 |
Palestinians hold a large flag in Gaza, May 15, 2007. (Reuters Photo) |
With patently great eagerness gripping her heart, 56-year-old An'aam Al-Awadah rushed to the telephone when it rang. The family lawyer was on the other end informing her that the occupation authorities turned down her demand that her husband who has a heart disease be allowed to travel abroad through Erez military barricade, northern Gaza Strip.
This response was all shocking by all measures to An'aam, a resident of An-Nusayrat refugee camp in central Gaza. "The life span of a person is only known and predestined by Almighty Allah, but I feel that the days of my husband have become numbered. His life is unlikely to continue unless he travels abroad and undergoes a valve replacement operation. It is because of the siege that hospitals here are no longer capable of conducting even such relatively simple operations," she told IslamOnline.net.
An'aam, who voted for Fateh movement in the recent legislative elections, places part of the responsibility on "Hamas" movement for the miserable conditions, as she puts it, from which Gazans are suffering. No sooner had she completed her sentence than her daughter Entisaar, a 20-year-old university student, engaged in the talk and expressed her objection to putting any blame whatsoever on Hamas, saying "It is not proper to blame Hamas movement for the conspiracy schemed by Israel and the US administration with the co-operation of Abu Mazen (the Palestinian President) and some Arab leaders," she told IslamOnline.net.
Entisaar says that in the previous elections she voted for Fateh movement candidates along with some leftist candidates. However, she asserts that in the event of new elections she will not only vote for Hamas movement, but will also make effort to persuade her mother to do the same. Khalil Abu Aamir, a 55-year-old resident of Zaitun district, southern Gaza, has mixed feelings; the first type is that of a follower and supporter of Hamas, while the other type of feelings is that of a father expressing his grave concern that his son Muhammad, due to the siege imposed on Gaza, cannot travel to Egypt so as to complete his university education there. Abu Aamir is aware that Hamas' ascension to power in early 2006 and its seizure of control of Gaza in mid-2006 aggravated the problems of Palestinians in Gaza and made their living conditions so hard.
The Islamic Project
| A marginal minority in Gaza holds the view that the solution lies in the return to the situation prior to the military settlement. |
"This is a tax that must be paid for the Islamic project to succeed," Abu Aamir told IslamOnline.net. On the other hand, some of Hamas' supporters hold the view that the leadership of Hamas can present new formulas which are more flexible, and they call on the leaders to consider other alternatives to get out of the current dilemma. Maged Ibrahim, a 34-year-old employee and Hamas' activist, says that Hamas leadership must show a maximum margin of maneuvering in order to end the crisis. In an interview with IslamOnline.net, Ibrahim considers that the error which his movement fell into was its belief that power and resistance can be combined together. This question pertaining to Hamas' ability to combine authority and resistance has preoccupied many on the Palestinian stage. However, both Ibrahim and Abu Aamir stress that their reservations regarding Hamas assumption of power do not by any means suggest their acceptance of the return of what they call "the corrupt authority leaders".
Through exploring the views of people on the streets of Gaza, there is a marginal minority who holds the view that the solution lies in the return to the situation prior to the military settlement.
Rasheed Al-Khayalah, a 43-year-old owner of a falafel and bean booth in Umar Al-Mukhtar street, a thoroughfare in central Gaza city, says he prefers to die of hunger rather than let things turn back to the situation before Hamas seized control of the Strip. Although Al-Khayalah is not a Hamas member and his work has been badly affected by the siege imposed on the Strip, he emphasizes that this imposed siege has caused his support for Hamas even to increase. "Any person who is patriotic and honest cannot accept that Israel, our arch-enemy, should determine the identity of the movement to rule. This is very serious and unacceptable," he told IslamOnline.net.
Aishah Al-Bashayrah, a strawberry vendor in the vegetable section of the popular Firas market in central Gaza, sees it as a struggle for survival in which the Palestinians must emerge victorious. "If we have to choose between our established national principles and our livelihood, we would in this case prefer to give up the latter unhesitatingly," she told IslamOnline.net.
Palestinians adopt these positions despite the unprecedented deteriorating economic, health and security conditions because of the siege.
Gaza's Conditions
| Since Israel released 255 Palestinian detainees, as a commitment it gave at the latest Sharm El-Sheikh conference, its security apparatuses have detained another 336 Palestinians. |
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 57% of Palestinian families are with incomes below the national poverty line, whereas the percentage of the families with incomes far below the poverty line is nearly 44%.
Adnan Abu Hasna, spokesman of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), told IslamOnline.net that "the estimated number of those people in Gaza Strip who are dependent on the aid provided by the UNRWA is 860 thousand Palestinians," indicating that he expects a clear rise in this number. Added to this, the siege led to the deterioration of health conditions in a catastrophic manner. The Palestinian patients who died because Israel did not allow them to travel abroad for treatment amounted to 65. As Dr. Basim Na'eem the Minister of Health in Ismael Haniyyah's government told IslamOnline.net, this number is expected to rise. He adds that the siege and blockage of crossings are the cause for this serious crisis the patients in Gaza Strip are undergoing. Moreover, most of the medicines are available in the Health Ministry warehouses in Ramallah, West Bank, so they can hardly reach them on a regular basis, Dr. Na'eem says. Rather, a quantity of those medicines is from time to time transported to them.
Dr. Na'eem, indicates that health conditions in Gaza Strip are apparently more tragic given that most medicine factories are located in the West Bank, making it relatively easy to meet the medicinal and treatment needs there, whereas in Gaza there is a great difficulty resulting from the siege. He also notes that hospitals and health clinics have run out of 150 types of medicines and medical products most of which are necessary and used in treating those with chronic diseases.
Shortage of medications is not the only problem facing patients in Gaza Strip because of the siege. Another problem is that much of the medical equipment, particularly X-ray machines, is no longer operational because of the lack of maintenance work. This in turn gave rise to a decline in the health services provided by Gaza Strip hospitals. In a statement to IslamOnline.net, Dr. Muwayyah Hasanin, the director of emergency department at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, says "80% of X-ray machines along with most of CAT scan machines in the Strip hospitals have broken down; artificial kidney machines and other medical equipment have also become inoperable as a result of the ongoing closure of crossings, the imposition of siege, and the halt of European aid." Furthermore, Hasanin states that several surgical operations were delayed for lack of medical equipment and anesthetics.
West Bank, Imperfect too
| 50% of West Bank Palestinians cannot pay their water bills. |
The situation in the West Bank is not much different than in Gaza Strip; according to Abdulrahman At-Tamimi, head of the Association of Palestinian Hydrologists, 600 thousand Palestinians in the West Bank are deprived of drinking water because they cannot pay the water bills. He adds that due to the deteriorating economic conditions 50% of consumers cannot pay their water bills, which in turn affected the ability of the local councils to pay the water costs to the Qatari-Israeli Water Company "Mekorot".
It is noteworthy that, contrary to the impression that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his advisors try to spread, the meetings held with Israelis have not resulted in improved conditions for Palestinians, yet created more complications, says Dr. Mustafa Al-Barghouthi, former Palestinian Minister of Information and head of the "Independent Palestine" bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council. He notes that despite the Israeli stated intention to remove the military barricades from the roads of the West Bank, those barricades rose from 545 in 2005 to 693 now.
"Such meetings create a very misleading impression and form a cover that allows Israel to pursue its expansionist and aggressive project against the Palestinian People," Dr. Al-Barghouthi told IslamOnline.net. Furthermore, he points out that West Bank settlers have increased by 50% since Israel implemented the disengagement plan in Gaza Strip, 2006. He adds that since Israel released 255 Palestinian detainees, as a commitment it gave at the latest Sharm El-Sheikh conference, its security apparatuses have detained another 336 Palestinians, exceeding the number of those released by 50%.
Moreover, there are 11 thousand Palestinians including 426 children in Israeli prisons. Al-Barghouthi expresses his regrets over the continuing meetings Abu Mazen holds with the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, which contribute to the misleading of the Palestinian, Arab, and international public opinion and give a false impression to the common people that there is a progress in the political process. He considers these meetings to be no more than public relations activities as far as Israel is concerned.
Resistance Vs. Power
| "Against all odds, we seek to establish a new model. Since such a model is not yet familiar, no one can imagine the possibility of authority and resistance coming together." — Dr. Yahya Musa, the deputy chief of Hamas bloc in Parliament |
For his part, Dr. Waleed Al-Mudallal, a professor of political science in the Islamic University in Gaza, says that the experience proved beyond any doubt that it is extremely difficult for a political movement to both adopt resistance and assume power, especially under such conditions as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That is because any authority established here will not have any sovereignty or control over its natural resources. Al-Mudallal demonstrates in an interview with IslamOnline.net that there are many players on the Palestinian stage and any authority should deal with them. He says, "Any authority formed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip cannot rule without communications with Israel which practically controls these territories." He further asks "how will Hamas continue to rule while Israel controls the border crossings through which the movement of exports and imports is controlled."
It would be unreasonable to think that Israel will allow Hamas to succeed when it declares its determination to continue armed resistance against it, Al-Mudallal asserts. He further notes that Hamas as a resistance movement cannot fulfill the political duties and international obligations that any authority should fulfill, otherwise it would lose the very reasons that justified its existence and earned it popular respect.
Al-Mudallal indicates that Hamas betting on some countries in the region is misplaced given the ties that bind those countries with the US, adding that international relations are based on interests, not on a moral framework.
Dr. Yahya Musa, the deputy chief of Hamas bloc in Parliament, admits that the equation is too difficult. But he asserts that the authority was formed out of the Oslo Agreements to replace the platform of resistance, not the opposite.
In an interview with IslamOnline.net, he says "Oslo designated the job of the authority as an alternative for the resistance in a way designed to make it not possible for authority and resistance to be there at the same time. Hence, we want to turn this authority into a revolutionary one, contrary to what the signatories to Oslo planned for. We want an authority that embraces the resistance and attaches more significance to its platform at the expense of its own."
He adds, "Against all odds, we seek to establish a new model. Since such a model is not yet familiar, no one can imagine the possibility of authority and resistance coming together." He regards the model established following Oslo as corrupted, noting that Hamas movement rectifies the mistake of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership when it made the existence and continuation of the authority contingent upon how much it complies with the dictates of the occupation.
|
