Gaza blockade

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The Gaza blockade is a partial blockade by land, sea and air of 360 km 2 large Gaza , live in the approximately 1.7 million people by Israel or Egypt . Israel wants to prevent the importation of military or military goods.

Beginning

Map of the Gaza Strip according to UN information in December 2012. Closed and current crossings to Israel and Egypt. Structure of the buffer zone.
Imports from 2006, trucks per month. For historical reasons, fuel imports are not listed. Blue: total imports before mid-2007, green: imports without building material, dark gray: building material, light gray: ABC building material. Source: UN-OCHA
dark red: population development / 1000 with an annual growth rate of 2.81%.
January 25, 2006: Hamas wins election,
June 25, 2006: Israeli soldier held hostage ,
June 14, 2007: Hamas seizes power ,
June 19, 2008: armistice ,
November 4, 2008: ceasefire breach ,
December 27, 2008: Operation Cast Lead ,
May 31, 2010: Mavi Marmara ,
21 November 2012: end operation pillar of defense ,
8 July 2014: the beginning of operation Protective Edge
Exports from 2000, trucks per month; AMA: Agreement on Movement and Access; Source: UN-OCHA
Overview of the goods permitted for import for the period from mid-2007 to mid-2010
Fisheries borders
1995: Oslo Agreement
2003: Bertini commitment,
Oct. 2006: After Palestinian elections
Jan. 2009: End of Operation Cast Lead,
Dec. 2012: Armistice Operation Cloud Pillar;
Source: UN-OCHA

The beginnings of the blockade go back to shortly after the first Intifada , when Israel began fencing in the Gaza Strip in the early 1990s to prevent attacks by Palestinian terrorists on Israeli civilians. The restrictions manifest themselves in the reduction of fishing limits , in the establishment of a buffer zone along the armistice line, in restrictions on imports and exports from Gaza and in restrictions on the movement of people.

After Hamas won around 44% of the vote and an absolute majority of the seats in the Palestinian parliamentary election on January 25, 2006, a civil war broke out in the Gaza Strip in 2007 between Hamas and the defeated Fatah , which Hamas won . In order to weaken Hamas, Israel then introduced a blockade of the Gaza Strip on the principle of "no prosperity, no economic development, but also no humanitarian crisis". Human rights activists and sympathizers of the Palestinians wanted to break this blockade on a case-by-case basis, but Israel prevented this.

history

The blockade reached its peak in 2007 and 2008, when, after Hamas came to power in mid-2007 , Israel only allowed the most basic foodstuffs and everyday necessities into the Gaza Strip and almost completely banned exports and passenger traffic.

In January 2008, the Israeli Military Administration (COGAT) compiled a list of the basic needs for the people of Gaza. It was called the 'red lines' - against the background of an average daily requirement of 2279 kcal per day per person, i.e. H. slightly higher than the guideline value of 2100 kcal / day of the World Health Organization, and a composition that should avoid malnutrition - or '106 list' because of the daily requirement of 106 trucks to ensure all basic supplies of the Gaza Strip, 77 trucks for Food were intended. The in-house food production in the Gaza Strip was taken into account, the delivery of wheat and grain via the Karni treadmill, which the UN converted into truckloads in its statistics, was only an empirical value of 12 + 13 trucks / day. In 2012 the Israeli human rights organization Gisha forced the disclosure of this list through a court order. According to the World Food Organization (FAO), the threshold value for hunger per capita is around 7.5 MJ / d (= 1,800 kcal / d).

In the first twelve months after the tightening of the blockade in July 2007, the total number of trucks without the deliveries via the Karni crossing was 17,327, according to OCHA (an average of 261 days instead of 106 trucks / day only 67 trucks / day, of which 47 trucks / Day with food). The additional deliveries via the conveyor belt in Karni corresponded to 14 trucks / day for human consumption and 10 trucks / day for animal feed.

With regard to basic services, little changed when a ceasefire came into effect in June 2008 (excluding building materials a total of + 15%, food + 2%). During this time, however, almost fifty times more building material was delivered, primarily gravel and comparatively small amounts of cement. Much of the gravel was not used because of the insufficient amount of cement.

When hostilities flared up again after the events of November 4, 2008 , imports fell sharply again ((23; 15; 1; 0) trucks / day). By mid-December 2008 there was no more flour in the UN food depots. On December 18, the UN suspended food distribution.

With the start of Operation Cast Lead on December 27, 2008, imports then rose in relation to the 1st half of 2007 over the year 2009 to a level of a little over 20%. Despite the severe destruction that occurred during the operation, the import of building material and window glass into the Gaza Strip was almost completely banned due to the possible use for tunnel, bunker and rocket construction (65 trucks with building material in 2009).

The blockade of the Gaza Strip was condemned in the Goldstone Report , which was drafted on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council in 2009 by the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict under the auspices of the South African judge Richard Goldstone , among other things as “collective punishment” serve to isolate the coastal region.

Prop-Palestinian activists such as the Free Gaza movement accused Israel in 2010 of strangling and starving the Gaza population. In May of this year, Israel delivered 2,653 truckloads to the Gaza Strip, according to the UN. H. 121 daily.

The ship Mavi Marmara , on which there were also international supporters, was boarded by Israel in the Ship-to-Gaza incident on May 31, 2010.

All goods that cannot be used for military purposes ( dual-use goods) have been cleared for export by Israel.

However, all building materials that were not intended for building projects coordinated with the autonomous authority and the UN remained blocked. Nevertheless, z. For example, a sports pool with Olympic pool dimensions will be inaugurated in Gaza in May 2010 , construction of which began in 2005.

Imports rose significantly in the second half of 2010. In the course of 2011 and 2012, there was a further slight upward trend. Exports from the Gaza Strip remained unchanged at a very low level. A fundamental problem was that the only crossing still open for supplies was Kerem Shalom at the limit of its capacity. In March 2012, the European Union therefore made EUR 13 million available for expanding the transition.

At the end of November 2012, during the ceasefire negotiations following Israel's Operation Pillar of Clouds in Cairo , it was agreed that Israel would ease the blockade. In return, Hamas announced that it would stop the rocket attacks. Construction materials for the private sector have now also been approved. The restrictions on passenger traffic through Israel did not change. The three-nautical-mile fishing limit in force since January 2009 has been withdrawn to six nautical miles. The strip between 100 m and 300 m of the buffer zone was cleared for farmers without machines for processing.

Egypt, which during all these years never had an official exchange of goods with the Gaza Strip, participated in the blockade of passenger traffic for several years from mid-2007 and officially endeavored at all times to prevent arms from being imported into the Gaza Strip. At the same time, the tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt became an important lifeline for the people of the Gaza Strip. Construction materials including structural steel also reached the Gaza Strip this way. In a UN report, quantities are named for September 2011 that are comparable to the volume of all imports from Israel in that month. Gasoline was increasingly obtained from Egypt because gasoline is subsidized there and is therefore considerably cheaper than that supplied from Israel.

Egypt facilitated border traffic through the Rafah crossing in May 2011 and opened it in December 2012 for deliveries of building materials and construction machinery. In May 2013, Qatar provided $ 500 million for the construction of 70,000 homes in the Gaza Strip.

In February 2013, relations between the Gaza Strip and Egypt began to deteriorate. Egyptian border forces flooded some of the tunnels under the border with sewage. In late February, an Egyptian court ordered the closure of all tunnels. The background to this decision was an attack on an Egyptian border police group in July 2012, in which 16 border police officers were killed. The Egyptian side claimed that some of the attackers came from the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas government in Gaza denied.

After the fall of Egyptian President Morsi in July 2013, there was a further significant deterioration in relations. At the end of September 2013, the tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip were largely destroyed, cutting off the Gaza's most important lifeline for building materials and fuel. In October 2014, the Egyptian government decided to create a 500-meter-wide buffer zone on the border with Gaza. Around 800 houses had to be demolished for this. In November 2014 the zone was expanded to 1000 meters.

During Operation Protective Edge on Gaza, which ran from July 8 to August 26, 2014 , according to UN figures, 6,761 buildings were totally destroyed and more than 100,000 buildings were damaged.

A donor conference for Palestine met in Cairo in mid-October 2014 to promote reconstruction. In total, commitments of $ 5.4 billion were made, including $ 3.5 billion for Gaza, of which roughly half was earmarked for the restoration of housing and infrastructure. According to the World Bank, only 27.5% of the committed funds ($ 1 billion of $ 3.5 billion) had been transferred by mid-April 2015. According to the press spokesman for the local Chamber of Commerce, none of this money had arrived in Gaza by April 2015. Reconstruction has begun, despite being hampered by the corruption of the Hamas government and restrictive control of cement imports by Israel.

According to the World Bank, the Gaza Strip was facing economic collapse in May 2015. Unemployment was probably the highest in the world. Since February 2015, the UN has been listing the delivery of the building materials essential for reconstruction, gravel, structural steel and cement, as ABC building material (aggregate, steel bars, cement) separately in its database (light gray in the import diagram). At the same time, the UN launched a reporting website entitled "The Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism" in accordance with the reconstruction agreement between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. It documents the progress of the reconstruction work on a daily basis. Around 130,000 households were included in this program. In May 2015, 67,000 of the 95,000 requested deliveries were delivered (September 2016: 130,700 / 81,600). The first rebuilt house was completed in October 2015.

Since April 2015, the UN has been publishing a monthly overview sheet with, in some cases, detailed information on the movements of people and material via the checkpoints. It is noticeable here that the number of trucks leaving Gaza does not match the number of export trucks listed in the OCHA database. The database does not contain the transports to the West Bank, which are probably not considered exports in the narrower sense. In 2015, both export shares were roughly the same and individually noticeably higher than the exports in previous years.

Towards the end of 2015, the number of imported trucks rose sharply and was comparable to the figures for the first half of 2007. This increase resulted from increased deliveries of building materials. The number of trucks for the basic service was only 3032 in January 2016. That is slightly more than the mean value of 2873 in 2011. However, if one takes into account the population growth (2.81% in 2015), then this comparative value is 3210 trucks . This is also pretty much the mean value for 2015 (3221).

In March 2015, vegetables were exported to Israel for the first time in 8 years. Flower exports, which were important in the past, are unlikely to recover due to changed conditions. In October 2015, gravel was removed from the group of dual-use materials. In contrast, in August 2015 u. a. reduced the allowable thickness of sawn timber from 5 cm to 1 cm, which adversely affected furniture production. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published a report in September 2015 expressing fears that Gaza would be uninhabitable in 2020 due to continued economic decline. One of the main reasons for this would be that the totally over-pumped and contaminated aquifer under Gaza could already be unusable in 2016 and could no longer be regenerated by 2020.

At the end of February 2016, there were reports of proposals for a seaport for Gaza, which would be located on an artificial island off Gaza. Cement deliveries to Gaza were suspended from the beginning of April 2016 to the end of May 2016. At the beginning of April, on the other hand, the fishing zone in southern Gaza was expanded to nine miles. This expansion was reversed two months later. It then took effect again briefly during Ramadan in June 2016.

The border with Egypt was only opened sporadically and sometimes stayed closed for months. After relations between Israel and Turkey, which had been interrupted by the Mavi Marmara incident , were resumed , the first shipload of Turkish relief supplies reached Gaza in July 2016.

Two UN organizations (OCHA, UNCTAD) published reports on the situation in Gaza in autumn 2016. It was u. a. emphasized that, according to a report by the World Bank, not even 20% of the funds pledged for reconstruction in 2014 had reached Gaza. The UNCTAD report cited the child mortality rate in the Gaza Strip, which rose from 12 to 20.3 per 1,000 births between 2008 and 2013 as a special warning sign. "This trend is hard to find anywhere else outside of societies with HIV epidemics," it said.

In September 2016, Israel began building an underground barrier to Gaza. A month later, another boat tried unsuccessfully to break the Gaza blockade. Parts of the restricted fishing zone were temporarily extended several times from 6 nautical miles to 9 nautical miles. In December 2016, a Coca-Cola factory in Gaza finally started operations.

At the turn of the year there were two improvements in the water supply: A water reservoir for increased water supplies from Israel went into operation and a second desalination plant. As a result, around 14% of the population could be supplied with clean water. At the same time, there were signs of improving relations with Egypt. The Egyptians still discovered tunnels.

In Israel, the port in front of Gaza continued to be discussed without any decision being made. In April 2017, friction between Fatah and Hamas intensified, in part to the detriment of Fatah supporters in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority cut the salaries of administrative employees who were sent on permanent leave in 2007.

The electricity supply became more and more problematic during the first half of 2017 as lines failed and the PA refused to pay the bill for the electricity supplied from Israel. But Israel initially continued to deliver. The infrastructure problems reached such proportions that Israel saw itself compelled to draw attention to them in a letter to the UN.

On May 11, 2018, Palestinian rioters destroyed equipment in the Kerem Shalom crossing during a series of unrest at night . They smashed assembly lines and security cameras, and burned the terminal for petrol, diesel oil and cooking gas. The Hamas organization, which controls the Gaza Strip, did not intervene. Due to the destruction, the last remaining passage of goods to the Gaza Strip was temporarily closed.

On October 11, 2018, the Israeli military destroyed another one kilometer long underground tunnel that protruded 200 meters over Israeli territory. The total value of the tunnel is estimated at $ 3 million in cement, electronics and man-hours invested in health, education, infrastructure or food for the people of Gaza.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b CIA - The World Factbook , as of July 2012; accessed on January 18, 2013
  2. ↑ UN-OCHA, Gaza Strip Access and Closure December 2012. ( Memento from August 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 18.8 MB)
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g UN-OCHA ( Memento of October 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Gaza Crossings Activities Database
  4. ↑ a b The World Factbook , CIA USA, as of 2015
  5. ↑ AMA: Agreed documents on movement and access from and to Gaza
  6. ↑ List of commercial goods allowed for import into Gaza, April 2010 , BBC, May 3, 2010
  7. ^ Commitments made by the Government of Israel to Ms Catherine Bertini
  8. ↑ UN-OCHA, Gaza Strip Access and Closure December 2012 ( Memento of August 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 18.8 MB)
  9. ^ Analysis of suffrage and election results of the 2006 elections on Wahlrecht.de ; Retrieved January 18, 2013
  10. ↑ Die Welt : Is the Gaza Blockade Lawful? ; Retrieved January 18, 2013
  11. ↑ The siege on Gaza Btselem
  12. ↑ Gaza bonanza Haaretz of 11 June 2009
  13. ↑ a b Israel used 'calorie count' to limit Gaza food during blockade, critics claim Guardian of October 17, 2012
  14. ^ Food and nutrition needs in emergencies , World Health Organization, 2004
  15. ↑ The FAO provides the data - the World Hunger Index is based on the figures from the World Food Organization Neues Deutschland from October 16, 2014
  16. ↑ a b The Humanitarian Monitor oPT ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), OCHA, August 2008
  17. ^ A Gaza Truce Undone by Flaws May Be Revived by Necessity , New York Times, Dec. 19, 2008
  18. ^ UNRWA suspends Gaza food distribution , Jerusalem Post, Dec. 18, 2008
  19. ↑ UN sample: Israel, Palestinians both guilty of Gaza war crimes , Ha'aretz . September 15, 2009. 
  20. ↑ Middle East conflict: EU hopes for easing the Gaza blockade (there info box The aid organization Free Gaza ) Spiegel-Online from June 14, 2010
  21. ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung : Dead and injured in an Israeli commando operation ; Retrieved January 18, 2013
  22. ↑ Briefing: Israel's new policy towards Gaza , Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 5, 2010
  23. ↑ Free swimmers. Visit to a new swimming pool in Gaza . Deutschlandradio Kultur, August 5, 2010
  24. ↑ HR / VP Ashton and Palestinian PM Fayyad sign agreements worth € 35 million to improve the living conditions of the Palestinian people
  25. ↑ EU supports Gaza crossing upgrade Ma'an News of March 22, 2012
  26. ^ ORF-Online: Hamas celebrates “victory” ; Retrieved January 18, 2013
  27. ↑ Gaza Strip: Israel loosens import ban on building materials , Spiegel, December 27, 2012
  28. ↑ UNRWA, Emergency appeal 2012 (PDF; 3.7 MB), p. 12
  29. ↑ Will Israel Solve Gaza Fuel Crisis? ( Memento from January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), Al-Monitor, June 16, 2013
  30. ↑ 35,000 Palestinians Come, Leave Gaza via Rafah Crossing ( June 13, 2013 memento on the Internet Archive ), Palestine News Network, June 11, 2013
  31. ↑ Egypt allows building material across Rafah border into Gaza , Haaretz, December 30, 2012
  32. ^ Egypt allows trucks with Qatari building supplies to enter Gaza , Egypt Independent, January 5, 2013
  33. ^ Lamia Nabil: Egypt, Qatar participate in Gaza reconstruction project. In: Daily News Egypt , May 12, 2013.
  34. ↑ Nidal al-Mughrabi: Egypt floods Gaza tunnels to cut Palestinian lifeline. , In: Reuters (English), February 13, 2013, accessed October 25, 2013.
  35. ↑ Egypt court orders tunnels to Gaza destroyed. In: Aljazeera , February 26, 2013, accessed October 25, 2013.
  36. ^ Theresa Breuer: Economy in Gaza: Closed smuggler tunnels could ruin Hamas. In: Spiegel Online , July 29, 2013.
  37. ↑ Susanne Knaul: Now the tunnels are buried. In: TAZ , September 22, 2013.
  38. ↑ Harriet Sherwood: Gaza chokes as Egypt's economic garotte tightens. In: The Guardian , October 14, 2013.
  39. ^ After the attack on Sinai: Egypt sets up a buffer zone to the Gaza Strip In: Spiegel , October 29, 2014
  40. ↑ Egypt to expand Gaza buffer zone to 1 km; 12 new tunnel openings found In: Haaretz , November 18, 2014
  41. ↑ Impact of the 2014 Conflict in the Gaza Strip In: Gaza Damage Assessment 2014: UNOSAT Satellite Derived Geospatial Analysis , October 2, 2014
  42. ↑ High level conference in Cairo: USD 5.4 billion to Palestine , Norwegian Government, October 12, 2014
  43. ↑ a b Gaza economy 'on verge of collapse', with world's highest unemployment , Guardian, May 22, 2015
  44. ↑ Ulrich Schmid: Reconstruction in Gaza - the will to assert in the rubble landscape , NZZ from April 25, 2015
  45. ↑ GAZA CROSSINGS: Trends in Movement of People and Goods ( Memento of March 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), UN-OCHA, December 2014
  46. ^ The Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism United Nations Office for Project Services
  47. ↑ a b Gaza situation report 115 UNRWA on October 13, 2015
  48. ↑ Gaza crossings operation status , OCHA from April 2015
  49. ↑ Gaza vegetables to be shipped to Israel for first time in 8 years , Ma'an on March 6, 2015
  50. ↑ Flower farming in Gaza withers under blockade Ma'an on November 11, 2015
  51. ↑ Import restrictions impede delivery of services and humanitarian assistance ( Memento from February 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) OCHA OPT, September 2015
  52. ^ Occupied Palestinian Territory slides into recession, Gaza becoming uninhabitable UNCTAD on September 14, 2015
  53. ↑ Uncertainty reigns over Israeli plans for Gaza seaport Ma'an, February 25, 2016
  54. ^ Israel halts cement imports into Gaza Strip Ma'an, April 5, 2016
  55. ↑ Decision to extend Gaza fishing zone to 9 miles takes effect Ma'an, April 3, 2016
  56. ↑ Israel extends Gaza fishing zone for Ramadan and due to 'abundance of fish' Ma'an, June 20, 2016
  57. ↑ Egypt opens Gaza crossing for 48 hours after 85-day closure Reuters, May 11, 2016
  58. ↑ Turkish Ship With Humanitarian Aid for Gaza Strip Docks in Israeli Port Haaretz, July 3, 2016
  59. ^ Gaza: two years after OCHA, August 26, 2016
  60. ^ The staggering economic cost of occupation: ... UNCTAD, September 6, 2016
  61. ↑ Economic monitoring report to the ad hoc liaison committee: main report World Bank, 14 Sept. 2016
  62. ^ UN criticize Israel Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 7, 2016
  63. ↑ Building starts on underground Gaza barrier , Ynet, September 7, 2016
  64. ^ Israel Halts Yacht Trying to Break Its Blockade of Gaza Strip , New York Times, October 5, 2016
  65. ↑ Israel eases Gaza Restrictions With Expanded Fishing Zone , New York Times, October 27, 2016
  66. ↑ Gaza Gets Economic Boost as Coca-Cola Opens $ 20 Million Bottling Plant , Haaretz, December 2, 2016
  67. ↑ Israel announces increase in water supply to Gaza Strip , Ma'an, October 31, 2016
  68. ↑ Desalination Plant Brings Relief to Gaza , New York Times, January 19, 2017
  69. ^ After Years of Conflict, Egypt Eases Pressure on Gaza , New York Times, AP, December 27, 2016
  70. ↑ Egyptian army destroys 12 tunnels along the Gaza border , Ma'an, January 2, 2017
  71. ^ Israeli Minister to Demand Cabinet Discuss His Plan to Build Gaza Island Port , Haaretz, March 5, 2017
  72. ^ Palestinian government slashes salaries for Gaza employees , Washington Post, April 5, 2017
  73. ↑ Palestinian Authority to Stop Funding Israeli-supplied Electricity to Hamas-controlled Gaza , Haaretz, April 27, 2017
  74. ^ Palestinian power struggle threatens further Gaza power cuts , Washington Post, AP, May 31, 2017
  75. ↑ Despite PA demands, Israel continues electricity supply to Gaza , Times of Israel, June 1, 2017
  76. ^ Israel Warns UN of Imminent Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza Strip , Haaretz, April 9, 2017
  77. ↑ Palestinians destroy last passage of goods to Gaza In: Israelnetz.de , May 13, 2018, accessed on August 8, 2018.
  78. ↑ military destroys a kilometer terror tunnel in: Israel Network .com, October 12, 2018 accessed October 15, 2018th