CounterPunch: Israel's Deadly Siege of Palestine.
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
"The idea is to put Palestinians on a diet but not make them die of hunger," commented Dov Weisglass, senior advisor to Israeli Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert, when asked how Israel should deal with the new Hamas government. Even these disgustingly callous words scarcely do justice to the collective punishment to Palestinians (illegal under international law) being inflicted by Israel on the people of Palestine for democratically electing a government that refuses to accede to Israeli demands.
The situation is desperate. Since the new Hamas-dominated government took office in January 2006, record levels of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, malnutrition, movement restrictions and social unrest of all kinds have been reported.
Here is the grim picture as culled from available sources by Jennifer Loewenstein of the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford, the U.K.
In addition to an economic siege imposed by the governments of the United States and the European Union in which all aid to the Palestinian Authority (and in some cases to NGOs as well) has been cut, bank transfers suspended, contacts with and visas for new government members effectively banned, and $55 million in tax revenues illegally withheld each month- comprehensive closure has been imposed on the territories restricting access to goods and services within the West Bank and imposing draconian movement restrictions on the entire Palestinian population.' Lees verder: http://www.counterpunch.org/
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