Gaza

Remember Gaza

Guest Column by Thomas L. Are

http://thomas-l-are.blogspot.com

The post Remember Gaza appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.

Israel have begun an aggressive pesticide spraying campaign along the Gaza border between 25 December and 5 January, despite claims by Palestinian farmers that it damages crops and harms the health of those nearby.  The Palestinian ministry of agriculture has condemned the spraying by Israeli occupation authorities, and have warned local residents to expect a loss of crops as a result. Middleeastmonitor.com reports: The ministry’s statement was reported by a number of media outlets.

A sixteen year old girl in Gaza has discovered a way to overcome chronic power shortages, by constructing a device that can generate electricity from the heat of candles. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA ) said that electricity blackouts were triggered when the Gaza Power Plant (GPP) shut down completely in April, having exhausted its fuel reserves due to a shortage of funds. The OCHA said that the blackouts lasted for 18-30 hours a day.

The Gaza strip may become uninhabitable by 2020 if nothing is done to address the water crisis in the world’s largest open prison. 1.9 million Palestinians are trapped in a narrow strip of land, living under an illegal blockade enforced by Israel. Only 10 percent of Gazans have access to clean drinking water, the World Bank said on Tuesday, calling the situation “alarming”. Gaza’s water supply could be irreversibly ruined soon as sea water seeps into destroyed infrastructure making the Palestinian territory uninhabitable.

Israeli warplanes launched two airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip on Thursday morning following reports that a rocket had landed in southern Israel late on Wednesday night. The airstrikes hit an area west of Rafah and the Nuseirat refugee camp located in the southern and central Gaza Strip according to Palestinian media reports. According to Press TV: No casualties have yet been reported in the Thursday morning attacks that followed alleged reports of a rocket fired at an open area in the western part of the occupied Palestinian territories on Wednesday night.