The United Nations expert repeats call for threat of sanctions against Israel over Gaza blockade

lift the blockade

The United Nations independent expert on Palestinian rights has again called for a threat of economic sanctions against Israel to force it to lift its blockade of Gaza, which is preventing the return to a normal life for 1.5 million residents after the devastating Israeli offensive a year ago.“Obviously Israel does not respond to language of diplomacy, which has encouraged the lifting of the blockade and so what I am suggesting is that it has to be reinforced by a threat of adverse economic consequences for Israel,” Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, told UN Radio.

“That probably is something that is politically unlikely to happen, but unless it happens, it really does suggest that the United States and the Quartet and the EU [European Union] don’t take these calls for lifting the blockade very seriously and are unaffected by Israel’s continuing defiance of those calls,” he said, referring to the diplomatic Quartet of the UN, EU, Russia and US, which have been calling for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the main UN body tending to the needs of some 4 million Palestinian refugees, said today Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age,” because UNRWA was reduced to building houses out of mud after the 22-day offensive Israel said it launched to end rocket attacks against it.

“The Israeli blockade has meant that almost no reconstruction materials have been allowed to move into Gaza even though 60,000 homes were either damaged or completely destroyed. So we in UNRWA have been saying ‘let’s lift this senseless blockage,’” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told UN Radio.

“We are the United Nations and we always hope that diplomacy will prevail, and it will prevail above the rationale of warfare. But if you look at what is going on in Gaza, and if you look at the continued blockade and the fact that that blockade is radicalizing a population there, then one has to have one’s doubts.”

In a statement last week, Mr. Falk stressed that the “unlawful blockade” was in its third year, with insufficient food and medicine reaching Gazans, producing further deterioration of the mental and physical health of the entire civilian population.

Building materials necessary to repair the damage could not enter Gaza, and he blamed the blockade for continued breakdowns of the electricity and sanitation systems due to the Israeli refusal to let spare parts needed for repair get through the crossings.Mr. Falk also deplored the wall being built on the borders between Gaza and Egypt.

“I’m very distressed by that, because it is both an expression of complicity on the part of the government of Egypt and the United States, which apparently is assisting through its corps of engineers with the construction of this underground steel impenetrable wall that’s designed to interfere with the tunnels that have been bringing some food and material relief to the Gaza population,” he told UN Radio.

“And of course, the underground tunnel complex itself is an expression of the desperation created in Gaza as a result of this blockade that’s going on now for two and a half years, something that no people since the end of World War II have experienced in such a severe and continuing form.”As a Special Rapporteur, Mr. Falk serves in an independent and unpaid capacity and reports to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.

In a new policy brief, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), entrusted with promoting the integration of developing countries into the world economy, reported that more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s population are now impoverished; 43 per cent unemployed; and 75 per cent lack food security. “In view of the eroded productive base, poverty is likely to widen and deepen unless reconstruction begins in earnest and without further delay,” it warned.

Israel allows passage to top business people and a limited number of Gazans seeking treatment for serious illnesses

,GAZA CITY ,Gaza Strip  A healthy man in blockaded Gaza faked cancer, hoping the deadly disease would be his ticket out of the territory that has become an open-air prison for its 1.4 million residents.

His ploy failed, but several thousand others succeeded in fleeing this shabby sliver of land this year using bribes and fake medical reports, a sign of Gazans’ desperation over growing poverty and misery under the strict border closure enforced by Egypt and Israel since Hamas militants overran Gaza in June 2007.

The blockade has few loopholes. Israel allows passage to top business people and a limited number of Gazans seeking treatment for serious illnesses. Egypt sporadically opens its border for university students and those with residency abroad.

Everyone else is stuck, even as Palestinian polls suggest nearly half the population would like to leave if they could. Deepening the Gazans’ sense of imprisonment, they must now also obtain permission from the Hamas government before attempting to leave, further complicating an obstacle-ridden path to freedom.

Those trying to bribe their way out usually approach middlemen who put them in touch with local doctors, Palestinian health officials or Egyptian bureaucrats and military officials.

Akram Ghneim, 31, an unemployed father of six living off food handouts, told The Associated Press he promised $260 to a Palestinian middleman, who obtained for him a bogus medical report saying he had cancer. Ghneim said he hoped he’d get a rare spot on the list of Gaza patients with life-threatening illnesses who are allowed to enter Israel for treatment.

Once in Israel, he planned to disappear and work illegally. But Israeli intelligence officials, who review applications, rejected him last summer, saying his cancer report was forged.

“This is what the blockade does,” said Ran Yaron, of the Israeli group Physicians for Human Rights, which helps bring Gazans into Israel for treatment by lobbing Israeli defense officials.

“Most are frustrated and devastated people.”

Yaron said fakers are a minority, but clog up the system for real patients who have to go through longer checks as a result.

Of more than 7,000 Gazans who crossed into Israel this year to seek medical treatment, some 500 haven’t returned, said Col. Moshe Levi, an Israeli defense official.

Some stay in Israel, while others move to the West Bank, a territory controlled by Israel but partly administered by Palestinians loyal to Fatah, bitter rivals of Hamas.

One Fatah loyalist, a healthy 30-year-old woman, said she was desperate to leave Gaza after being harassed by Hamas officials.

She bribed a Gaza doctor with $100 to certify she had “whatever cancer could only be treated in Israel.” The doctor then paid off a physician serving on a Palestinian committee that certifies medical reports for Israeli military officials, the woman said. She eventually succeed in reaching the West Bank and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being sent back to Gaza by the Israeli authorities.

Israeli intelligence officials investigate Gazans applying to enter Israel to ensure they are not militants and to check whether medical certificates are genuine, but tend to rely on the Palestinian committee to confirm that the patient is actually sick.

The head of the Palestinian committee, Bassam Badri, denied members accept bribes. Omar Masri of the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank said the issue was “too stupid for a response.”

But Palestinians who have successfully used bogus transfers said some health officials accept payments, anything from $100 to $500. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the illicit system.

Others pay bribes to get out through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, said a senior Hamas official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to alienate Egyptian authorities.

Payments range from $400 to $5,000, according to Rafah residents familiar with the system, known among Gazans as “Egyptian coordination.”

An Egyptian security official at the border denied Egyptian officers take bribes to allow crossings. He said that three months ago, two Palestinian officials posted on the Egyptian side were removed on suspicion of taking bribes. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Depending on the sum, the middleman’s talents and luck, bribe-paying Gazans can sometimes leave immediately through the crossing, with Egyptian officials stamping them through, even when it’s closed, Rafah residents said. Otherwise, bribe-payers wait for one of the official border openings by Egypt, usually lasting for around three days every month or two.

About 2,000 Gazans get through each time the border opens. Only half are on the official list and the rest are handled directly by the Egyptian authorities, said Ehab Ghussein, the Interior Ministry spokesman in Gaza.

Thousands more have applied to leave but don’t make the list, he said.

Numerous tunnels run under the Gaza-Egypt borders in a thriving smuggling trade bringing goods into the territory. But few Gazans use them to sneak into Egypt, because once on the other side they would have no official status and be more vulnerable to Egyptian police.

But even paying bribes isn’t a guaranteed exit strategy.

Hazem Riyashi, 27, says he paid a middleman $1,000 in July to cross through Egypt, hoping to reach the Gulf emirate of Dubai, where his family lives. But the middleman disappeared and has not returned his calls. Riyashi hasn’t given up, and is looking for someone else to pay off.

“I think everybody should leave Gaza,” he said. “Even the air smells cleaner abroad.”