<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Colossus: the giant Gazan prison &#8211; Opinion &#8211; Al Jazeera&nbsp;English]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<div id="ctl00_cphBody_dvSummary" class="articleSumm">The blockade imposed on Gaza is a powerful psychological device aimed at wringing concessions from Gazans and Hamas.</div>
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<div id="dvByLine_Date"><span id="ctl00_cphBody_dvByLine" class="byLine"> Larbi Sadiki</span><span id="dvArticleDate"> Last Modified: <span id="ctl00_cphBody_lblDate">04 Nov 2010 12:52 GMT</span> </span></div>
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<td align="center"><span style="font-size:10px;font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:10px;font-family:Verdana;"><strong>Life in Gaza has been reduced to relying on human ingenuity and improvisation [Getty] </strong></span></span><strong> </strong></td>
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<p>Gaza &#8220;the giant open prison&#8221; are not the words of Hosni Mubarak, the  Egyptian president. Nor were they scripted by Hamas&#8217; Khaled Mishaal or  Fatah&#8217;s Mahmoud Abbas. They belong to David Cameron, the young and  charismatic British prime minister.</p>
<p>Since the imposition of the  Gaza blockade nearly four years ago, no single European leader has  voiced moral outrage over the sanctions with such alacrity, simplicity  and forcefulness. His words have reverberated widely in Gaza as well as  elsewhere in the Arab world.</p>
<p>Like Cameron&#8217;s words, the untold misery shatters the international  political society&#8217;s quasi silence and questions the immorality of  indifference and inaction towards the blockade.</p>
<p>Gazans need to  reclaim their state of dignity and humanity before reclaiming the  seemingly illusionary hope of a Palestinian state. A peek inside the  &#8216;big prison&#8217; reveals the blockade to be multi-layered &#8211; affecting  economy, polity, diplomacy and security.</p>
<p>For most Arabs, that  Israel imposes a de-humanising blockade may be easy to explain, but  Egypt&#8217;s role in the blockade defies logical explication. The music one  hears from the Egyptian regime and other Arab states about adherence to  international agreements convinces neither Arabs nor Westerners.</p>
<p>But  abiding by sanctions that traumatise, de-humanise and isolate fellow  Arabs, as in Iraq (where tens of thousands died as a result) or in Gaza  is acceptable in the name of good citizenship in the international  arena.</p>
<p><strong>Occupied Palestine: Homo Sacer</strong></p>
<p>There are many &#8216;prisons&#8217; that dot the Middle East&#8217;s vast body politic. However, Gaza is unquestionably the most restricted.</p>
<p>Cameron  told the UK parliament in June 2010 that the world is unable &#8220;to sort  out the problem of the Middle East peace process while there is,  effectively, a giant open prison in Gaza&#8221;. Israel needs to hear its  friends&#8217; moral protest and heed their advice to end the blockade.</p>
<p>The blockade on Gaza is an affront to civilised behaviour. Period.</p>
<p>The  horrors of the Holocaust are a lesson that no segment of the human race  should be subjected to. The Holocaust belongs to all humanity and  demeaned all humanity. It is not the exclusive bastion of Israel.</p>
<p>In Gaza, the Geneva Convention&#8217;s obligations on occupying forces have  been overruled and invalidated countless times, rendering the fourth  convention no more than ink on paper.</p>
<p>Whether Israel is still an  occupying force may be a tired legal red-herring. But the fact remains  that Gazans cannot move, eat, watch TV, use the Internet, drive cars,  study, work, think of the future, make and raise babies, and literally  be, when Israel controls air, sea and land routes in and out of Gaza.</p>
<p>Without the protection of international law, Gaza is effectively  treated almost as a homo sacer amongst the community of human entities  and international society of cities and states. War, sanctions and a  psychologically traumatising siege on 1.5 million human beings render  them &#8216;accursed&#8217;, almost stripped of all rights afforded in and to  societies of human congregations in all corners of the world.</p>
<p>Over  the last few years Gazans have been placed on a forced collective  &#8216;diet&#8217;, bombed in the middle of the blockade, starved of financial  liquidity, causing Gaza to backtrack into an appalling state of  sub-human existence.</p>
<p><strong>Obama&#8217;s daughters in Gaza</strong></p>
<p>What is baffling in all of this is that the sanctions maintained by  Israel and Egypt are not UN-mandated yet nearly the whole world &#8211; bar UN  relief agencies &#8211; seem to abide by them.</p>
<p>Poor Obama whose advent  to power whetted the appetite of the &#8216;wretched of the earth,&#8217; who  expected him to liberate them from hunger, occupation, authoritarianism  and under-representation.</p>
<p>He is lost for words when it comes to  Gaza. But his silver tongue virulently and eloquently lashed at Hamas  and other Palestinian factions&#8217; rockets against the settlement of  Sedorot. He was correct to lend support and sympathy to Sedorot&#8217;s  inhabitants. Ismail Haniyeh, the besieged premier in Gaza, concurs. Like  many other Hamas leaders, he sees no utility in this strategy. Just as  many Israeli leaders and people oppose the blockade and the bombing of  Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.</p>
<p>&#8220;If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters  sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect  Israelis to do the same thing,&#8221; the then president-elect told Israelis  in July 2008.</p>
<p>Malia, Sasha and their puppy would not endure the blockade in Gaza  like the hundreds of thousands of puppy-less Gazan children whose  parents cannot afford to feed them, much less buy them pets.</p>
<p>Maybe  Obama thinks it but does not speak it: &#8220;If somebody was cutting off the  electricity and food of my house where my two daughters sleep at night,  I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Palestinians to do  the same thing.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>A Tale of Two Cities</strong></p>
<p>The politics of urban space used by Israel is brilliant. It is  another method in its inventory of war against Palestinians. Ramallah is  ensconced in the false illusion that normalcy is back to people&#8217;s  lives. The trappings of normalcy &#8211; food, a degree of free movement,  education, law and order and night clubs &#8211; abound.</p>
<p>The credit  goes partly to Keith Dayton, the American officer who sculptured out of  Fatah&#8217;s unruly militias a nuclear body for an &#8216;Abbas-istan&#8217; in the West  Bank. There is, however, still policing against dissidence, corruption  and nepotism.</p>
<p>Unlike Ramallah and Bethlehem where living standards are  satisfactory, Gaza has to make do with little. Indeed, the blockade has  been eased and more foodstuffs and other goods make their way into the  Strip on a daily basis. However, to a large extent the strategic goods  essential for reconstruction are still banned. Cement and metal are  vital for rebuilding close to 20,000 homes destroyed during the 2009  bombing.</p>
<p>Coupon culture is rife. With nearly 40 per cent jobless, the blockade  has turned a large segment of the Palestinian population into  parasites, relying on food coupons and rations doled out by charity  organisations and the government. Were it not for Qatar, amongst other  donors, the local bureaucracy would have been wage-less. But as the  crisis of liquidity bites, Haniyeh has to reduce wages by about $40 a  month. The tunnels still serve to smuggle large amounts of cash but not  enough to run a state.</p>
<p><strong>Hard Power vs. Soft Power</strong></p>
<p>This is exactly at the core of the blockade: to re-stratify the  Palestinian polity between the haves of Abbas-ville whose livelihoods  are secure, and the have-nots of Gaza where collective punishment makes  people re-think loyalty to Hamas and commitment to its political  strategy. It is a powerful psychological device aimed at wringing  concessions from Gazans and Hamas.</p>
<p>Time has come for investing  more soft power in Gaza to lure Gazans and Hamas to the negotiating  table, and unburdening Israel and Egypt of their dehumanising tactics.  Hamas needs to sharpen its diplomatic skills to open up Gaza. Gazans  have endured enough humiliation and isolation.</p>
<p>The &#8216;carrot&#8217; that is the West Bank has not thus far tempted Gaza.  Instead of queuing up for the benefits of secure existence in Ramallah  and its surroundings, Gazans affirmed resistance by digging tunnels,  claiming in the past four years the lives of nearly 300 tunnel diggers.</p>
<p>Hamas  sought self-sufficiency in fruits and vegetables and has partly  succeeded. A lease-based farming system in the so-called muharrarat  (formerly mustawtanat or settlements vacated by Israelis) has been  instrumental in this strategy.</p>
<p>The release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and of Gilad Shalit,  the captured Israeli soldier, can be one step in deploying soft power  with Gaza.</p>
<p><strong>Asta Quando?</strong></p>
<p>It was heart-warming to see images of the Chilean miners winched to  freedom and the world caring for 36 human beings trapped underground for  over two months.</p>
<p>There is half a million minors (between the age of zero and 18), and 1  million adults trapped in Gaza in an inhumane state of siege, which is  not UN-mandated but the whole world seems to observe. Why? They, too,  need to be winched to freedom of movement and existence.</p>
<p><strong><em>Dr Larbi Sadiki is a Senior Lecturer in Middle East  Politics at the University of Exeter, and author of Arab  Democratization: Elections without Democracy (Oxford University Press,  2009) and The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and  Counter-Discourses (Columbia University Press, 2004), forthcoming Hamas  and the Political Process (2011).</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>The views expressed in this article are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera&#8217;s editorial policy.</em></strong></p>
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<p><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/11/20101138294106415.html">Colossus: the giant Gazan prison &#8211; Opinion &#8211; Al Jazeera English</a>.</p>
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