Construction materials are urgently needed to rebuild destroyed homes and infrastructure, writes MICHAEL JANSEN.
TWO MONTHS after the end of the Israeli offensive on Gaza, its 1.5 million residents have seen little improvement in their daily lives.
Reconstruction of destroyed or damaged homes, businesses, schools and infrastructure remains on hold although donors have pledged billions for the effort. Israel maintains a policy defined by the Israeli military as “no development, no prosperity, no humanitarian crisis”.
According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), access remains “the single most important condition for the advancement of the relief and rehabilitation efforts”.
Under pressure from the international community, Israel has, to an extent, increased the flow of food and medical supplies.
But the list of banned items includes pasta, lentils, toilet paper, cheese, toothpaste and toothbrushes, jam, laundry powder and school notebooks.
Aid agencies and traders do not know from day to day what items will be blocked, which means importers face uncertainty and delays. Medicines expire, produce perishes, and prices rise for goods kept in storage.
Of the five crossings between Israel and Gaza, four are partially operational: the Erez passenger terminal; the Nahal Oz facility for fuels; the industrial-scale Karni handling zone for imports and exports (now banned); and Karem Shalom, now used for most imports. Sufa, the entry point for construction materials, is closed.
The Egypt-Gaza passenger crossing at Rafah is closed to Palestinians and most foreigners.
During the week of March 2nd-9th, 729 lorryloads of goods entered Gaza, 43 per cent for humanitarian programmes: 88 per cent of these carried food and the rest carried hygiene and cleaning supplies, medicines, non-edible goods, educational materials, industrial and electrical appliances, and packaging. No agricultural materials, livestock, construction materials or spare parts were allowed into Gaza.
The daily average was 121.5 trucks, compared to 246 in the third week of July 2008, more than a year after Israel tightened its blockade. When goods crossings were working normally, 450-750 lorryloads were processed daily rather than weekly.
Ocha reported that petrol and diesel are in short supply and only 24 per cent of weekly needs for cooking gas and 68 per cent of fuel requirements for Gaza’s sole power station entered the Strip.
Cash (Israeli shekels) is also in short supply, curtailing banking and commercial transactions.
“The blockade has to be deconstructed if Gaza is to be reconstructed,” says UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman Christopher Gunness.
He says UNRWA has “patched up” some of the 50 agency facilities damaged during the Israeli offensive, but its main warehouse “lies in ruins”.
The Karem Shalom crossing is, according to Gunness, a “bottleneck” that cannot be used if “we are to get in construction materials on an industrial scale. This can be done only through Karni [zone, which is] like a normal cargo terminal at a port.”
The urgent need for construction materials has been revealed by UN satellite images of a vast pool of sewage caused by Israel’s bombing of a treatment plant southeast of Gaza City.
The plant, which serves 400,000 people, has been out of service since early January. While teams from the Palestinian water authority and Red Cross were able to fix a pipe pouring effluent into the Mediterranean, major repair work at the plant has been delayed by the lack of materials to fix it and other plants.
Jaber Wishah, deputy director of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, believes Israel’s blockade of construction materials is “a violation of human rights: the right to proper housing, the right to health”.