ZGram - 9/18/2002 - "Ethnic Cleansing by Starvation"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

September 18, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

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Ethnic Cleansing by Starvation

by Rania Awwad

A US-financed assessment of the overall malnutrition level among 
Palestinian children, released this month by the US Agency for 
International Development (USAID), found that one in five Palestinian 
children under the age of five now suffers from chronic or acute 
malnutrition. This astonishing statistic is on par with impoverished 
nations such as Chad and Nigeria, and actually surpasses rates of 
child malnutrition in Somalia and Bangladesh. Such figures, the 
report noted, are "considered an emergency by most humanitarians and 
public health officials." The report points to Israeli-imposed 
closures and sieges of major civilian centers as the direct and 
primary cause.

We typically think of famines as being caused by natural disasters 
(droughts, overgrazing) or by crises that result in the displacement 
of large populations from their lands (wars, ethnic strife). The 
situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, however, is a 
startling aberration since it is clearly a man-made disaster intended 
to specifically target whole civilian populations. Most importantly, 
it can easily and immediately be reversed.

Today, Israeli military sieges are literally imprisoning families 
within their homes for days at a time. People cannot leave their 
homes to work, buy food, go to the doctor, or send their children to 
school. Military checkpoints and roadblocks are restricting commerce 
and the transport of food supplies. Workers cannot travel between 
Palestinian towns, and farmers and manufacturers are unable to 
deliver their goods to shops and markets. People have exhausted the 
money they can draw on from relatives and connections on the outside.

The USAID report also revealed that about one quarter of West Bank 
Palestinians have had to sell personal possessions to put food on the 
table. The World Bank recently determined that as many as 62 percent 
of Palestinian families are now living on less than two dollars a 
day. As a result of these obstacles, increasing numbers of families 
are skipping meals or reducing their food intake because eventually 
they run out of money and assets to sell.

Even before the current Israeli re-occupation which began on June 20, 
many Palestinians relied on aid from the Palestinian Authority and 
the UN World Food Program (UNWFP). With its ministries and 
institutions flattened, the PA can no longer serve in this role, and 
the UNWFP has recently announced an emergency operation to cope with 
what they call "dramatically deteriorating living conditions in the 
Palestinian Territories."

But how can the slow starvation of a whole population be stopped when 
that very starvation is being altogether denied by the Israeli 
government and ignored by the US Administration? Major General Amos 
Gilad, Israel's coordinator of government affairs in the West Bank 
and Gaza Strip, was hardly ruffled by the USAID findings. In fact, he 
asserted that "hunger is when people have swollen bellies and fall 
over dead. There is no hunger yet."

Discovering that dismissive denial of facts is not working, the 
Israeli authorities are now moving to soften criticism with 
much-hyped symbolic gestures. Israel recently announced its intention 
to release about seven percent of the 600 million dollars in 
Palestinian tax revenue it has seized since the start of the 
Intifada, as well as its intention to reissue work permits for 
Palestinians to cross from the West Bank and Gaza to their jobs 
inside Israel.

These measures, however, are hardly sufficient. Much more needs to be 
done. It is important to understand that the collective punishment 
policies pursued by Ariel Sharon's government against the 
Palestinians are not reactive but deliberate, and are intended to 
serve a specific and well-defined political purpose. Sharon is the 
head of the Likud Party, which to this day vows never to permit the 
establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.

Sharon's solution is to depopulate as much as possible the Occupied 
Palestinian Territories by making life for its citizens unbearable. 
And what could be more unbearable than watching your children cry 
themselves to sleep from hunger, night after night? What is most 
alarming is that Sharon may very well be having his way. As recently 
reported in the Jerusalem Post (an English-language Israeli daily), 
80,000 Palestinians have allegedly left the Occupied Palestinian 
Territories for Jordan and other nations to seek economic relief for 
their families.

In parallel, private Israeli efforts have been pursuing their 
missions of "helping" any Palestinian who wishes to leave the West 
Bank or Gaza. As the president of one organization which seeks to 
assist Palestinians to "permanently emigrate" put it: "Our aim is to 
empty the state of Arabs".

Another group, Gamla, founded by former Israeli military officers and 
colonists, has published similar recommendations on its website in a 
nine-thousand-word manifesto titled "The Logistics of Transfer." It 
argues that the mass expulsion of every Palestinian is "the only 
possible solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and further 
makes the claim that this is "substantiated by the Torah".

The starvation of captive Palestinians is nothing less than the 
muffled ethnic cleansing of a whole people. As always, these matters 
should be of serious concern to US citizens given that our 
diplomatic, military, and financial support have long allowed Israel 
to pursue with impunity such policies which contradict our own 
cherished political values and commitment to human rights. It is time 
for us to speak up. We must not be complicit in the decimation of a 
whole people.

Rania Awwad can be reached at: 
<mailto:raniaawwad@hotmail.com>raniaawwad@hotmail.com

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