Impacts of Israel's Tightened Siege on the Gaza Strip

December 1, 2008

The following is excerpted from the "Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," published on November 30. Minor grammatical changes have been made by the staff of the AINS.

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have continued to close all border crossings to the Gaza Strip for more than two years. The IOF siege of Gaza, which has steadily tightened since June 2007, has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip.

• 1.5 million people are being denied their basic rights, including freedom of movement, and their rights to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education.

• The Egypt-brokered ‘Tahdiya’ or truce between Palestinian resistance groups and Israel began on 19 June; however, there have been no major changes regarding the movements of civilians and goods through the six Gaza Strip border crossings.

• Rafah International Crossing Point, the only border crossing from the Gaza Strip to the outside world via a country other than Israel, remains closed.

Impacts of Tightening the Siege Imposed on the Gaza Strip over the Past Three Weeks

• The Gaza Power plant completely stopped operation due to the lack of energy fuel. Over the past three weeks, IOF have allowed only 1,721,610 liters of energy fuel into the Gaza Strip, an amount which can operate the power plant for only 5 days.

• The main concern of 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip is to obtain their basic needs of food, medicines, water and electricity supplies.

• The majority of the civilian population lack access to drinking water.

• Electricity is cut off for 100,000s of civilians from 8-12 hours daily, which has impacted at least 500,000 students or various stages of education who are currently having exams.

• UNRWA had been forced to suspend its humanitarian aid program for at least 750,000 Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip for 5 days.

• Thousands of Palestinian civilians have been forced to wait in long queues to buy bread.

• At least 45 bakeries in the Gaza Strip (75%) have been closed due to the lack of electricity supplies and cooking gas, whereas the remaining 18 bakeries have been forced to work in a lower capacity.

• The Rafah International Crossing Point has been opened for 3 days only to allow 2,100 Palestinian civilians, mostly patients and students, to travel abroad, and 780 others to travel back to the Gaza Strip.

• IOF have continued to close Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing in the face of Palestinian civilians wishing to travel to the West Bank and Israeli for medical treatment, trade or social visits.

• IOF have imposed additional restrictions on access of international diplomats, journalists and humanitarian workers to the Gaza Strip. They have prevented representatives of several international humanitarian organizations from entering the Gaza Strip.

• IOF have decreased the number of patients allowed to travel through Erez crossing to receive medical treatment in hospitals in the West Bank and Israel to an average of 17 patients daily, which marks a decrease by 15% in comparison with the first quarter of 2008.

• Health conditions in the Gaza Strip have deteriorated and all medical facilities have been impacted as scores of medical sets are operated by electricity. At least 94 medicines have been lacking.

• The lives of at least 30 newly born babies, whose development has not been completed, is endangered as they need medical equipments that are operated by electricity.

• A Palestinian patient died when Israeli security forces attempted to practice extortion on him to cooperate with them to be able to received medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip. Thus, the number of Palestinian patients who died because IOF did not allow them to receive medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip or due to the lack of medicines in the Gaza Strip has mounted to 47, including 16 women and 10 children.

• Fuel supplies allowed into the Gaza Strip through the Nahal Ouz crossing have sharply dropped to amounts that could hardly satisfy the minimum needs of the population; the Gaza Strip has received only 19.6% of its daily needs of energy fuel required for the operation of the power plant; 4.1% of the daily needs of benzene; 2.9% of the daily needs of diesel; and 4.8% of the daily needs of cooking gas.

• IOF have closed all commercial crossings of the Gaza Strip; al-Mentar (Karni) crossing has been partially reopened for 3 days and Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing has been partially reopened for 6 days only to allow the entry of limited amounts of humanitarian aid.

• Living conditions of the Palestinian civilian population have seriously deteriorated; levels of poverty and unemployment have sharply mounted.

• At least 900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have been deprived of family visitation for more than 15 months.