2008 for the Gaza Strip with food and medicine in an attempt to break the Israeli siege.

The question is where do these 40 or so activists, jewels of human beings, most of them non Muslims, stand in the presence of Almighty Allah compared to the   so called worldwide Muslims   of around 1.3 billion people and their corrupt and degenerated to the core rulers who are nothing but mercenaries of neo con Jewish, US and European war mongers? 

This humanitarian gesture was followed by other flotillas carrying essential items to Palestinians involving people like British Parliamentarian George Galloway and journalist Yvonne Ridley and many others who were pelted with stones and injured by Hosni Mubarak’s thugs-police. Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson said it was “almost unbelievable” that the world did not care about what she called “a shocking violation of so many human rights”.

Mrs. Robinson, stated that she had been “taken aback with the terrible, trapped situation of the families” in the Gaza. said Mrs. Robinson, a former president of Ireland,   who pointed out that “ the situation was far worse than in towns in the West Bank and women she spoke to say their farm lands had been bulldozed and their families were unable to find jobs or supplies. Their whole civilization has been destroyed, I’m not exaggerating, that it’s almost unbelievable that the world doesn’t care while this is happening.”   

Notwithstanding 56% of the   Gazan population consists of children, Israel has   refused to allow desperately needed food trucks to reach their destination. UN food agencies in Gaza that have had their food supply cut by the Israeli blockade said they are facing a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

In addition to preventing access for food supplies Israel has refused to allow European Union-funded fuel supplies into Gaza, starving the power generation plant of fuel which has caused widespread blackouts up to 16 hours a day. Water facilities, including access to clean drinking water, and the treatment of raw sewage continue is also being severely disrupted by fuel shortages. Fifty to sixty million liters of untreated and partially treated sewage are being dumped into the Gaza Strip Mediterranean Sea daily, posing a public health risk.

Then came reports on 14 December 2008 by Marie Colvin in The Times stating that Gaza families eat grass as Israel blocks food aid .Jindiya Abu Amra and her 12-year-old daughter went scrounging for the wild grass their family now lives on.

         Mrs. Mary Robinson 

The historian Ilan Pappe has documented that “the genocidal policy [in Gaza] is not formulated in a vacuum” but part of Zionism's deliberate, historic ethnic cleansing. Gideon Levy and Amira Hass are reporters on the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Jewish controlled World media continued to ignore the desperate plight of the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel however has contributed to that by barring journalists from entering Gaza, a move condemned   by the Foreign Press Association. The UN appears to be a lone voice in trying to engineer some relief.

It was on these  Palestinians that Israel, intensifying its inherent barbarity ,declared all out war  on 27 December 2008, using the most sophisticated and most destructive fighter planes and weapons supplied by United States .

During the 22 days of its carnage Israel killed 1,334 Palestinians  one-third of them children, injured 5,450, displaced 100,000, made homeless 50,000 ,destroyed 4,100 residential homes and buildings , damaged or destroyed  17,000   (together accounting for 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza), 29 educational institutions,   92 mosques,1,500 shops, factories and other commercial facilities,20  ambulances, ruined 35-60% of agricultural land and caused an estimated damage of  $1.9 billion in total.

The destruction was suspended only in time for President elect Barack Obama to take his oaths as the new President of the United States.

Later  UN Fact-Finding Mission   headed by Justice Richard Goldstone   concluded there is evidence of   violations of international human rights and humanitarian law committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity. 

The irony for humanity in general and the Palestinians in particular  is that it was the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of this very same Israel was given a standing ovation by  Congressmen of US, the sole super power , during his recent visit to US.

Under the circumstance  peace loving people  worldwide can only pray to God to save the world.

Ends