Gaza: "As we flutter our hands about tectonic political change..."

[Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers@xxxxxxxxx>]

Israel's Appalling Bombing in Gaza
Starving in the Dark
By VIRGINIA TILLEY
Dr. Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, currently
working in South Africa.
She can be reached at tilley@xxxxxxxx

http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley06302006.html

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It is not the immediate human conditions created by this strike that are
monumental. Those conditions are, of course, bad enough. No lights, no
refrigerators, no fans through the suffocating Gaza summer heat. No
going outside for air, due to ongoing bombing and Israel's impending
military assault.

In the hot darkness, massive explosions shake the cities, close and far,
while repeated sonic booms are doubtless wreaking the havoc they have
wrought before: smashing windows, sending children screaming into the
arms of terrified adults, old people collapsing with heart failure,
pregnant women collapsing with spontaneous abortions. Mass terror,
despair, desperate hoarding of food and water. And no radios,
television, cell phones, or laptops (for the few who have them), and so
no way to get news of how long this nightmare might go on.

But this time, the situation is worse than that. As food in the
refrigerators spoils, the only remaining food is grains. Most people
cook with gas, but with the borders sealed, soon there will be no gas.
When family-kitchen propane tanks run out, there will be no cooking. No
cooked lentils or beans, no humus, no bread ï the staples Palestinian
foods, the only food for the poor. (And there is no firewood or coal in
dry, overcrowded Gaza.)

And yet, even all this misery is overshadowed by a grimmer fact: no
water. Gaza's public water supply is pumped by electricity. The taps,
too, are dry. No sewage system. And again, word is that the electricity
is out for at least six months.

The Gaza aquifer is already contaminated with sea water and sewage, due
to over-pumping (partly by those now-abandoned Israeli settlements) and
the grossly inadequate sewage system. To be drinkable, well water is
purified through machinery run by electricity. Otherwise, the brackish
water must at least be boiled before it can be consumed, but this
requires electricity or gas. And people will soon have neither.

Drinking unpurified water means sickness, even cholera. If cholera
breaks out, it will spread like wildfire in a population so densely
packed and lacking fuel or water for sanitation. And the hospitals and
clinics aren't functioning, either, because there is no electricity.
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