De Israelische Terreur 808

'War on Gaza ghetto enters new phase

The Israeli campaign to deny the 1.5 million residents of Gaza their basic right to food has in recent days been showing signs of success.

Israel has enforced a 20-month blockade on the Gaza Strip and has managed to cripple the economy with its recent war that inflicted over $1.6 billion of harm on the Gazans.

Abu Omar Abu Karsh, a chicken salesperson who now sits idly at once the busiest shop in the Remal neighborhood of Gaza City, said that the price of a living chicken had been 10 to 12 shekels (around 2.6 dollars) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) before the war.

The military operations on Gaza, however, pushed chicken prices through the roof "and during the war we sold it for 55 shekels", he said.

Israel has bulldozed three of the eleven chicken hatcheries in the strip and severely damaged two of the others. With the lack of production power in the Palestinian ghetto, even relative calm has been unable to influence prices.

Chicken meat is now sold at 35 shekels (9 dollars) a kilogram.

"Chicken is the only meat that the poor can afford but the increase of the prices forced the people to turn away from buying and my sales decreased by 90 percent," Abu Karsh told Xinhua.

While doctors are amongst the highest paid personnel throughout the world, the dire situation in Gaza shows no mercy for even such public servants.

Mattar, a physician who works at a hospital in Gaza and has a family of five children, said "I used to buy two slaughtered chicken per week, each weighs 2 kilograms and I used to pay 25 shekels for each kilogram. It is really so expensive."

Red meat prices have also surged and the meager humanitarian aid entering the strip does not reach all its residents. The majority of families in Gaza have already abandoned dreams of eating beef or lamb as prices have surpassed 70 shekels (18 dollars) a kilogram.

"Living in Gaza is really becoming so difficult, and day-by-day living is becoming so hard. We really don't know where to go and we really don't know how long this will last, and we really get very tired," said Mattar.

The surge in food prices in Gaza comes as hundreds of factories in the strip have already been closed and unemployment in 2008 was pinned at 70 percent.

"Since the end of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, 90 percent of the population in Gaza depended on food aids they have received from the Arab and international countries," said Palestinian economist Omer Sha'ban.

"Living in Gaza became so difficult and complicated, and I believe that if the situation continues like this, the Palestinian economy in Gaza will completely collapse and poverty will hurt every individual," he added.'
Lees verder: http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=89423&sectionid=351020202