As usual, we hardly have any reservations about the numbers published by COGAT. However, we continue to recommend that the data be examined in a wider context. In a broader context, the report’s self-congratulatory nature is a little less persuasive. The security context provided by the report – it opens with statistics on rocket fire on Israel during the past year – is important, but needs to be examined alongside Israel’s obligations under international law, the government’s promises and the real needs of the residents of Gaza. What would the numbers look like then?

For instance, the report states: “Israel is working with the international community and the Palestinian Authority to advance and streamline procedures for the approval of internationally-funded projects. To this end a coordination and monitoring mechanism has been set up for the implementation of internationally funded projects in accordance with security considerations. So far 163 internationally funded projects were approved for implementation”.

And in the broader context? The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose projects account for half of those approved by Israel last year, reports that this still only represents 27% of the projects they wish to implement in their recovery and reconstruction plan. For example, of 100 schools the agency seeks to build, only 42 were approved, and as getting clearance for materials still involves cumbersome bureaucratic procedures, actual construction has begun on only half of the schools.  ”Advancing and streamlining”, indeed.

The report continues: “In the past year, 29,715 Palestinians entered Israel from the Gaza Strip. Additionally, Israel decided to increase the quota of traders entering Israel to 70 per day. In the past year 7,282 traders entered from the Gaza Strip for business reasons in Israel, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and abroad as part of the ongoing economic activities in the Gaza Strip”.

And back to the broader context. It is interesting to compare those numbers to the average of half a million workers who left Gaza every month on the eve of the Second Intifada. Furthermore, permits issued today are only for “senior businesspeople”, defined as those whose exit would contribute to improving the Gaza economy. The few women traders in Gaza, as well as young merchants, who want to build commercial ties with Israel and the West Bank, generally do not receive permits. Israel is thereby ignoring the common wisdom that small businesses are a driver of economic development.

From the report: “In the framework of the Cabinet’s decision on agricultural exports, the export project, in cooperation with the Netherlands to export strawberries and carnations continued. In addition it had been decided to export bell-peppers, but the exports stopped due to low quality of the produce that did not meet European standards. As an alternative the export of cherry tomatoes to European markets was approved”.

Here too, the context puts a damper on the good news. In the first five months of 2011, Israel may have allowed export of agricultural produce to Europe at the economically negligible volume of around two truckloads per day, but it has now been more than two months since a single truckload of goods left Gaza. Besides, as opposed to the government’s December decision and repeated promises made to international actors, the export of textile and furniture from the Gaza Strip has still not been approved.

Certain measures have indeed been taken over the past year to “ease” the closure, and we welcome those. But when seen in the broader context of the needs of Gaza residents and promises made to them, it’s clear that overall, progress has come too little and too late.

The article quotes a cable written by officials at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and also quotes a 2008 speech by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Just in case that’s not enough, the state said the same thing in official documents submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court. The message is clear: push the economy to the brink without going over. But then again, how do we know when it’s “gone over?” Guy Zohar asked the same question on an Israeli television news program on Channel 10 last night.

There’s something else that’s no secret but that hasn’t seemed to penetrate yet. Ready? The closure isn’t over and neither are restrictions paralyzing economic activity, namely the ban on export and construction materials and on the movement of people.

A case in point: this week the Jerusalem Post reported that trade of fruit from Israel to Gaza was up 25% in 2010, putting Gaza on par with the consumer markets in the Netherlands, France and Spain and suggesting this is an indication of economic revitalization in Gaza. It’s well known that Israel has allowed agricultural products in to Gaza to help Israeli farmers get rid of excess produce – it’s what made kiwis a luxury one week and then permitted another – before civilian goods were allowed into Gaza on a more regular basis, beginning this past summer. The Israel Fruit Growers Association chairman Ilan Eshel says so much in the JPost article.

Unlike the Netherlands, France, and Spain, however, farmers in Gaza are barred from selling most of their products outside of the Gaza Strip, because Israel won’t let the goods through the crossings. In addition, the article neglects to mention the tremendous losses to the agricultural sector in Gaza over the past several years when transport of inputs for the sector were limited and a ban on export shrank profits for Gaza’s farming families, which account for 25% of the population. Since late November, Israel has allowed limited export, but it benefits a small fraction of the agricultural sector; just three kinds of products have been let out so far – carnations, strawberries, and peppers – at a rate of about four trucks per day versus 70 per day before the closure. The article also didn’t point out that limitations on movement in the buffer zone have prevented access to about 35% of Gaza’s agricultural lands, making it hard for farmers to tend to their fruits and vegetables. This in addition to destruction caused to agricultural lands and infrastructure in these areas during Operation Cast Lead, which have since not been rehabilitated since they cannot be accessed.

If we want Gaza to be more than a dumping ground for Israeli consumer products and if we want an increase in trade to truly benefit “both sides”, as Chairman Eshel says, steps should be taken to actually end the closure – the only real way to end the war on the economy.

As has been the case in every year since June 2007, the export of flowers and strawberries is the exception that proves the rule. While in 2005 Palestinian residents of Gaza exported approximately 70 truckloads per day to Israel, the West Bank and abroad, and while Israel promised, in the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access, to permit the transfer of 400 outbound trucks daily from Gaza, since June 2007, only 262 trucks have left Gaza – a daily average of one-third of a truck.

The overall export is summed up in the following table:

Trucks leaving Gaza on average per day, June 14, 2007 – Dec. 1, 2010

This year, the Ministry of Defense promised an increase in the levels of export: up to 10 trucks a day of strawberries and flowers during the winter, and for the first time since 2007, within the framework of the Dutch project, Israel is considering permitting export of cherry tomatoes and red peppers. The general ban on export – of furniture, clothes, and other agricultural produce – remains in place.

It is therefore not surprising that two-thirds of the factories in Gaza are not operating or operate at minimal capacity, and unemployment in the Strip hovers at around 40%.

The continuation of the general ban on export raises questions regarding the sincerity of Israel’s announcement that restrictions on goods entering and leaving Gaza will be limited to those necessary to address security concerns. If Israel can check trucks loaded with strawberries and flowers, why can’t it check the goods produced by factory workers in Gaza, as it did until June 2007? Another restriction, which has a less than clear relationship to security, is the refusal by the Ministry of Defense to allow Gaza residents to sell their products in Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan, as they did until 2007. If flowers enter Israel on their way to Europe, why does Israel refuse to allow them to continue to the West Bank or Jordan or to flower shops in Israel? The land crossings with Israel are the only way out for goods, because of Israel’s ban on movement via Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters.

Photos: Mohammed Azaiza

Perhaps the Defense Ministry has started to implement the plan announced by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman: to close the crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip hermetically, thereby blocking all access between Gaza and the West Bank. Instead of being sold to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan (the main markets for Gaza’s agricultural produce until 2007), Gaza’s strawberries and flowers have to make the long and expensive journey to Holland which leaves farmers with little profit.

Recently, Lieberman announced that “we will of course be happy, if we find buyers that are interested in purchasing from Gaza” and “we are willing to cooperate with anyone who is interested in investing money, and creating a market for Gaza’s products” (click here for the statement in Hebrew). Well, Minister Lieberman, the markets are waiting, and you don’t have to invest money, just open the crossings!

Prior to the June 2007 closure, 30-35 trucks of agricultural produce were exported every working day of the agricultural export season (November – March), carrying mainly cherry tomatoes, flowers and strawberries. This amount is from a total daily average of 70 trucks of exports, mostly furniture, garment, cash crops, vegetables, processed food, metal products, handicrafts, and other kinds of goods. Gaza export –halted except for the trickle of strawberries and flowers – used to account for 10.8% of the Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP), valued at $330 million. That is now lost. Estimated annual losses from the inability to export agricultural products alone stand at approximately $32 million, and tens of thousands of people in the agricultur! al sector have lost their livelihood.

The flower and strawberry export is part of a one million Euro program, sponsored by the Dutch government, to support Gaza’s farmers. The Dutch government insists that Israel permit the flowers and strawberries to reach European markets as an exception to the ban on all other kinds of export from Gaza, a ban which has forced other donors to convert development programs into humanitarian hand-outs. If Gaza’s crossings were fully open for export and Gaza residents were afforded the right to engage in a dignified living, European taxpayers could spend less money on aid and more money buying strawberries grown in Gaza, rumored to be among the sweetest and reddest in the world.