Gaza Strip

2023 Israel–Hamas war; 13 October 2013: 500 children have been killed by Israeli air attacks – one-third of Palestinian fatalities in the Gaza Strip. In the Gaza Strip, children’s ages are measured by how many Israeli assaults they have been through. About half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million is under 18, and the current offensive is Israel’s fifth major one in 15 years.

The Gaza Strip, or simply Gaza, is a partially self-governing Palestinian territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, which borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north. The largest city is also named Gaza, referred to as Gaza City to avoid confusion. Despite the 2005 partial Israeli disengagement from Gaza, the United Nations, international human rights organisations, and the majority of governments and legal commentators consider the territory de facto to be still occupied by Israel.

History

Bombing of Gaza in October 2023

Gaza has since 2007 been governed by Hamas, which came to power in elections in 2006, with Israel earlier having supported of Hamas in order to divide the Palestinians. The territory has been placed under an Israeli and U.S.-led international economic and political boycott from that time onwards. The population is not free to leave or enter the Gaza Strip, nor allowed to freely import or export goods. Israel controls Gaza's air and maritime space, and six of Gaza's seven land crossings. It reserves the right to enter Gaza at will with its military and maintains a no-go buffer zone within the Gaza territory. Gaza is dependent on Israel for its water, electricity, telecommunications, and other utilities.

Poverty

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip mostly live in abject poverty, but despite this they still manage to have about twenty children each. Their electricity is cut off regularly. They suffer from constant insect attacks. Even those with university degrees, job experience, and only two children (instead of the usual twenty) have to rummage through the garbage to find food. People dig for food and have no problems taking it to their wives who serve it up as the family meal--this is the normal situation there today. Aside from human food, they also search for livestock feed, pieces of plastic, and pieces of metal to use or sell. Out of Gaza Strip's 1.85 million, 700,000 live in poverty like this. The monthly income for the poor rarely exceeds 500 shekels ($144 USD). The poverty is largely because of Israel. They imposed an all-out land, aerial, and naval blockade on Gaza in June 2007. In July 2014, they cut water, power, and sewage.

Oil found in 2013

In late 2013, Gaza discovered oil off its shore. Israel badly wanted that oil, so in 2014 Israel held a false flag kidnapping of three jewish boys to frame Hamas and then launched into full scale genocide to conquer the Gaza Strip, with another Gaza Holocaust.

Items banned from the Gaza Strip

Israel has banned the following items from entering the Gaza Strip as a form of collective punishment for supporting Hamas:

• spices: sage, cardamom, cumin, coriander, ginger, nutmeg
• foods: jam, halva, chocolate, fruit preserves, nuts and seeds, biscuits and sweets, potato chips, dried fruit, fresh meat
• miscellaneous food ingredients: vinegar, gas for soft drinks, glucose, industrial salt, industrial margarine, flavor and smell enhancers
• livestock: horses, donkeys, goats, cattle, chicks
• fishing equipment: fishing rods, various fishing nets, ropes for fishing
• agricultural equipment: nylon nets for greenhouses, hatcheries and spare parts for hatcheries, spare parts for tractors, dairies and cowsheds, irrigation pipe systems, ropes to tie greenhouses, planters for saplings, heaters for chicken farms
• materials of written communication: size A4 paper, writing implements, notebooks, newspapers
• construction materials: plaster, tar, wood for construction, cement, iron, tarpaulin sheets for huts
• miscellaneous: plastic/glass/metal containers, fabric for clothing, buoys, musical instruments, toys, razors, sewing machines and spare parts, heaters

These restrictions serve two purposes:

1. To reduce the autonomy of the people of the Gaza Strip
2. To reduce the quality of life of the people of the Gaza Strip

Border crossing points

There are six controlled border crossing points on the border of the Gaza Strip. Five of them are crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel, and one of them, Rafah, is a crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Three of the border crossings- Erez, Nahal Oz, and Karni are in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and two of these, Nahal Oz and Karni, are adjacent to Gaza City. The other three border crossings- Sufa, Kerem Shalom, and Rafah, are in the southern corner of the Gaza Strip.

War crimes

On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) approved the arrest warrant request against Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to Israel's warfare in the Gaza Strip. This was the first time that the Court had issued an arrest warrant against the political leader of a democratic country. Of course, Netanyahu complained about alleged “anti-Semitism.”

See also

• Palestine
• Palestinians
• West Bank
• Israeli settlements
• Gaza flotilla massacre

Books

• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Further reading

• Kevin Alfred Strom: The Gaza Holocaust, 2014

External links

• Not killing Gazans ‘moral mistake’: Netanyahu, 2014
• What 'no country in the world' should tolerate, 2014
  • Israel says that ‘no country in the world’ would agree to live under the threat of Gaza’s rockets, but ignores its own culpability in its 100-eyes-for-an eye spiral of violence.
• Unternehmen „Schutzrand“ / Unternehmen „Mannhafte Klippe“ (Operation Protective Edge / Operation Resolute Cliff), 2014