"Choosing Atrocity: Israel, America and the Strangling of Gaza" -- Chris Floyd

Tweet Portion below; whole thing here: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1713-choosing-atrocity-israel-america-and-the-strangling-of-gaza.html

[Prof. Juan] Cole also points to a revealing article by Helena Cobban. Although he provides a useful link, the piece is worth quoting more fully. In her piece, Cobban talks to Professor Efraim Inbar, a key adviser of incoming Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and learns that the post-attack strangling of Gaza is indeed a deliberate act of collective punishment. Cobban writes:

In a telling op-ed published in The Jerusalem Post in early February, Prof. Efraim Inbar, an adviser to Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, argued that, "The developing international campaign to reconstruct Gaza is strategic folly. It is also unlikely to be effective. And, under current circumstances, it is also immoral."

The article strongly supported a policy of punishing all the people of Gaza for the actions of Hamas.

I interviewed Inbar here in Jerusalem yesterday. Referring to his article and to today's donors' conference, he admitted that the international community might (misguidedly) insist on rebuilding Gaza-- "but we can always slow the process down."

Indeed until now Israel, which is the "occupying power" in the Gaza Strip, has complete control over the passage of all freight into or out of the Strip. Since the Gaza war it has used that power to prevent the entry of just about all the basic materials required for physical rebuilding: cement, rebar, glass, piping, etc. So it seems that the outgoing Olmert government has already been working hard to prevent or slow down the rebuilding of Gaza.

The Independent, in another piece linked by Cole, details some of the sand that Israel is pouring into the gears of the aid machine:

The total number of products blacklisted by Israel remains a mystery for UN officials and the relief agencies which face long delays in bringing in supplies. For security reasons such items as cement and steel rods are banned as they could be used by Hamas to build bunkers or the rockets used to target Israeli civilians. Hearing aids have been banned in case the mercury in their batteries could be used to produce chemical weapons.

Yet since the end of the war in January, according to non-government organisations, five truckloads of school notebooks were turned back at the crossing at Kerem Shalom where goods are subject to a $1,000 (£700) per truck "handling fee".

Paper to print new textbooks for Palestinian schools was stopped, as were freezer appliances, generators and water pumps, cooking gas and chickpeas. And the French government was incensed when an entire water purification system was denied entry. Christopher Gunness, the spokesman for the UN agency UNRWA responsible for Palestinian refugees, said: "One of the big problems is that the 'banned list' is a moving target so we discover things are banned on a 'case by case', 'day by day' basis."

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said: "Israel's blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security."