The flotilla was intended to challenge the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, a closure that has been decried as a violation of international law. While Israel prevented the boats from reaching the Gaza Strip, the initiative was successful in bringing media attention to the closure.
But Israel remains victorious on one crucial front. A tremendous majority of those talking about the blockade -- from the mainstream media to critics and activists -- use 2007 as the start-date, unintentionally lending legitimacy to Israel's cause and effect explanation, an argument that pegs the closure to political events.
According to the Israeli government, the blockade was a response to the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. The stated goals of the closure are to weaken Hamas, to stop rocket fire and to free Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who has been held in Gaza since 2006.
But the blockade -- which the Israeli government has openly called "economic warfare" -- did not begin in 2007. Nor did it start in 2006, with Israel's economic sanctions against Gaza. The hermetic closure of Gaza is the culmination of a process that began 20 years ago.
It is important to note, first, the groundwork that made this process so devastating. In her definitive piece on the economic de-development of the Gaza Strip, published in 1987, Dr. Sara Roy uses data from the years of 1967 to 1985 to illustrate how the Israelis turned the Gaza Strip into a captive market and made Palestinian residents a labor pool dependent on Israel. This was achieved, in part, by limiting Gaza's exports and commercial production. These early restrictions (or economic warfare, to use the Israeli term) predate Hamas. So when freedom of movement was limited during the First Intifada, Gaza was already feeling pinched.
Sari Bashi is the founder and director of Gisha, an Israeli NGO that advocates for Palestinian freedom of movement. In an interview conducted with this writer, Bashi remarked that the gradual closure of Gaza began in 1991, when Israel canceled the general exit permit that allowed most Palestinians to move freely through Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It was then that non-Jewish residents of Gaza and the West Bank were required to obtain individual permits.
This was during the First Intifada. While the mere mention of the word invokes the image of suicide bombers in the Western imagination, it's important to bear in mind that the First Intifada began as a non-violent uprising comprised of civil disobedience, strikes, and boycotts of Israeli goods. So, that the general exit permit was canceled during this time suggests that this early hit on Palestinian freedom of movement was not rooted in security concerns. It seems, rather, a retributive act, intended to punish Palestinians for daring to resist the Israeli occupation.
Sporadic closures of the Gaza Strip started in 1993, Bashi continues, following a wave of suicide bombings carried out by Palestinians. Because a tremendous majority of Palestinians are not and were not suicide bombers, however, the restrictions on movement again constituted collective punishment for the actions of a few -- foreshadowing the nature of the blockade to come.
Over the years, there were other suggestions that a hermetic, punitive closure was on the horizon. "Movement [was] gradually restricted," Bashi says, adding that in 1995, the Israelis erected a fence around the Gaza Strip.
At the beginning of the Second Intifada, in September of 2000, Palestinian students were subject to a blanket ban, forbidding travel from Gaza to the West Bank. At this time, the Israelis also closed the "safe passage" -- an armored convoy that facilitated Palestinian movement between the Occupied Territories.
As the Second Intifada wore on, so did restrictions on Palestinians' freedom. In March of 2005, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and HaMoked penned a report titled, "One Big Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan." That there was the need to write such a report -- and that the NGO's findings elicited such an alarming title -- suggests that the blockade was well under way at this time, more than two years before the Israeli government would have you believe it began.
B'Tselem's and HaMoked's March 2005 report stated that only a small number of Gazans were being allowed into Israel to work. Tens of thousands had lost their jobs due to the restrictions on movement.
The 2005 disengagement supposedly signaled the end of the Israeli occupation of Gaza. But, in reality, it brought more Israeli limitations on the movement of both people and goods. While the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access -- brokered by the U.S. and signed by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority -- should have eased those restrictions, it didn't. The number of day laborers exiting Gaza via the Erez Crossing offers a dramatic example. In January of 2000, before the Second Intifada began, an average of 17,635 day laborers passed through Erez every day. In January of 2005, that number had dropped to 49.
Throughout the years there were upticks and downturns in the amount of workers exiting the strip. And in 2005, too, there was a brief rebound. But in 2006, the small number of Gazans who were still working in Israel were banned from entering, cutting them off from their jobs at a time when the Strip's economy was thin to the point of breaking.
As a result of this recent history, the situation in Gaza today is stark: the economy has been driven into the ground; some estimates put the unemployment rate at almost 50 percent; four out of every five Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on humanitarian aid; hospitals are running out of supplies; the chronically ill cannot always get exit permits, which can lead to access-related deaths; students are sometimes prevented from reaching their universities abroad; families have been shattered.
While the flotilla might have successfully brought the blockade into the mainstream consciousness, it missed an opportunity to really push the envelope by reframing the conversation altogether.
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The alternative, of course, is for the PLO/PA to come back to the negotiating table at which Israel has been sitting and waiting, and there, in good faith, in clean hands, and without preconditions start talking peace to the democratically elected representatives of the nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel.
(end)
Let us not be surprised, therefore, that once the PLO goes to the UN, Israel will go its way and ensure that its security and national interests are protected. Such a move, doubtless, will include the application of Israeli law in Area C and parts of Area B in the West Bank, thus annexing the vast majority of the West Bank, while allowing the Arabs there to continue to manage their affairs in the remaining territory.
Another act, no doubt, will be to ensure that the separation between Gaza and the West Bank is total: not even VIPs of the Palestinian Authority will be permitted to cross Israel from one territory to the other.
A third elements will be the transfer, or lack thereof, of funds to the Palestinian Authority, funds and economic assistance now received from the state of Israel, and, no doubt, the funds to the Palestinian Authority from certain European countries, the United States and from Canada will come to an end.
(will continue...)
The two fundamental aspects are UN Security Council, 242, on the basis of its acceptance the PLO was included in the process, and the Oslo Accords, especially the Second of them, 1995, in which the PLO's PA committed not to make any unilateral moves such as the one of approaching the UN.
(Another fundamental aspect has been the PLO's commitment to ensure that no terror and/or violence will be directed at Israel and Israelis, and no preparations for such acts will take place. Yet, the PLO, from day one, commenced amassing illicit weapons and to date - including this morning - forces from the PLO's demanded "state" have been firing rockets into Israel, this morning directed at the southern port city of Ashqlon).
(will continue...)
http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/240/94/IMG/NR024094.pdf?OpenElement
Economic de-development of the Palestinians has been Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank for decades.
Hamdan issued a press release where we learn these wonderful things:
• Hamas does not rule out kidnapping more Israelis in order to better its bargaining position in a prisoner swap.
• "Resistance will continue, God willing, in order to liberate the land of Palestine from the [river to the] sea."
• Palestine has entered a fierce battle with Israel on two fronts. The first front is resistance against the occupation [i.e., Israel] continuing until its termination, and the second to preserve the unity of the Palestinian people.
• Resistance will humiliate the Zionist enemy and liberate the land.
• "We have made clear we will not recognize the occupation, and today I say more than that: There is no Israel in our political dictionary."
Guess all they want is peace......
As a tax paying US citizen, I just don't want to PAY anymore for Israel's security. I don't believe that Israel and the US have an "unbreakable bond."
George Washington wrote in his farewell address to the nation that becoming too close to any one nation was not good...lest their enemies become our enemies. And that is exactly what has happened.
One might think that we are witness to two five-year-olds engaged in a playground argument: “Yes you will!” “No I won’t!” “You must!” “I can’t!”
But one would be wrong.
The issue of Israel’s existence as a Jewish State is the very core of the conflict. If Abbas, or any other Muslim leader for that matter, were to agree that Israel is a Jewish state, he would be in opposition to the Islamic religious concepts of “defense of Muslim lands” and of non-Muslims as dhimmi.
Though not found in the Qur’an, the obligation for the defense of Muslim lands is a core concept in medieval and modern Muslim theology, dating back to the 13th century Muslim exegete Ibn Taymiyyah, who declared that all Muslims are obligated to rise up and attack any non-Muslim who takes Muslim land. It is a compulsory duty (fard Ayn) to wage interminable jihad until the Muslim land is reclaimed and again under its divinely ordained and rightful Muslim sovereignty.
Hamas's head of international relations, Osama Hamdan, has restated the official Hamas positions that the Western media loves to downplay.
Hamdan issued a press release where we learn these wonderful things:
Hamas does not rule out kidnapping more Israelis in order to better its bargaining position in a prisoner swap.
"Resistance will continue, God willing, in order to liberate the land of Palestine from the [river to the] sea."
Palestine has entered a fierce battle with Israel on two fronts. The first front is resistance against the occupation [i.e., Israel] continuing until its termination, and the second to preserve the unity of the Palestinian people.
Resistance will humiliate the Zionist enemy and liberate the land.
"We have made ​​clear we will not recognize the occupation, and today I say more than that: There is no Israel in our political dictionary."
As usual, Western pundits will ignore and downplay any statements like these, while trumpeting vague statements by Hamas that could be badly misinterpreted as meaning that it is willing to accept Israel's existence.
"The Knesset on Wednesday voted down an attempt to open the option of civil marriages and divorces to Jews in Israel. “Israel is the only democracy in the world where Jews don't have freedom of religion,” said MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz), who led the list of legislators behind the initiative. “There are currently hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are considered without religion, and cannot marry in Israel,” he said prior to the vote."
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=231234
How Israeli Palestinians are represented in the Knesset is a bit of a sham. How they are disposessed of their homes, excluded from renting in many places, not allowed to bring a spouse from the OT to live with them is not exactly a mark of democracy either.
Just because you don't like the result of a democratic process doesn't make the democratically elected, Hamas control, illegitimate
""You don't even understand this issue. You are throwing spaghetti against a wall to see what sticks: but what you really are doing is throwing #$%^ at a fan and having it blow back at you.
Shall I explain it to you, or do you just want to see Israel burn to the ground ay way you can?"""
If you can read this, id love to see you explain.
And why would you doubt the "stated" goal of stopping rocket fire? In 2009, there was two rockets a day fired at Israel from Gaza. 2010 it is down to one ever other day. Real, actual rockets that actually kill people. Clearly the blockade is doing what it is supposed to do.
On the off chance that you aren't joking: I'm not sure how there is any lull in hostilities when according to all sources (including the Palestinian ones claiming credit for them) there are multiple rockets launched every single week. For several years. Every one of those rockets are in response to an Israeli attack? I see plenty of sites documenting rocket launches with dates. Can you cite anywhere that records weekly attacks by Israel?
The results of the poll showed that 65.4 percent of people supported going to the UN in September to obtain recognition for a Palestinian State.
I guess if your goal was the destruction of Israel you too would be in favor of going to the UN.
Only by this action will the shipment of billions of dollars of heavy military equipment, bombs, missiles and chemical weapons for the Israeli government be prevented.