One full year into the siege, Israel -- in full view of the world -- continues to illegally starve and collectively punish Gaza's civilian population, ostensibly to avenge the democratic expression of the Gazan people who continue to choose resistance to occupation over humiliation, betrayal and servitude Israel's gulag Already living atop of one another, Gaza's people under siege are effectively inmates in a concentration camp, writes Saleh Al-Naami Zahir Abu Shaaban has been on edge for the last seven months. He is afraid that his life dream won't come true -- his dream of completing his computer engineering postgraduate studies in the United States. He thought that his dream had come within reach when he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship, which the US State Department awards each year to a number of Palestinian students. Abu Shaaban and six other Palestinians were awarded the fellowship after competing with hundreds, and Abu Shaaban thought the State Department would guarantee his and his colleagues' safe travel. He was sorely disappointed when Israel blocked his travel. Israeli domestic intelligence even attempted to bargain with him, stipulating that in order to be allowed to travel he would have to become an informer and provide information on resistance movements. Last Tuesday, Abu Shaaban applied at the Erez Crossing's Shin Bet office for permission to travel to Jerusalem in order to obtain a US entry visa from the American consulate. He told Al-Ahram Weekly that he was surprised when the Shin Bet officer tried to blackmail him. The officer asked Abu Shaaban to inform him about all the employees at the Islamic University who are affiliated with Hamas, just because he works there as a teaching assistant. Abu Shaaban tried to convince the officer that he is an independent individual and doesn't belong to any organisation, but the interrogator was stern and decisive: either Abu Shaaban agrees to cooperate with Israeli intelligence or he could forget about the idea of completing his education in the US. After Abu Shaaban rejected the threats and blackmail of the interrogator, who tried for two hours to convince him, Abu Shaaban was thrown out of the office and made to wait two hours until soldiers returned his identity card and told him to return to Gaza. There are currently 4,000 Palestinians who study abroad but are languishing in Gaza because of the siege and Israeli authorities' refusal to allow them to return to their universities. John King, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was the first to make the connection between life in the Gaza Strip under siege and the reality of prison. He said that with regard to services, the conditions of detainees in prison are much better than those of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Anyone who takes an honest look at conditions in Gaza under siege will find striking the resemblance to the prison. Some 178 Palestinians have died to date because they have been barred from leaving the Strip for medical treatment abroad. Rami Abdu, spokesperson of the Popular Committee for Resisting the Siege, told the Weekly that 31 per cent of the patients Israel has barred from travelling abroad have been children under 15. Abdu said that this percentage does not include the hundreds of sick and wounded who don't apply to travel because they are certain the occupation will reject their applications. Farah Said Al-Sawaf, two years old, suffers from a tumour in her right kidney. Her parents applied for her to travel for treatment but the occupation still hasn't accepted her application. Farah's mother attended a press conference last week held by the families of sick children who have been barred from travelling. Crying, she said, "what body can bear such pain? What can I do as my child dies in my arms? Only hours stand between us and her fate." The case of Mohamed Bulbul, also two years old, is no less tragic. He has a stomach tumour and his father says that he needs to resume radiology treatment within 10 days or else he will die. To continue the analogy, normal prison inmates are not deprived of light in the evening, and yet Palestinians under siege in the Gaza Strip have grown accustomed to living in darkness when electricity is cut off for hours. Israel has limited the amount of fuel that is permitted to enter the Strip to run its sole electricity generation station. As such, all Palestinian families spend evenings in candlelight or utter darkness. In this prison, people have also grown used to walking long distances on foot due to the diminishing number of taxis functioning as a result of the extreme fuel shortage. Anyone standing near Salaheddin Street, which connects the southern and northern Gaza Strip, will see hundreds of people walking on foot as though they are in training. Further, due to the limited goods that are allowed in, many commercial shops have closed their doors. The shops that do carry some of what people need are forced to close their doors early due to lack of shoppers -- a result of the worsening economic conditions and the inability of cars to run due to the lack of fuel. Environmental conditions within this vast prison have seriously deteriorated due to the pollution caused by drivers' use of cooking oil as fuel to run their cars due to the lack of gasoline. Suleiman Al-Awawdeh, a mechanic, told the Weekly that the pollution stems from the inability of cars to fully burn cooking oil, which leads to the air being polluted with oxidised gas. Medical sources in the Gaza Strip have confirmed that this contributes to the spread of cancerous diseases. As such, anyone moving throughout the streets of the Strip will notice that many people are wearing makeshift facemasks to limit the amount of oxidised gas they inhale. Living in this prison has diminished people's hopes and ambitions to the point that they have begun to consider life's basics as luxuries that can be done without. Osama Abu Sharaf, 44, lives in Deir Al-Balah City. Last week, at the insistence of his four children, he tried to find a kind of melon that is known to be sweet. He told the Weekly that he checked all the fruit stands spread along the section of Salaheddin Street that connects Deir Al-Balah to Al-Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip, but didn't find what he was looking for. Every year in this season these stands are filled with this kind of melon, but vendors told Abu Sharaf he wouldn't find it this year. This melon is grown in greenhouses in the agricultural areas along the Strip's eastern borders, near Israel. Occupation bulldozers have destroyed the greenhouses, flattening them to the ground. Among the most serious ramifications of the siege has been the general deterioration of economic conditions. Maher Al-Taba, public relations director at the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce, says that losses to the Palestinian economy exceed $1 billion. A report he prepared one year on from when the siege was imposed notes that direct losses due to the closure of commercial crossings alone are worth about $360 million. Al-Taba says that the siege has led to deteriorating circumstances in the sectors of production, investment, foreign trade, agriculture, industry and labour. This deterioration has led to serious social and psychological, and health and educational problems. Israel's decision to annul the Gaza Strip's customs code has halted direct imports to Gaza, denying the Palestinian Authority substantial customs revenue. Al-Taba adds that Israel's decision to reopen the Sufa Crossing in the southern Gaza Strip to the entry of humanitarian aid, foodstuffs, fruit and medical supplies is not sufficient to meet the Strip's needs. The crossing is not equipped to receive goods and in the past was used only for admitting building materials, while Karam Abu Salem Crossing, east of the Rafah Crossing, was used for basic goods and aid. Al-Taba says that Sufa and Karam Abu Salem crossings can receive 70 to 100 trucks a day, whereas the Gaza Strip's daily needs require 150-200 trucks of goods just to meet basic needs. The siege has also had a negative impact on educational institutions due to the lack of basic materials available. Moreover, many Palestinian families are incapable of paying university fees for their children or buying school bags and uniforms. Al-Taba expects this reality to draw Gaza's children and youth "to a dark fate of helplessness" and future unemployment. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, approximately 20 per cent of Palestinian youth want to migrate abroad and thousands did in 2006. The Gaza Strip is considered to have the highest population density in the world. A million and a half people live in an area of 365 square kilometres. Even without the siege it can be considered a prison, but the siege makes its reality clear to all. More than a prison, the Gaza Strip is Israel's very own concentration camp.
