Aid groups appeal for end to Gaza blockade

Coalition of 35 organizations says 100,000 Gazans still homeless after war, reconstruction moving too slowly

File: A truck carrying cement is seen after it entered the southern Gaza Strip from Israel through the Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah, on April 29, 2015. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90)
File: A truck carrying cement is seen after it entered the southern Gaza Strip from Israel through the Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah, on April 29, 2015. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash 90)

Some 35 aid groups from around the world, including ActionAid and Oxfam, launched a joint call Wednesday to end Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, which is in dire need of reconstruction.

Last summer’s devastating war in Gaza cost the lives of over 2,251 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, according to Gaza-based sources. Israel says almost half of the fatalities were combatants and blames Hamas for all civilian deaths, since it emplaced its war machine in residential areas. Seventy-three people were killed on the Israeli side, including 67 soldiers, as the IDF battled Hamas-led Palestinian terror groups that fired over 4,500 rockets at Israeli towns and cities and carried out attacks through tunnels dug under the border.

“For a whole year, the Israeli government has restricted basic and essential construction materials from entering Gaza,” said a statement signed by the NGOs and posted on the site of activist group Avaaz.

“Not one of the 19,000 homes that were bombed and destroyed has been fully rebuilt. One year on, around 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza are still homeless, hospitals and schools still lie in ruins, and whole neighborhoods have no access to running water.”

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas wrested control of the Strip in a bloody coup, ousting the Palestinian Authority leadership, for fear of weaponry being smuggled in. Hamas has bragged that it is digging new attack tunnels and producing new rockets. Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel.

Israel controls the waters around Gaza and residents are not allowed to travel more than six nautical miles from the coast.

Land crossings in and out of the coastal enclave are also strictly controlled by Israel and Egypt. Israel says its blockade is essential to prevent militants from obtaining materials to fortify military positions and build rockets they could fire at the Jewish state. The Egyptians are concerned that Gaza-based Palestinian groups are providing military support to Islamic fundamentalists who are behind a spate of attacks on Egyptian security forces and tourist sites in the Sinai Peninsula that have claimed hundreds of lives.

Some 600 trucks of supplies cross into Gaza from Israel daily according to COGAT, the IDF body that coordinates civilian issues with the Palestinians and manages the crossings with the Gaza Strip.

Israel allows small quantities of construction materials into the Strip as part of the rebuilding effort in the wake of the war, but says that in Hamas’s hands, large amounts of concrete and piping would be diverted to military projects.

“Just five percent of the 6.7 million tons of steel bars, cement and aggregates needed to rebuild what was destroyed since the end of the war has been permitted to enter Gaza,” the statement said. “At this rate, it could take 17 years before Gaza is rebuilt.”

Palestinian workers offload a truck loaded with cement after it entered from Egypt through the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza Strip, August 20, 2015. (Abed Rahim Khatib /Flash90)
Palestinian workers offload a truck loaded with cement after it entered from Egypt through the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza Strip, August 20, 2015. (Abed Rahim Khatib /Flash90)

Last month the long-awaited reconstruction started in Shejaiya, one of Gaza’s areas that was hardest hit during the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas.

The NGOs acknowledged that Palestinian political parties had failed to reconcile and prioritize reconstruction, “and Egypt’s closure of its border has further limited supplies entering Gaza”.

But they said Israel’s blockade was the main obstacle to reconstruction.

A petition launched by the NGOs has so far garnered more than 450,000 signatures from around the world.

Earlier this month the leading Arab daily London-based al-Hayat reported that Israel has agreed to “entirely” remove its blockade on the Gaza Strip and establish a naval passageway between the Hamas-controlled territory and Cyprus, in return for a long-term ceasefire lasting seven to 10 years.

But a final agreement between Israel and Hamas is still far off, the sources told al-Hayat.

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