The day Gaza becomes uninhabitable
by Anna Majavu, New Frame, January 13, 2020
In 2012, the United Nations published research suggesting that by 2016, the main aquifer supplying water to about two million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip would be “unusable” and that by 2020, the aquifer would have been damaged irreversibly. This would make Gaza uninhabitable by 2020.
So for many Gazan residents, the end of the past decade was no time to celebrate. Instead, it was a countdown to the day they would no longer be able to survive.
Israel occupied Gaza in 1967 and it has been under an internationally unlawful military occupation since then. It is a tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea, measuring just 365km2. It is also the most densely populated place on the planet. Gaza’s more than one million residents are refugees from the towns and cities in Palestine that Israel occupied and purged in 1948, when it became a state.
For decades following the 1967 occupation of Gaza, a row of Israeli settlements built along the Gaza coastline ensured that Palestinians were denied access to the sea, even though they lived just 2km from it. Israel finally pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but two years later, when Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections in Gaza, Israel imposed a siege on the strip that has been in place since then. The area is surrounded by a heavily fortified fence, checkpoint and a border with Egypt that is nearly always closed. More than a million people in Gaza now live on less than R50 a day.
‘Deadly medieval blockade’
Palestinian-South African academic Haidar Eid taught English literature at the former Vista university’s Soweto campus in the late 1990s and was awarded his doctorate by the University of Johannesburg. He is now an associate professor in English literature at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, a musician and the leading Gaza campaigner for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
“Apartheid Israel has maintained a deadly medieval blockade on Gaza since 2007, when Hamas seized control of the tiny strip after legitimately winning the 2006 Palestinian Authority Legislative Council elections,” said Eid. “The UN made it absolutely clear that in 2020 Gaza would become uninhabitable. We are already there.”
In 2012, the United Nations report said Gaza’s water supply had already reached crisis levels because its aquifer (the only source of water for Gaza) had become so depleted that it was filling up with sea water. The situation is much worse now, with 97% of Gaza’s water undrinkable, according to Eid.
“Most of us don’t drink tap water because of its poor quality. Instead, we buy expensive water from private enterprises at six times the standard rate. Many of us resort to private wells. In fact, we dig wells and get unfiltered water for bathing and washing,” he said.
Drought experts in South Africa have warned against the overuse of groundwater during periods of drought; if too many boreholes are sunk too close to the coast, there is a risk of the water table emptying out and sea water seeping in, contaminating the remaining fresh underground water. But unlike South Africa, which has a number of alternative options, such as desalination or wastewater treatment, Gaza has missed out on all innovation.
Israel describes itself as a “world leader” in desalination technology and most of its water comes from four large desalination plants. It also supplies portable desalination jeeps to the Indian army, which desalinate water while driving. But Israel has withheld this technology from Gaza. The Israeli blockade, or siege, of Gaza means the Palestinian Authority cannot set up its own desalination plants as Israel has simply banned it from importing any new technologies, says Eid. Additionaly, Israel will not allow the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank to supply Gaza with water. This leaves Gaza without any option other than to overuse its aquifer.
Lack of power
There are also electricity shortages in Gaza. It has a single power grid that, even before Israel bombed it repeatedly, only supplied Gaza with 40% of its electricity.
“The rest was supposed to be provided by the occupying power, Israel. But it has allowed only 40 watts of power to be provided to the Strip, in the full knowledge that 400 watts are needed for Gaza to meet the bare minimum survival needs,” said Eid.
Residents living in Gaza’s blocks of flats barely get water at all because the generators that pump the water to the upper levels of these high-rise buildings “only work for a few hours a day. Even wells can’t be fully operated. The electricity shortage also prevents the Strip’s sewage treatment plants from operating, allowing untreated sewage water to flow directly into the sea,” said Eid. In 2012, the UN estimated that 90 000m³ of sewage a day was being discharged into the Mediterranean Sea.
“Cutting electricity is a death sentence for the almost two million Gazans living in the Israeli-blockaded strip,” said Eid.
Eid said Palestinians in Gaza live a “terrifying existence”, not only because of regular bombings by Israel. The most recent high-profile bombing came in November 2019, when Israel bombed the home of the Sawarka family four times, killing five children and four adults. On Christmas Day, Israel admitted that it had made a “mistake” in doing so.
“The terror of it is that Gazans die every day from preventable illnesses as a result of dirty water or the lack of a life-saving operation, or starvation due to the crops that fail to grow without sufficient irrigation, or babies dying because they cannot be kept warm in their first few days of life,” Eid said.
“Medical conditions due to injuries from internationally prohibited butterfly bullets and other illegal Israeli weapons, as well as from water contamination, cannot be treated because of the siege. In addition to the ban on building materials, Israel also prevents many other necessities from being imported: light bulbs, candles, matches, books, refrigerators, shoes, clothing, mattresses, sheets, blankets, tea, coffee, sausages, flour, cows, pasta, cigarettes, fuel, pencils, pens, paper and many other things. In Gaza, people are wondering whether the current Israeli government, the most fascist in the county’s history, might even discuss a ban on oxygen!”
‘Incremental genocide’
Ilan Pappé, an Israeli academic who teaches at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, has described Israel’s policy towards Gaza as one of “incremental genocide”.
According to Eid, the BDS movement is crucial to helping the Palestinians defeat the Israeli military occupation. In late December, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tabled a draft law aimed at undermining BDS that would “ban” local British councils from “imposing their own direct or indirect boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns” on Israel or any other country.
Eid said this is indicative of the power of BDS. “South Africans will recall when then British prime minister Margaret Thatcher decided to ban local British councils from boycotts against the apartheid system. And now you have Johnson planning to make a similar decision. In the 1980s, the whole world stood up against the apartheid system and its allies. The same thing is happening now against apartheid Israel.
“It is our South African moment,” he said.
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Yes the Apartheid, Terrorist, Genocidal, State of Israel making Nazi Germany look like a paragon of Democracy by turning the Gaza Strip into an open air version of Auschwitz.
Half of this is terrible lies, why do nobody telling here like the gazian lives before 2005? They use to work in Israel and I met a lot of them here. But when hamas( terrorist organisation) took a power in sector all the problems arise.
Hamas was voted into power in Palestine in 2006, whereupon the real terrorists, the Zionist racists, arrested as many Hamas members as possible, and the Quisling PA thugs took control under President Quisling for Life, Abbas. Then the PA, under Dahlan, he who transported the Zionist Po 210 that was used to poison Arafat, to his inner sanctum, tried a putsch in Gaza, but was defeated. The Zionist racists have increasingly throttled the Gazans since 2005, with that racist relish in tormenting those they regard as human insects so well known from Judeofascists and Talmudic xenophobes like YOU.
My guess is that any candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party who campaigned on a platform including complete support for Palestine and immediate end to the Occupation(s) and open participation in BDS events, would win the election easily. And Corbyn’s successes are an indication of that. The problem, which prevents such a democratic solution, is that the internal electoral system in the Labour Party was designed to prevent any such candidate from running. The real story of the anti-semitism campaign and the political hit jobs on the likes of Chris Williamson is that ‘antisemitism’ was a code word for democratic. What scared the Blairites and the MPs for life in the PLP was the systematic campaign by Corbyn’s team to bring democracy to the Party. The Zionists understood that any real democracy would result in total support for Palestine and automatic re-selection. The PLP didn’t like to admit… Read more »
One Zionist blabbed unfortunately, at the beginning of the foul campaign, that one of Corbyn’s ‘crimes’ was his ‘Leftwing policies’. They kept better discipline after that. If I remember aright, it was the loathsome ‘Rabbi’ Sacks.
Just look at the items in the list of embargoed goods … this is truly a siege designed to be savage .
Don’t expect a single morsel of sympathy from the new British government , or indeed the opposition , or the Lords. The new prime minister and his top three cabinet members are all deeply committed pro zionist Israeli firsters . Backed up by a party beholden to the huge CFI cabal.
The final betrayal of the Palestinians by the British is now complete.
‘We, a diverse community, drawing on all ethnicities creeds and colours, ages and genders from across the UK demand the Britiah Board of Deputies should hereby publically address the following points ….. ‘
https://dorseteye.com/dear-british-board-of-deputies/
And yet the population rise in Gaza still continues un-abated?
Demographics of the Palestinian territories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Palestinian_territories#Population_pyramids%5B27%5D
But not to single out the Palestinians, this is a major problem for most of the planet. Too many people chasing ever diminishing requirements for survival.
Maybe, if the majority of the planet just reduced its population growth to simply match population replacement levels. or less. This would reduce demand and the struggle for access to resources.
More ‘targets of opportunity’, particularly the children, for you Zionists to sate your blood-lust. You must be over the moon.
Why all the down-votes? Do people at Off-G really believe humans >aren'<t in the midst of a population overshoot episode right now? If you do, I have these hugely profitable bridge shares for sale…
Because, in the case of Gaza, it is vicious victim blaming. Can’t you see that? Gaza is not the world-it’s Hell on Earth.
Best not say anything negative about Israel. Margaret Hodge might get upset and start calling us ”fucking racists and anti-Semites.”
And we wouldn’t want to upset poor old Maggie, now, would we? ;o)
Yes, the millionairess socialist, another cob of shit planted there to get the result that has just happened.
‘Oh, dirty Haggie May, they are taking her away’- I wish.
One of the wealthiest and most influential people in Britain who has long shamefully abused her privileged position to the detriment of others far less fortunate.
So, what will happen? Surely, both Palestinians and Israelis have stronger ties to the land than their respective states. So why not have some kind of federation with a new name and have Jerusalem as a free city?
I know that as long as the power of veto at the UN, won’t let that happen, but it’s better than two states or Greater Israel, or the rediculous notion of Palestine carved into two tiny strips of land.
The Palestinians are the descendant of all those groups who lived in the region over 70,000 or so years-more if you chuck in earlier Homo species. Including Jews who later converted to Islam or Christianity. The Zionists have no links to the land for 2000 years, save self-serving and narcissistic religious mythology. The Palestinians may wish to allow Jews to settle in THEIR land, but they’ll need to behave like good neighbours.
It’s sad and depressing that year after year, decade after decade, the inhumanity; the barbarity, continues unabated against the Palestinians in their own homeland. Thank you Anna for reminding us of the gross human rights abuses continuously carried out by the Apartheid regime of Israel. Unfortunately tho, I don’t see any of the R2P crowd jumping up and down demanding ‘humanitarian intervention’ to protect the Palestinians, or even calling for no fly zones. Or anything. At all. I don’t see any Western leader loudly criticising Israel’s many human rights abuses and its flouting of international law, and its slow motion genocide against the Palestinians. I don’t even hear them babbling on about the ‘international rules based order’ in the context of Israel. I just hear silence. Deafening silence. It highlights the complete hypocrisy, double standards and moral bankruptcy of the allegedly civilised West. And now we have these very same… Read more »
‘I don’t see any Western leader loudly criticising Israel’s many human rights abuses and its flouting of international law, and its slow motion genocide against the Palestinians.’ – perhaps because those that may be sympathetic to Palestine can expect the usual treatment from both Israel and the domestic media for doing so?
Recognition of Palestine is a particularly fraught issue, as Corbyn found to his cost.
Labour had no effective response to antisemitism slurs, one minute throwing left wingers under the bus, the next timidly signing off ultimatums delivered to them by the Jewish Board of Deputies.
It goes without saying that any politician brave enough to stand with Palestine will be shredded by Britain’s right wing media, and as bad as Britain is the US is 100 times worse.
Agree Harry. Having problems replying or posting a comment.
They want to shut us down or silence our voices.
Corbyn’s gutlessness got its just desserts.
I’m willing to cut Corbyn a good deal of slack: leading the Labour Party in opposition is hard enough, without having a disloyal rabble in the parliamentary party continually back-stabbing you. That said, he (and the leadership team) should have stomped on the ‘anti-Semitic’ lie the minute it raised its vile head and defended those falsely accused. Instead, he/they made concessions to the accusers. Didn’t understand the nature of blackmailers: give the scum what they want and they don’t go away, they come back demanding more.
“Soon, right thru out the West, all criticism of Israel, including advocating for BDS or simply wearing a Free Palestine T shirt will be deemed anti semitic.” BDS is already illegal in some parts of the world. Certain patterns of speech and certain words or sentences are illegal in Germany, Switzerland and soon will be in France (if that law hasn’t pase3d already – have to ask my daughter) It’s already here… Interestingly, the (very appropriate) phrase “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize” wasn’t Voltaire, it was an American Neo-Nazi called Kevin Strom..could this be more revisionist history? If this quote was Voltaire, and has been “retrospectively” misattributed then it’s a clever misdirection that shows exactly what the game is. If it was Kevin Strom, he was bang on the money, irrespective of his “extremist” views. Voltaire didn’t even say:… Read more »
The slob has already made it illegal for councils to boycott goods from the evil country.
Another sign of the TOTAL Zionist control over the West, is the filthy and villainous hypocrisy of Germany, UK and France in attacking Iran over the defunct JCPOA. These vermin did NOTHING to help Iran after the USA unilaterally abrogated the Treaty and imposed vicious sanctions, despite dissembling that they would, and now they attack Iran, not the aggressor. Bibi must be smiling at the slavish obedience of his Sabbat Goy stooges.
Youngsters in France have been prosecuted for wearing BDS T shirts.
Teachers in the US have been sacked for failing to swear loyalty oaths to our Zionist overlords.
Correct Paul. In France it comes under something called the Lellouche law where people are convicted of ‘inciting hate’ and fined up to €28000.
Interestingly, (no surprise actually) this is used to target those advocating for BDS or wearing Palestine or BDS T shirts.
Those calling for boycotting China or Myanmar for example are not touched.
At all.
Yeah, knew about the situation in the United States. Even hurricane victims were refused aid if they didn’t sign a pledge stating they would not boycott, or advocate boycotting Israel. I think recently 27 States have laws specifically targeting the BDS movement.
That’s probably increased now.
France is a slave state, end of story, controlled by the CRIF and Jewish money power. On the pretense of restitution for the fate of French Jews during WW2, yet the Algerians, slaughtered in their tens of thousands, directly by France (supported by Israel) get NO attention or recompense, let alone slavish obedience, at all.
France may be a slave state, but the slaves are currently rising up in unprecedented numbers against neo-liberalism. And, as far as I can tell, not a word about it in the ‘free’ Australian media.
Instead, another Sino-phobic jab on today’s A
(continuing…) ABC radio news from a China ‘expert’ alleging bad faith in China’s one-month trial of a direct Shanghai-Perth air link.
An ‘expert’ from the Raytheon and Lockheed financed ASPI, was it.
I don’t hear you or the many propagandized suckers ranting about the great fact that the ‘Palestinians’ are intent on geocide, hatred, terrorism, extreme antisemitism, and that their prime intention is driving the Jews into the sea. There is no siege on Gaza, there is Israeli prevention of the terrorists acquiring weapons. If Hamas got hole of an H bomb, they wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to use it.
You’re so ignorant you don’t even know history, and that you obviously support a mass murdering, terrorist, apartheid fascist regime that is occupying Palestine.
Genocide? Its Israel that is committing the genocide here.
You support kiddie killers. I won’t bother wasting anymore time on a vile peice of crap like you.
Free Palestine.
“In the 1980s, the whole world stood up against the apartheid system and its allies. The same thing is happening now against apartheid Israel.
“It is our South African moment,” he said.”
Don’t hold your breath. The SA government didn’t have the world’s media in lock-step behind them lying, omitting and obfuscating. You can’t even say what this article says in the MSM. There’s your problem, right there. How can something be changed if nobody is allowed to discuss it without fear of being hounded and cancelled, unless they’re on marginalised and “alt-news” sites?
There is NO comparison. Zionist and Judeofascist money power controls all Western polities. They have a huge dominance in the MSM, and the residual goyim are allies-or else. They dominate the heights of finance, the driving force of neo-liberal capitalism. They are driven by hatred so extreme that it casually and often threatens to ‘take the world down with us’ if they feel threatened – and they mean it. This hatred derives from the basic Judaic hatred of the other, the Western colonial settler hatred of the indigenous who must be expelled or exterminated so that the European Herrenvolk can seize their God-given lebensraum, and, the least pathological, from the hatred that understandably grew from the horror of the Nazi Judeocide. And I see that Koestler, in his The Thirteenth Tribe, describes the Khazars, the ancestors of the Ashkenazis, as being very violent and belligerent, a tendency that present-day Zionists,… Read more »
No one is above the law but we can replace a true account with lies and hypocrisy, call it law – and suffer lawlessness by deceit. Deceit is the principle nature of a complex mind trap that doesn’t just apply to Palestine and Gaza – for they are an example by which to condition the others. And anyone who seeks to address this from any position of public or corporate position will likely lose it – or be walled out because the narrative power operates the minds of men, The power to hold a true account is in us, and yet is given away in conformity to ‘thinking’ that make us powerless and – therefore taken as power – by networks of corruption that bribe, capture or neutralise and undermine anything that would hold them in check and to a due and true relational account. Terror works the fear of… Read more »
Remember after the fall of Hitler, solomn faced dignitaries demanded that ‘lessons should be learned’ before drawing up impressive charters, and international codes of conduct in the hope that such legal instruments would prevent this kind of tragedy from ‘ever happening again’. Of course in todays lawless world brutal regimes shit all over such agreements, and there is particular pathos in the fact Israel is no better than other terror states who exhibit a similar disregard for things like fairness, decency, or even the most basic forms of legal nicety. What is doubly ironic is that Israel’s propaganda arm would put Joseph Goebbels to shame, especially when we learn that the Jewish Board of Deputies are demanding that Labour must agree to ’10 pledges’ specially drawn up for them. This is not to shut down support of Palestine but to allow Labour to build bridges with the Jewish community who… Read more »
The Zionists and Judeofascists are NOTHING if not liars. These outrageously arrogant Ten Commandments, so neatly illustrating the Judeofascist DEMAND that their concerns must be central to a country where they represent perhaps half of a community of a few hundred thousand, are most certainly designed to outlaw all support for the Palestinians. You can bet your life that ‘Commandment Creep’ will soon be in full spate.
The BOD represents possibly one-quarter of one per cent of the UK population. By what right, by what strange inversion of democracy, does this miniscule group seek to make ‘demands’ on a mass political party which fewer than half their community vote for?
Will Labour yield to blackmail once again?
You bet they will!
The UN’s definition of genocide, under Article II of its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) states: Article II In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Israel fulfills conditions (a), (b) and (c) of Article II at a minimum. Israel thus is a genocidal state that continues to commit acts of genocide. ‘Apartheid state’ is becoming a defunct misnomer. Under Article III… Read more »
The title gives away that Israel is a fascist entity that must be brought under control. Israelis must attend a de-brainwashing program that will remove their delusion of being exceptional and thus being entitled to treat anybody their fake religion deems sub-par to its own sickening extra cruelty towards non-jews.
Life on Earth obviously only stands a chance without Israel.
You cannot abolish Israel. It is too powerful, and with its nukes and bio-weapons, far too dangerous. Israel must reform, return to its 1947 borders, live in peace with its neighbours and give up its massive corruption of Western sham ‘democracies’, or it will destroy itself AND the rest of us all.
A few things about Israel that aren’t mentioned very often but should be. There is actually a Hebrew-speaking working class that will be essential to overthrowing the Zionist regime. Presently of course it’s mired in a Zionist consciousness primarily born out of the fact that Israel is a race-based semi-theocratic bunker/garrison state that sees itself in a hostile sea of Arabs, that without substantial imperialist support it isn’t viable in the longterm. It’s basically a death trap for its inhabitants, and no sensible Jew would choose to live there. But despite its genocidal appetites and intent, Israel is not a fascist state either. Secular Jews of Tel Aviv and elsewhere hate the ultra-orthodox zealots in government with a passion and yet they still walk the streets. Hebrew-speaking workers must be broken from the poisonous false consciousness of Zionism before any real progress will be made in Israel/Palestine — just as… Read more »
There is actually a Hebrew-speaking working class that will be essential to overthrowing the Zionist regime.
well, good luck with that.
it might actually be easier to convince them to get on various boats and airplanes, and go back to Poland and New York State, where they or their grandparents all came from.
Within Israel itself, particularly among the Tamudists of the orthodox and ultra-orthodox, and the ‘settlers’ in Occupied West Bank, open talk of ‘transfer’ ie mass ethnic cleansing, or extermination, is common. And these monsters have more and more power inside Israel. If it ever came to it, you can easily see the corrupt scum of Western politics mumbling some ‘concern’, but doing NOTHING.
That, as the Talmudists say, is mere ‘Christian morality’. Under Judaic religious law, killing civilians is not just permissible, but a mitzvah or good deed. That applies to children, even babies, if it can be said that they would grow up to ‘oppose the Jews’. And the citizens of an entire ‘city’ eg Gaza, may be slaughtered for the ‘crimes’ of a few. International Humanitarian Law outlawing collective punishment can go to Hell.
after all, why should the ubermenschen be concerned with the lives of the untermenschen? there’s nothing in the Talmud that would recommend that.
There is much that is precisely the opposite.
Excellent article, Anna, thank you and I do believe that exposing this atrocity is crucial to garnering sufficient support to seek a resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. As always, there many aspects to such a complex problem, and it is important IMHO to acknowledge that Hamas do enable random rocket attacks into Israel – however it might be ‘justified’ – it is no way to promote improved relations. I recognise the fear that Israel must feel when surrounded by potential enemies and especially those that threaten to “wipe Israel off the map”, in the same way that the Afrikaners feared a democratic solution in RSA. Nevertheless punishing innocent civilians is a crime against humanity and must be stopped in the same way that South Africa did by engaging the support of the international community. I am humbled to hear that Haidar Eid has chosen to share the deprivations of the… Read more »
Yes the Apartheid, Terrorist, Genocidal, State of Israel making Nazi Germany look like a paragon of Democracy by turning the Gaza Strip into an open air version of Auschwitz.
Don’t get carried away-it just plays into the Judeofascists’ and Zionists’ hands. Gaza is more like the Warsaw Ghetto, and a future Auschwitz Option while on the agenda of some Israelis and the worst of Diaspora Jewry, but, not yet, imminent.
How comforting to know.
There are plenty inside Israel who talk openly of extermination. They call the Palestinians ‘Amalekites’ ie a group that God has decreed MUST be exterminated. It is a religious duty. Mind you some Jews, Diaspora Jews, have recommended that Israel cause a nuclear winter as punishment for centuries of oppression by a ‘Jew-hating world’.
There is a “Justice” Minister called Shaked who called for Palestinian mothers to be killed so no Palestinian children could be born.
The Times of Israel, a national newspaper, quite openly advocated genocide, “When Genocide Is Permissible.”
Two rabbis published a book calling for the murder of all Palestinian children, called “The King’s Torah.”
This is mainstream now, ten a penny. There are hundreds of recent examples.
The world’s only openly racist, genocidal regime.
The last time that Gaza was attacked in the usual brutal, cowardly, fashion, Israeli social media was aflame with the most murderous and vicious race hatred imaginable. Not all Israelis, of course, but very, very, many. And we are expected to worship them ALL, and NEVER dare critise any among them.