Carter Palestine Israel Series

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter, 2006 -- Edited Excerpts

Let’s take a quick look at Gaza. Its population has soared in recent years as Palestinian refugees have poured in from other areas occupied by Israel. In 1948 there were 90,000 natives, the population more than tripled by 1967, and there are now more than 1.4 million – 3,700 people living within each square kilometer.

Gaza has maintained a population growth rate of 4.7 percent annually, one of the highest in the world, so more than half its people are less than fifteen years old. They are being strangled since the Israeli “withdrawal,” surrounded by a separation barrier that is penetrated only by Israeli controlled checkpoints, with just a single opening [for personnel only] into Egypt’s Sinai as their access to the outside world. There have been no moves by Israel to permit transportation by sea or by air, Fishermen are not permitted to leave the harbor, workers are prevented from going to outside jobs, the import or export of food and other goods is severely restricted and often cut off completely, and the police, teachers, nurses, and social workers are deprived of salaries. Per capita income has decreased 40 percent during the last three years, and the poverty rate has reached 70 percent.

Israel has taken control of the consumer and production sectors of the area’s economy, making it an exclusive market for many Israeli products even among the local Palestinian citizens, who could not sell their own products in Israel, Jordan, or other places. Their economic system has been forced back into the preindustrial age and their territory broken into ever-smaller fragments, leaving a tiny and nonviable economic and political entity, circumscribed and isolated, with no dependable access to the air, sea, or even other Palestinians.

Sewage Flood Causes Gaza Deaths

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6498835.stm

Mar 27, 2007

At least four people have been killed after a sewage treatment pool collapsed and flooded a village in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said. The earth wall gave way in the village of Umm al-Naser in northern Gaza, submerging at least 25 houses. A UN report in 2004 had warned that the sewage facility was at its maximum capacity, and flooding was inevitable unless a new waste treatment plant was constructed.

German Bishop Compares Ramallah to Warsaw Ghetto

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834047.html

Mar 08, 2007

Harsh words by a delegation of German bishops during a weekend visit to Israel, including a reference to "Ghetto Ramallah," aroused consternation at the German Embassy yesterday. Earlier, when the group crossed the separation fence, Cardinal Joachim Meisner said "something like this is done to animals, not to human beings." Meisner, the Archbishop of Cologne, is from the former East Germany. "I never in my life thought to see something like this again," he said.

Pollution Adding to Gaza's Woes

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C411C216-6D79-43E2-A07B-B1F40D6DB976.htm

Mar 01, 2007

The Gaza Strip is the most densely populated piece of land in the world but it has had little or no investment in infrastructure for years, and the situation has worsened since sanctions were imposed last year.

With no sewage plant, Gaza's waste is dumped into the sea, making it unsafe for fishing or swimming according to a recent report. The stench is unbearable but it was the skin rashes children developed after swimming that drove Ramadan Abu Seif, a resident of the Al-Shate refugee camp, which is next to one of the sewage-discharge outlets, to act.

With international sanctions still choking the struggling Palestinian economy and no political horizon in sight, addressing this menacing problem will have to wait while the cost of politics and occupation continues to mount.

UN Alarm at Palestinian Poverty

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6387843.stm

Feb 22, 2007

The UN study, carried out by the World Food Programme (WFP), talks of a "marked decline" in living standards. It says that by the end of last year more than 80% of Gazans and 60% of West Bankers were reducing their daily expenditures. The report warns that rising levels of unemployment and poverty are posing acute challenges to "food security" - a family's ability to provide itself with enough to eat.

The study talks of "economic suffocation" and says that Israeli security restrictions in the occupied West Bank and around Gaza are fragmenting the Palestinian economy. Sectors like fishing and farming are being ruined.

Although the report does not refer to them, the past 12 months have also seen international economic sanctions on the Hamas-led Palestinian government. They were imposed by Israel and the West because the administration refused to renounce violence and recognise the state of Israel's right to exist.