According to Deputy Health Minister Youssef Abulreesh, the two cases are Palestinian men who returned from Pakistan through Gaza's Rafah on Thursday, March 21 and were placed under quarantine. On Saturday, March 22 their tests were confirmed positive for COVID-19. The two are now in a field hospital in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. More than 1,210 people haven placed in quarantine in hospitals, hotels and schools.
The Gaza strip is the largest open air prison in the world. It's Palestinian population, many of whom are refugees expelled from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948. Israel has carried out three major military assaults (in 2009-09. 2012 and 2014) against Gaza, unleashing the force of the regions most powerful army and sole nuclear power, on one of the most densely populated and poorly defended refugee areas in the world. In the 2014 attack 2,251 Palestinians were killed, among them 1,462 civilians and 551 children.
Gaza's two million residents most with claims to return to their homes, supported by international law are being asked to practice social distancing. This is impossible and the virus would spread like wildfire. Hamas has shut down restaurants, reception halls and Friday prayers at mosques, and any Palestinian returning from abroad are either being quarantined or are self-isolating. Though people have been ordered to only leave their homes to buy food, there is high risk that the virus will spread very rapidly in the densely populated enclaves and refugee camps of Gaza. Israel have responded to the confirmed cases by closing its borders with Palestine (including the West Bank) completely.
The blockade has caused grinding poverty resulting in more than two-thirds of Gazan families being dependent on aid. Due to fuel shortages and damaged electrical infrastructure, there are power shortages for up to 16 hours per day in most areas of Gaza. 70 percent of households in Gaza receive running water for only 6 to 8 hours every two to four days. Over 90 percent of the water extracted from the Gaza aquifer is unsafe for human consumption, while needed filtration equipment cannot be imported to Gaza.Nearly 90 million litres of untreated or partially treated sewage is dumped into the sea off Gaza every day, while equipment needed to build new or maintain existing treatment facilities are banned from entering Gaza. As a result of the blockade the economy, education, medical care, agricultural and fishing industries have worsened, in some cases in near collapse.
Gaza's wealth is largely unreachable s a direct result of Israel's occupation and blockade. Most agricultural land is located in places declared closed military areas. Access to traditional fishing grounds is restricted by the Israeli Navy. Development of their natural gas reserves is forbidden by the Israeli government. All of this while the movement of people into and out of Gaza is severely restricted and both the import of goods and the export of products from Gaza is strictly limited.
Israel has supplied Gaza with only a few hundred COVID-19 tests for its almost 2 million people. Gaza only has 65 life-saving ventilators (19 of which are already in use) and most of the equipment used in hospitals is in very poor condition and there are not enough adequate quarantine facilities to deal with the virus. It's a catastrophe in the making. Health officials warn that containment and treatment under the Israeli blockade will be impossible. This is truly a nightmare situation. Israel will not be able to deflect the blame if this nightmare scenario turns into a reality , that it created and made no effort to prevent. In the shadow of the global pandemic, these conditions in Gaza are a recipe for a disaster. Yet they are not the result of some unfortunate accident, but are are a result from deliberate Israeli state policy, consciously designed and maintained to achieve Gaza's, oppression, isolation and disintegration.
It is difficult to identify a date when the siege on Gaza began. The population of Gaza swelled in the aftermath of the Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes in 1948 and ended up in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and beyond. In 1967, Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, marking the beginning of the military and civilian occupation of Gaza. Palestinians have been subject to military rule since 1967, while Israelis who settled there were provided the protections of civil law. Following the first Intifada in 1987 Israel tightened its external and internal control and by 1994 it had established a fortified external control zone around Gaza through fencing, walls and militarized zones and imposed strict limitations on entry and exit, thus beginning a policy of isolating Gaza.
This crisis has been building since Israel's life-threatening blockade began 13 years ago, after the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by Hamas fighters, but it is clear that the siege has been in effect for decades:.
Gaza is a segregated, debilitated and subjugated colony of Israel. The occupation writ large is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, the medinas of French colonies, the indigenous reservations across North America and other colonial regimes. Gaza represents an extreme form of settler colonialism—the conversion of a Bantustan into an open-air prison. Israel manufactures humanitarian crisis through its siege to create permanent isolation and deprivation, which is supported by the international community through its political inaction and its supplying of humanitarian aid in spite of the Israeli government’s legal obligations.
Critics of Israeli policy have long expressed a concern that the occupation relies on collective punishment, which is prohibited by international law. De-development and the siege, however, represent a kind of collective torture, forcing Palestinians to cope and endure in conditions that, while met by resilience, no group should be forced to endure. This torture takes the form of a frontal attack on the physical and mental health of Palestinians, a denial of the basic requirements of medical care, sustenance, community and mental health through infrastructures of dispossession.
Due to the Israeli siege, the healthcare system in Gaza is totally unprepared to deal with this pandemic. Palestinians in Gaza are living in crisis even without the Coronavirus, and the almost inevitable outbreak of the virus is essentially another nail in the coffin from the Israeli state. It is absolutely crucial that the Israeli siege on Gaza comes to an immediate end, and the 2 million people trapped on the Gaza Strip are finally allowed access to reliable electricity and medical aid. As long as Israel maintains the siege Palestinians will remain prisoners in their own land. Palestinians like all people in the the world, want to live in freedom. The pandemic's arrival threatens to make Gaza even more unlivable under Israeli siege.
In this most moment when people in more privileged countries can just slightly relate to a life in confinement, separated from loved ones, uncertain about basic needs and worrying about their collective future, it is imperative to think of the inhabitants of Gaza who have suffered much worse for decades, and are at the risk of a far more devastating blow now that this terrifying pandemic has reached their shores. Please take action by writing to the Foreign Office. It's imperative for the UK to use its diplomatic power to insist the inhumane siege in Gaza ends immediately, and for Palestinians to have access to the healthcare they need.
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