MIDEAST: Palestinians Not Helping Themselves Either

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Mar 29 2008 (IPS) - A deal currently being discussed by Israel and Egypt would see Israel sever a major tie with the Gaza Strip. Under the agreement, Egypt would become the sole external supplier of power to Gaza, replacing Israel which is today the major provider of electricity to the coastal strip.

Currently, Israel supplies Gaza with 70 percent of its power, Egypt some 5 percent, and the remainder is generated by a local power station in Gaza itself. But if the new arrangement is implemented, a 150-megawatt power line will be built from the town of Arish in the Sinai desert to Gaza, effectively ending the coastal strip’s reliance on Israel for its power.

In February, when Palestinian militants were raining down rockets on Israeli towns, the Israeli government gradually reduced the supply of power to the strip as a punitive measure aimed at deterring the rocket fire. At the same time, several senior ministers called for Israel to take a series of measures that would complete the process of disengagement from Gaza that began in August 2005 when then prime minister Ariel Sharon pulled the army and some 8,000 settlers out of the strip and demolished every home in the more than 20 settlements there.

Last month, deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai said Israel wanted to “disconnect” from Gaza. “We want to stop supplying electricity to them, stop supplying them with water and medicine, so that it would come from another place.” The place Vilnai was referring to was Egypt, which controlled Gaza before it was captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

For all the talk of cutting Gaza’s reliance on Israel, two-and-a-half years after Israel withdrew from Gaza, the 1.5 million residents there are still dependent on Israel for almost every basic need. Palestinians argue that “disengagement” as the Israeli withdrawal is known, is simply a different form of occupation. Israelis counter that had the Palestinians seized the opportunity presented by their unprecedented move, they would have far greater control of their own lives today.

Israel controls not just the electrical power into Gaza but also the flow of food, medical supplies and humanitarian aid. It is also the major supplier of water to Gaza, and Israel decides which patients requiring serious medical treatment get permits for treatment at its hospitals.

Except for the Gaza-Egypt crossing at Rafah, all the border crossings into the strip are controlled by Israel, as is the air space over Gaza and the coastline. The main currency in use in the strip is the Israeli shekel.

Since the Islamic Hamas movement seized control of Gaza from the more moderate Fatah movement last year, Israel has tightened its control over the strip even further, limiting the flow of goods and electricity into the strip. The Israeli government has defined Hamas-controlled Gaza as an “enemy entity” since the Islamic movement is committed to Israel’s destruction and refuses to recognise the Jewish state.

Both sides blame each other for the fact that two-and-a-half years after Israel pulled out of Gaza the strip still remains so dependent on Israel. The Palestinians argue that even though the Israeli army and the settlers have left Gaza, Israel still controls life in the strip, and hence the occupation there has never ended.

As long as Israel controls the border crossings, the air space and the coastline, and refuses to allow passage between Gaza and the West Bank – the two geographic entities the Palestinians hope will constitute a future state – it cannot argue that it has relinquished control of the strip, say the Palestinians. “After ‘disengagement’ Israel’s colonisation of Gaza will have ended, but because it will still control Gaza, Israel’s occupation will remain,” wrote Saeb Erekat, one of the chief negotiators with Israel, on the eve of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005.

“Neither people nor goods will be able to move in or out of Gaza without Israel’s permission, even though the international community (as well as Israel itself in the Oslo Accords) has recognised that Gaza and the West Bank form one territorial unit,” continued Erekat. “Israel’s plan is to undermine the territorial unity of the occupied Palestinian territory by cutting Gaza off from Palestinian political and administrative centres in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

The Palestinians also argue that since the Gaza withdrawal was a unilateral move by Israel – Sharon effected the pullout without negotiating with the Palestinian Authority – it lacks any legal foundation. What’s more, say Palestinian moderates, the move strengthened the radicals, including Hamas, because it undermined the view championed by moderates that an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza can only come about through negotiation.

Israelis insist that not only did the Palestinians fail to understand the significance of the precedent set with the uprooting of settlements in Gaza, but they have failed miserably to seize the opportunity presented by the withdrawal. “From a historical perspective, the withdrawal from Gaza was the first time Israel has dismantled a big block of settlements,” says Shalom Harari, a former advisor on Palestinian affairs in Israel’s defence ministry. “This was a precedent. It was very significant also on a symbolic level.”

From the moment Israel pulled out of Gaza, Harari told IPS, the Palestinians were intent on doing everything to “show the world” that Israel had not in fact disengaged from the strip. The fact that Israel continues to control the Gaza coastline, its airspace and most of its border crossings, he says, is a direct result of the refusal by Palestinian militant groups to cease attacks on Israel, especially the firing of rockets at communities inside Israel.

A large terminal built by Israel at the time of the Gaza withdrawal was meant to process thousands of Palestinian workers who would enter Israel every day to earn a living and then return home. But after several Palestinian suicide attacks at border crossings, says Harari, the plan was scrapped.

“If the Palestinians had focused on economic development and not violence, they would have got an airport in Gaza,” says Harari, who is now a senior research fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya. “And if the fishermen in Gaza weren’t fishing containers of AK-47s out of the water that have been dropped off the coast, Israel would not have to control the coastline.”