For Gaza shall be forsaken…
… but not by the international press, for whom this 360km2 strip of land seems to hold more fascination than the rest of the Middle East put together. Everything that happens there is much worse than comparable things happening elsewhere: hunger, illness, poverty, overcrowding, unemployment, even darkness is much darker there. The BBC, naturally, has been in the forefront of keeping the world up to date with just how unspeakably ghastly everything is, serializing an aid worker’s Gaza diary (’Poverty is deepening here, as is stress and despair, especially among the most vulnerable, women and children’), reporting on power cuts (’At least 800,000 people are now in darkness’), and making it clear where the blame lies (’Israel closed Gaza’s borders last Thursday’).
However, it turns out that the place has a border with Egypt too, and the BBC has been forced to adjust its usual choice of Gaza map - which didn’t mention Egypt at all - to one which accords more closely with reality. This isn’t a problem, though, for in the looking-glass world of the BBC, Egypt sealing its border with Gaza forms part of Israel’s blockade:
At the time of Israel’s “disengagement” or withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, an international agreement launched new policing of the Rafah border.
Essentially, a combination of CCTV cameras providing live pictures to the Israeli authorities and a team of EU monitors at crossing points was intended to ensure proper control, and protection against the smuggling of guns and explosives which could be used to launch attacks against Israel from Gaza.
Those arrangements broke down progressively, partly after Hamas won the parliamentary elections in Gaza of January 2006, and totally after the final seizure of all power in Gaza by Hamas in 2007.
The EU teams withdrew. The border closed.
It has become part of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which Israel says is a necessary response to rocket attacks from Gaza which kill and injure Israeli citizens.
Meanwhile the stage-managing of Gaza’s blackouts, the careful planning of the ’spontaneous’ breaching of the border, Hamas’s fabrication of Gazan ‘food shortages’, and the fact that Israel at no time has left Gaza deprived of electricity, are among the aspects of the situation disregarded by the BBC in favour of propaganda like this:
The border was destroyed by Hamas militants after an Israeli blockade of Gaza led to a shortage of food, fuel and other vital supplies.
Israel said the blockade was aimed at preventing rocket attacks by Palestinian militants on its settlements near the border.
So it’s all down to the Israeli ‘blockade’. Surely never in history has a state withdrawn from a territory that its critics had spent years demanding it withdraw from, only to find that it is still, by those very same critics, held to be responsible for everything that goes on there. Israel is expected to provide food, fuel and power to the very people who are dedicated to its destruction, and is savaged by the international community when it reduces (never cuts off, only reduces) that support.
Meanwhile, whatever Gaza’s hardships, the local manufacture of rockets never seems to be interrupted, and those deadly missiles continue to rain down upon the towns (not ’settlements’ as the BBC would have it) of Israel. Presumably they are putting them together by candlelight.
For more on the media’s delusions of Gaza, Cinnamon Stillwell’s ‘Pallywood’s latest attractions’ is strongly recommended. Read Cinnamon’s post, and follow her links.
UPDATE 30 January 2008: Der Spiegel has published a grimly fascinating article on the Gaza rocket industry, ‘A visit to a Gaza rocket factory’, in which engaging Gazan rocket-builder ‘Abdul’ (a geography student by day) shows off his propellant-making skills to reporter Ulrike Putz. Some highlights of Abdul’s cheery chatter: ‘Fertilizer for the rocket fuel … we get it in Israel’; ‘The Israeli blockade doesn’t affect us; it’s just intended to plunge the people into misery’; ‘If we kill soldiers, then we are more than happy. If it hits a child, then naturally we are not happy’. Naturally. (Information about this article came via Solomonia’s post ‘Why should Israelis continue to support this?’ - why indeed? Acknowledgements and thanks.)
