The Long War on Gaza

 

 "The current desecration of Gaza is the latest stage in a process that has taken increasingly violent forms over time.² In the fifty-six years since it occupied the Strip in 1967, Israel has transformed Gaza from a territory politically and economically integrated with Israel and the West Bank into an isolated enclave, from a functional economy to a dysfunctional one, from a productive society to an impoverished one. It has likewise removed Gaza’s residents from the sphere of politics, transforming them from a people with a nationalist claim to a population whose majority requires some form of humanitarian aid to sustain themselves.

Violence in Gaza has not only or even primarily been a military matter, as it is now. It has been a matter of everyday, ordinary acts: the struggle to access water and electricity, feed one’s children, find a job, get to school safely, reach a hospital, even bury a loved one. For decades the pressure on Palestinians in Gaza has been immense and unrelenting. The damage it has done—high levels of unemployment and poverty, widespread infrastructural destruction, and environmental degradation, including dangerous contamination of water and soil, among other factors—has become a permanent condition."

READ REPORT BY SARA ROY