4 Months Into Aid Cutoff, Gazans Barely Scrape By

As the Quartet finally agree to send humanitarian aid to the Occupied Territories - the scheme aims to release more than $120m of EU funds to support local health services and cater for the basic needs of poor Palestinians - one can only wonder at the logic behind our decision to punish the Palestinians for voting for Hamas.

The situation on the ground in Gaza is becoming grim. And, although no-one is yet said to be starving, nearly everyone dependent on government salaries is eating less and less well, with a sharp reduction of chicken, meat and vegetables in a diet that is now based on the cheapest ingredients — beans, potatoes, greens and bread.

The World Food Program, with 160,000 nonrefugee beneficiaries out of Gaza's population of 1.4 million, sends its workers on house visits. They say people are cutting down on the number of meals a day, and few are eating meat, eggs or yogurt, said Kirstie Campbell, a spokesman, who estimates that half the population of Gaza is not getting enough to eat.

At the same time, Dr. Ibrahim al-Habbash, the director of Gaza's largest hospital, Al Shifa, said that the worst shortages of medicines have been alleviated with increased donations from donors and Physicians for Human Rights/Israel, an advocacy group, while the Karni crossing from Israel to Gaza has been open more regularly in the last few weeks.

According to a new report issued this week by United Nations agencies here, "the humanitarian situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has deteriorated rapidly in 2006, a result of the fiscal crisis facing the Palestinian Authority following the election of Hamas" as well as continuing "Israeli security and access restrictions." The number of Palestinian families dropping below the poverty level — defined as $2.70 per person a day — has increased by 9 percent already, the report says.

Unicef says it is tripling its appeal for the Palestinian territory to $22.7 million for this year, and says one in three newborns is "at risk of dying in the hospitals of Gaza" because of a lack of medicines and essential drugs, according to a spokesman, Damien Personnaz.

As I sit here in the affluent West, I find it so depressing to report on what our government's are doing to some of the world's poorest people.

Especially as Israel is essentially asking Hamas to perform an impossible task. Recognise Israel. How can this be done when Israel refuses to define her own borders?

And - welcome though the aid is - we should never lose sight of the fact that, by cutting Hamas out of the process, we are now effectively undermining a democratically elected government by establishing what is, in reality, a parallel administration.

And yet both Bush and Blair claim that they are exporting democracy to the Middle East, whilst simultaneously ignoring the democratic choice of the Palestinian people.

It is now being reported that Hamas are days away from reaching agreement with Fatah over the prisoners document. This should be a moment for optimism, but with Israel now threatening to start targeting Hamas leaders in their homes, one gets the feeling that no matter what Hamas do, the Israeli script is already written.

The EU have done well to force the US to make this modest concession to their brutal plan to starve the Palestinians into submission, but they need to do more.

The EU recently stated that it would not recognise any future Israeli borders that were not arrived at through negotiations with the Palestinians, it is now time for Blair to use some of that supposed "special relationship" status with the US to hammer home to the Americans that the EU is serious about this.

The US is the only power that has any influence over the Israelis, Blair must use what influence he has to convince Bush that the Israelis need to negotiate.

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Tags: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Fatah, US, EU, starving,