Blockade puts Gaza on brink of serious food crisis, says UN
Israel's attempt to starve the Palestinians into submission is proving highly successful according to the UN.
Why do we sit around and watch outrages like this being played out in front of our eyes?Destitution and food insecurity among Gaza's 1.5 million residents has reached an unprecedentedly critical level, according to unpublished UN findings that they now need "urgent assistance" to avert a "serious food crisis" in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The report revealing that Gaza's population has already passed the internationally-agreed threshold at which it needs concerted measures to prevent a "deterioration in their nutrition" has been drafted on the eve of a donors' conference to discuss Palestinian political and economic prospects in London today.
Showing that Palestinians are having to spend a higher and higher share of their shrinking incomes on food, the findings are that the proportion of Gazan incomes now going on food is 66 per cent – significantly higher than the 61 per cent recorded for Somalia. Seventy per cent of Gazans are at a "deep poverty" income level of $1.20 (60p) per head per day or less.
Israel is the occupying nation; occupiers have a legal obligation towards the people whose nation they are occupying. And yet, it is Israel's deliberate actions which are producing the food crisis in Gaza. The closing of crossings into Gaza has been part of a deliberate attempt to starve the Palestinians into submission.
Israel's policy was summed up by Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, earlier this year. 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."We can't say that we didn't see this crisis coming because this "crisis" is actually the official Israeli government policy. They are putting the Palestinians "on a diet" as Weisglass would say.
What utterly appalls me is that there are people who defend this kind of outrage.
Ms Campbell said last night: "At the moment we are less and less able to assist what is a growing need. Hunger today is widespread in Gaza on the ground and it will not be long before we face a growing problem of malnutrition in Gaza."I expect someone like Bush to lack the moral fibre to speak out against such outrages to human decency, but one of the reasons that Brown is tanking in the polls in the UK is because he is silent when it comes to such matters.
Were he to behave like a proper Labour leader, he would speak out against what the Israelis are deliberately doing to an occupied people.
It is simply outrageous and our silence in the face of such an outrage is shameful.
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