Mondoweiss
Why is the Israeli army finally worried that Gaza is on the brink of
collapse?
Jonathan Cook on January 22, 2018
A Palestinian youth plays on his phone during the power outage on winter
season in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern of Gaza Strip on January
11, 2017. (Photo: Yasser Qudih/ APA Images)
Last week Israeli military officials for the first time echoed what human
rights groups and the United Nations have been saying for some time: that
Gaza's economy and infrastructure stand on the brink of collapse.
They should know.
More than 10 years ago the Israeli army tightened its grip on Gaza,
enforcing a blockade on goods coming in and out of the tiny coastal enclave
that left much of the 2 million-strong population there unemployed,
impoverished and hopeless.
Since then, Israel has launched three separate major military assaults that
have destroyed Gaza's infrastructure, killed many thousands and left tens of
thousands more homeless and traumatised.
Gaza is effectively an open-air prison, an extremely overcrowded one, with
only a few hours of electricity a day and its ground water polluted by
seawater and sewage.
After a decade of this horrifying experiment in human endurance, the Israeli
army finally appears to be concerned about whether Gaza can cope much
longer.
In recent days it has begun handing out forms, with more than a dozen
questions, to the small number of Palestinians allowed briefly out of Gaza -
mainly business people trading with Israel, those needing emergency medical
treatment and family members accompanying them.
One question asks bluntly whether they are happy, another whom they blame
for their economic troubles. A statistician might wonder whether the answers
can be trusted, given that the sample group is so heavily dependent on
Israel's good will for their physical and financial survival.
But the survey does at least suggest that Israel's top brass may be open to
new thinking, after decades of treating Palestinians only as target
practice, lab rats or sheep to be herded into cities, freeing up land for
Jewish settlers. Has the army finally understood that Palestinians are human
beings too, with limits to the suffering they can soak up?
According to the local media, the army is in part responding to practical
concerns. It is reportedly worried that, if epidemics break out, the
diseases will quickly spread into Israel.
And if Gaza's economy collapses too, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
could be banging on Israel's door - or rather storming its hi-tech
incarceration fence - to be allowed in. The army has no realistic
contingency plans for either scenario.
It may be considering too its image - and defence case - if its commanders
ever find themselves in the dock at the International Criminal Court in the
Hague accused of war crimes.
Nonetheless, neither Israeli politicians nor Washington appear to be taking
the army's warnings to heart. In fact, things look set to get worse.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week there could be no
improvements, no reconstruction in Gaza until Hamas agrees to give up its
weapons - the only thing, in Hamas's view, that serves as a deterrent
against future Israeli attack.
Figures show Israel's policy towards Gaza has been actually growing harsher.
In 2017 exit permits issued by Israel dwindled to a third of the number two
years earlier - and a hundredfold fewer than in early 2000. A few hundred
Palestinian businesspeople receive visas, stifling any chance of economic
revival.
The number of trucks bringing goods into Gaza has been cut in half - not
because Israel is putting the inmates on a "diet", as it once did, but
because the enclave's Palestinians lack "purchasing power". That is, they
are too poor to buy Israeli goods.
Netanyahu has resolutely ignored a plan by his transport minister to build
an artificial island off Gaza to accommodate a sea port under Israeli or
international supervision. And no one is considering allowing the
Palestinians to exploit Gaza's natural gas fields, just off the coast.
In fact, the only thing holding Gaza together is the international aid it
receives. And that is now in jeopardy too.
The Trump administration announced last week it is to slash by half the aid
it sends to Palestinian refugees via the UN agency UNRWA. Trump has proposed
further cuts to punish Mahmoud Abbas, the increasingly exasperated
Palestinian leader, for refusing to pretend any longer that the US is an
honest broker capable of overseeing peace talks.
The White House's difficuties are only being underscored as Mike Pence, the
US vice-president, visits Israel as part of Trump's supposed push for peace.
He is being boycotted by Palestinian officials.
Palestinians in Gaza will feel the loss of aid severely. A majority live in
miserable refugee camps set up after their families were expelled in 1948
from homes in what is now Israel. They depend on the UN for food handouts,
health and education.
Backed by the PLO's legislative body, the central council, Abbas has begun
retaliating - at least rhetorically. He desperately needs to shore up the
credibility of his diplomatic strategy in pursuit of a two-state solution
after Trump recently hived off Palestine's future capital, Jerusalem, to
Israel.
Abbas threatened, if not very credibly, to end a security coordination with
Israel he once termed "sacred" and declared as finished the Oslo accords
that created the Palestinian Authority he now heads.
The lack of visible concern in Israel and Washington suggests neither
believes he will make good on those threats.
But it is not Abbas's posturing that Netanyahu and Trump need to worry
about. They should be listening to Israel's generals, who understand that
there will be no defence against the fallout from the catastrophe looming in
Gaza.
