Washington, DC | January 25, 2008 | www.adc.org | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is deeply disturbed by the Jan 24 Editorial by the Washington Post about the situation in Gaza. ADC encourages you to write to the Washington Post about their distorted editorial. Below you will find a letter sent to the Post by ADC, you can send your letters to letters@washpost.com
LETTER FROM ADC TO THE WASHINGTON POST
The author(s) of Jan 24 editorial by the Washington Post claim that “no one is starving in Gaza.” Apparently, the Post did not consult the latest reports by the World Food Programme and the UN Relief and Works Agency which call for immediate aid to be sent to the impoverished Gaza Strip to “urgently prevent a humanitarian crisis.”
Basic research by the Washington Post would have also found that 79 percent of the 1.5 million Gazans live in poverty and approximately 70 percent of the Gazans live on less than 250 dollars a month and food purchases account for 60 percent of household expenditures (World Food Programme, Jan 11, 2008).
The Post also fails to mention that despite Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel continues to have complete control over Gaza’s land, sea, and air borders; utilities; tax revenue; and internal economy, making it an occupying power.
The editorial goes on to call for Egypt to close the border and to turn back the Gazans. Under humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, Gazans must be allowed access to humanitarian aid and supplies. Gazans should not be forced to go without food or medicine nor be forced to live under constant collective punishment. An end to the misery inflicted by the ongoing Israeli occupation should be the goal for all, however, the Washington Post seems to favor halting the peace process instead. Shame on the Post.
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WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL, JAN 24
Breach in Gaza
As thousands stream across the border to Egypt, Hamas blockades the peace process.
Thursday, January 24, 2008; A18
THE HAMAS movement provided a dramatic illustration yesterday of its ability to disrupt any movement toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians. As tens of thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip surged across the border into Egypt, Hamas security forces directed traffic; earlier, they stood by as organized groups of militants blew up the fence along the previously sealed border. As Hamas no doubt expected, the government of Egypt greeted this illegal invasion with a quick surrender: President Hosni Mubarak announced that Gazans would be allowed to shop in Egypt because they “are starving due to the Israeli siege.”
In fact, as Mr. Mubarak well knows, no one is starving in Gaza — though food, fuel and cigarettes are much cheaper across the border. Israel closed its border with the territory and disrupted power supplies over the weekend in response to a massive escalation of Palestinian rocket launches from Gaza at nearby Israeli towns — between Tuesday and Saturday last week, some 225 rockets were aimed at the town of Sderot, where more than 20,000 Israelis have been relentlessly terrorized. Hamas took advantage of the blockade first by arranging for sympathetic Arab media to document the “humanitarian crisis,” then by daring Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians portrayed as Israel’s victims. Its ultimate goal, stated publicly yesterday by Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshal, is to force Egypt to permanently reopen the border in cooperation with Hamas; that would greatly diminish Israel’s ability to respond to rocket attacks with economic sanctions, and it would undermine the rival Palestinian leadership of Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert committed themselves to reaching a peace accord in 2008 during President Bush’s visit this month. Yet since then, political attention in the region has been focused on the rocket attacks, Israel’s retaliatory strikes against militants in Gaza and the subsequent blockade, and yesterday’s dramatic breach of the border. Naturally it is impossible for the peace negotiations to make progress in these conditions. So those who say their priority is an Israeli-Palestinian settlement ought to be trying to stop Hamas’s disruptions.
That obligation doesn’t just fall on Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert — though Israel may have a lesson to learn from the way Hamas exploited its temporary shutdown of fuel supplies. Mr. Mubarak and other Arab leaders have to resist the urge to roll over every time they are challenged by Hamas and al-Jazeera television. Would Mr. Mubarak allow tens of thousands of Darfur refugees to illegally enter Egypt from Sudan, where a real humanitarian crisis is underway? Surely not. Egypt’s obligation as a law-abiding state is to restore order on the border and prevent the ongoing and massive smuggling of armaments into Gaza. That would go a long way toward stopping the rockets.
The Bush administration and European governments should act to stop the ongoing farce at the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. Human Rights Council, which have ignored months of daily rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians but now rush to condemn a partial, three-day disruption of Gaza’s power supplies. Hamas, and the people of Gaza, should get a consistent message that relief lies not in blowing up international borders but in ending attacks on Israel and allowing a peace process to go forward.