Since Israel sent a search and rescue team and doctors to help earthquake-devastated Haiti, op-eds and articles have praised Israel’s important provision of relief and also attempted to hold up a mirror to the country, showing closure-devastated Gaza just over our shoulder. Some in Israel asked, how is it that aid is rushed half a world away when children are living in half-destroyed homes just an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv? Others argued that Israel’s positive actions in Haiti should stand alone, even if the Israeli government over-publicized the efforts (in his blog this week, Ami Kaufman adds English subtitles to a popular Israeli satire spoofing the over-focus on Israeli rescue efforts in Haiti – worth watching!). Israel’s Foreign Ministry justifiably expresses pride in Israel’s humanitarian actions in Haiti, but it also boasts, for example, in the MFA round-up for 2009 that aid to the Gaza Strip increased by 900% in 2009. Is that really something to be proud of?

On average, 2,500 trucks of goods enter the Gaza Strip each month. This is roughly 25% of the amount that entered prior to the June 2007 closure of the Strip (10,400/month). The items permitted entrance are limited to basic goods “necessary for the survival of the population” (to quote a recent letter Gisha received from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)). Items like flour, grain, and sugar are allowed. Every month new items appear among those allowed in and others items are mysteriously rejected: coffee this month yes, but cardamom to flavor it, no. Anise yes, and black pepper too, but vinegar no. Significantly, there is a total ban on raw materials that would permit Gaza residents to engage in production and commerce, allowing for economic independence. Clarity regarding the policy requires no less than a court order.

Israel does not provide the aid transferred to Gaza. In fact it earns on each truck that passes and each ton of aid bought or shipped, stored, and transferred through its territory. After closing all of Gaza’s other crossings, including the airspace, territorial waters, and indirectly – Rafah Crossing – Israel partially opens its side of the gates to Gaza to allow others to bring in aid and other items. More often than not, Israel blocks the movement of goods in to and out of Gaza and of course the movement of people who in most parts of the world travel into and out of their countries for simple, every day things like work and school and weddings.

These restrictions – and the policy underlying them, limiting Gaza residents to a “minimal” existence – are what have helped make Gaza residents dependent on international aid, whose provision Israel burdens.

Since the end of December 2009, 36 trucks loaded with strawberries and cut carnation flowers were permitted to leave Gaza for Israel’s Ashdod port, from which they were shipped to Europe. This is the first time since January 2008 that strawberries have managed to leave the 41 kilometer-long Strip. The flowers have been a little luckier – prior to December 2009, Israel permitted the export of 19 truckloads of flowers during the past 2.5 years of closure, mostly around Valentine’s Day.

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.

According to Palestinian officials, last week Israel mounted two attempts to transport industrial diesel into the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom border crossing, and not via the Nahal Oz crossing, which has until now been the only crossing designed and equipped for the transfer of fuels and gas to Gaza. Attempts to transfer industrial diesel via Kerem Shalom were also made in the previous month. In the last week, Israel transferred not one drop of industrial diesel via Nahal Oz and in the previous two weeks transferred 3.68 million liters in total- 53% of the amount required. The reports that Israel intends to close down the Nahal Oz crossing completely follow a gradual slowdown of operations at the terminal, which now operates only three days a week.

The other crossings have also been closed: Karni Crossing, which was the main trade route, has been closed since June 2007, and only one conveyer belt, used to transport produce and animal feed, has continued to operate on a partial basis since then. The Sufa crossing has not operated since September 2008 and Israel announced its permanent closure in March 2009. The transfer of goods via the Rafah crossing is prohibited. And so all of Gaza is now almost totally dependent on the Kerem Shalom crossing, which has limited capacity and was originally designed for the occasional transfer of humanitarian aid only. Now Israel apparently plans to burden Kerem Shalom with fuel and gas transports as well.

Of course, in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, Israel occasionally closes Kerem Shalom too, due to what it identifies as dangers to the crossing.

The possibility that security risks would threaten the opening of Gaza’s crossings was the subject of considerable forethought. As a result, three fundamental conditions designed to ensure that the Gaza Strip crossings would operate continuously were established and agreed to by Israel:  (1) Recognition of the need to operate alternative lanes (lane redundancy); (2) recognition of the need to operate alternative crossings (passage redundancy); and (3) the primary objective which Israel committed to in the Crossings Agreement: the principle of continuous operation.

It is hard to imagine how one crossing, consisting of only one primary lane, can fulfill these fundamental conditions.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to strike against the tunnels underneath the Egypt-Gaza border, via which the majority of goods required by Gaza residents are transported, including by blowing them up.

Under these circumstances, with the sea and air routes completely blocked, the tunnels rejected as a legitimate option, and the overland crossings increasingly shut down, how exactly are the residents of Gaza supposed to get the goods they need?

When senior foreign delegates visited Israeli President Shimon Peres recently, they were surprised when he informed that there are no humanitarian problems in the Gaza Strip.

He maintained, in fact, that there is plenty of food, medicines and other products, although there is a slight shortage of cement. But you know – Hamas wants cement.

The gap between the well-documented existence of a severe humanitarian situation in Gaza and the President’s firm assertion that there is no such thing was so vast that the delegates could not help but wonder: Could it be that Peres was lying to them?.

The fact of the matter is that since Israel imposed an almost total closure on the Gaza Strip 27 months ago, it has repeatedly declared that there is no humanitarian crisis. It continues to stick to this story even though it only allows 25% of the needed goods to pass into Gaza (some 2,500 trucks per month as opposed to 10,400 prior to the closure). It does so even though around 75% of the population of Gaza (more than 1.1 million people) has been classified as “food insecure” by international organizations. It does so even though more than 90% of the water in Gaza has been declared non-potable according to World Health Organization standards, due partly to the shortage of equipment to treat it properly.

In fact, the President did not lie when he claimed that Gaza has an adequate supply of basic foods – rice, flour, and oil, for example – which Israel allows in. But please don’t ask about foods like sesame, juice powder, or beef stock – these items are banned, because they are beyond what is essential for the “basic existence of the population.”

Raw materials for industry, paper for textbooks, and building materials for reconstructing homes have also been classified by Israel “as beyond what is essential for the basic existence of the population.” Therefore, their import into Gaza has been prohibited.

As a result, two-thirds of the people in Gaza – one million human beings – are forced to rely on food assistance, 97% of the factories have shut down, unemployment stands at over 40%, and the local economy has collapsed due to the ongoing ban on the import of raw materials and the export of finished products.

The President did not lie, but he failed to mention essential information about the goals of Israel’s policies – to keep Gaza on life support, to permit the minimum transfer of food to prevent starvation, and to do everything in its power to prevent economic growth.

Picture this: its 7:15am, 40-60 children are crammed into a single classroom ready for a new day of learning. Many of them have no exercise books, textbooks or even pencils. This scene repeats itself at 12:15pm, when the “second shift” starts in the same classroom, at the same school, with the same overcrowding and the same shortages (no, this is not Israel in the 1950’s; this is the Gaza Strip in 2009).

A total of 451,704 students went back to school two weeks ago in the Gaza Strip. The new school year promised more of the same struggle to cope, even at school, with the outcomes of the war and the closure imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip for the past 27 months. For over two years, Israel has refused to allow paper to be imported into the Gaza Strip (except to the UNRWA schools) since paper is not considered “essential for the basic existence of the population.”

The education system, already weakened by the closure, sustained a severe blow when 280 schools and kindergartens were damaged during the war, including 18 schools that were completely destroyed. And there is no possibility of rebuilding them, since cement and building materials are also unnecessary for the “basic existence of the population.” Some 12,000 students who attended the destroyed schools were forced to look for new schools and this has led to an increase in the number of students at other schools, to more than 60 pupils in some classes. At present, almost 90% of the 221 schools operated by the UNRWA in Gaza and more than 80% of the 383 state schools are forced to operate in “shifts” in order to cope with the large number of students.

In the northern Gaza Strip alone, the destruction of 15 schools left 9,000 students without a place to study. Some 4,000 of them were placed in just 2 schools.

At the top of the list of goods that Israel won’t allow into the Gaza Strip are construction materials which can be used to repair the heavy damage sustained during the war and to rebuild the schools that were damaged and destroyed. As billions of dollars earmarked for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip remain unspent due to Israel’s policies, Israel has chosen a strange way to “teach Gaza a lesson.”

In the JPost today Yagil Henkin – a military historian from the Shalem Center – argues that “it is very unlikely that sanctions will cause the Hamas government to fall,” as “comprehensive economic sanctions can backfire; they tend to consolidate regimes.” With a historical review of other experiences with sanctions in the last few decades, he explains that “sanctions give the regime total control over the distribution of goods, making the population more dependent on it and thus less likely to resist.”

He goes on to advise: “It is obvious that embargoes of food and basic goods are counter-productive. The people of Gaza may or may not view Hamas as the culprit, but in any case, it is unlikely that the lack of pasta or fresh meat will goad them to overthrow their government.”