The starving people of Palestine

Today’s New York Times carries an article on the suffering and degradation being inflicted on the people of Palestine.

Their complete lack of money, combined with the corrosive effects of the Israel occupation, have created a de facto concentration camp for 1.5 million people. Two thirds of the people in Gaza are unemployed and the remaining third who mostly work for the state are not being paid. Gaza is now by far the poorest region in the Mediterranean. Per capita annual income is $700, compared with $20,000 in Israel.

Life for these people is beyond miserable. An Israeli airstrike on Gaza’s only electrical power plant means that most Gazans now get only 7 to 12 hours a day of electricity, at unpredictable hours, with running water largely dependent on electric pumps.

Fishermen, now prevented from going more than a few hundred yards from shore by the Israeli Navy, are using hand-thrown nets from the beach to catch a few sprats and sardines.

“It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first poured into Gaza],” says Dr. Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist who is mayor of Gaza City. “Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves.”

It is ironic that the Israeli people, themselves victims of violence, camps, and starvation, would inflict those same tactics on another group of people. It is a learned behavior — just as an abused child can become an abuser later in life, so a society that was oppressed and spat-on can commit the same evils at a different time and to a different society.

I am not attempting to equate the Holocaust with the occupation of Palestine. It is a fool’s calculus when someone compares human atrocities. But what is eminently valid is the observation that in both cases, fear of some enemy and greed for land led to irrational policies based on violence and military oppression.

Fear and greed, by themselves, are powerful psychological forces; combined, they can make even the sanest people commit the most reckless of insanities.

The actions of Adolph Hitler in committing the Holocaust make him the standardbearer for those dark motivations that reside in the human heart. But he had no monopoly on those forces, and sixty years after his death, there is still war, suffering, and occupation all over the world. Only when individuals take the time to study their motivations, to reflect on why they do the things they do and, just perhaps, think about the mistakes they might be making, will that tyranny which resides in every person be sated and laid to rest.

In the meantime, suffering and oppression — for the Palestinians and others — will continue to be with us.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 3:38 pm and is filed under International Relations, The Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.