GAZA DISENGAGEMENT WILL NOT EASE SUFFERING FOR PALESTINIAN WOMEN ANDFAMILIES
saleh on August 3rd, 2005MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, reports that Israel’s disengagement from Gaza will not alleviate the suffering that Palestinian women and families have experienced under the Israeli occupation.
In fact, prospects for Palestinians may worsen after the policy is carried out. A closer look at the plan reveals that Israel’s current stranglehold over Gaza and the West Bank may even be strengthened after disengagement.
Military violence, economic misery, and “strangulation”-a term used to define Israel’s policy of preventing Palestinians from traveling within the occupied territories-will likely continue, and even worsen, after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza. For example, “[u]nder an economic siege imposed in 2000, Israel cut off Gazans’ access to jobs and trade,
causing unemployment rates to soar to nearly 50 percent and doubling the ranks of the poor to 77 percent of the population. Israel has threatened to make this siege permanent after disengagement,” writes MADRE, “which will only worsen Palestinian suffering.”
MADRE also points out that under international law, Israel’s military occupation will continue because the Israeli army will still surround and control the Gaza Strip. Israel will also still control Gaza’s borders, coastline, airspace, telecommunications, water, and electricity, and maintain its hold over Gaza’s economy by controlling the flow of people and goods in and out of the Gaza Strip.
Nevertheless, Israel claims that disengagement will free it of any responsibility under international law for the civilian population in Gaza. In effect, writes MADRE, “Israel is trying to ‘disengage’ from its obligations to the population under its military occupation-to control Palestinian land with no accountability to the Palestinian people.”
Read the full report: “Reconfigured Occupation: Gaza Disengagement Will Not Ease Suffering for Palestinian Women and Families”
