Israel destroying Gaza's farmlandsThe Electronic Intifada: On the morning of 4 May 2009, Israeli troops set fire to Palestinian crops along Gaza's eastern border with Israel... 200,000 square meters of crops were destroyed, including wheat and barley ready for harvest, as well as vegetables, olive and pomegranate trees...
Ibrahim Hassan Safadi... lost 30,000 square meters to the blaze, including 300 pomegranate trees, 150 olive trees, and wheat... In previous attacks over the last decade, Israeli soldiers bulldozed his land, razing his lemon, olive and clementine trees as well as demolishing greenhouses... In 2008, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 11 of his sheep and seriously injured a 15-year-old cousin, Jaber, by shooting him in the mouth...
Attacks by Israeli soldiers occur on a near-daily basis... Nearly a decade ago, Israeli unilaterally imposed a 'buffer' or 'no-go' zone solely on the Gaza side of their shared borders... The initial 100-meter 'off limits' area has now extended to one kilometer across much of Gaza's eastern border and two kilometers along the Strip's northern border... Roughly one-third of Gaza's agricultural land lies within the confines of the 'buffer zone.'... Gaza's farming sector is further devastated by the destruction of what is believed to be hundreds of wells and sources of water and the contamination of farmland due to Israel's invasion of Gaza... These attacks have left nearly 60 percent of Gaza's agricultural land useless.
The Guardian: The World Bank report found huge disparities in water use between Israelis and Palestinians, although both share the mountain aquifer that runs the length of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water supply, while Israel, which controls the area, takes the rest... In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians are surviving on as little as 10 to 15 litres a person each day, which is at or below humanitarian disaster response levels recommended to avoid epidemics. In Gaza, where Palestinians relay on an aquifer that has become increasingly saline and polluted, the situation is worse. Only 5%-10% of the available water is clean enough to drink...
In Gaza, the continued Israeli economic blockade played a key role in preventing maintenance and construction of sewage and water projects. In the West Bank, Israeli military controls over the Palestinians were a factor, with Palestinians still waiting for approval on 143 water projects... Fuad Bateh, an adviser to the Palestinian water authority, said... "Palestinians have no say in the Israeli development of these shared, trans-boundary, water resources... It is a situation in which Israel has a de facto veto over Palestinian water development.'
The New York Times: Families still live in tents amid collapsed buildings and rusting pipes. With construction materials barred, a few are building mud-brick homes. Everything but food and medicine has to be smuggled through desert tunnels from Egypt. Among the items that people seek is an addictive pain reliever used to fight depression...
There are many levels of deprivation short of catastrophe, and Gaza inhabits most of them. It has almost nothing of a functioning economy apart from basic commerce and farming. Education has declined terribly; medical care is declining. There are tens of thousands of educated and ambitious people here, teachers, engineers, translators, business managers, who have nothing to do but grow frustrated. They cannot practice their professions and they cannot leave...
Many here are especially worried about the young. At a program aimed at helping those traumatized by the January war, teenagers are offered colored markers to draw anything they like, says Farah Abu Qasem, 20, a student of English translation who volunteers at the program. 'They seem only to choose black and to draw things like tanks... And when we ask them to draw something that represents the future, they leave the paper blank.'
