COVID-19 Hits Two Million Palestinian People Under Blockade in Gaza

March 23, 2020 | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

On March 22, health authorities confirmed the first cases of COVID-19 (coronavirus) in the Palestinian territory of Gaza. While the spread of the virus is impacting all of humanity, the danger posed to the two million Palestinians locked down in this tiny, densely populated space is among the most ominous in the world.

From 2008 to 2014, Israel waged repeated one-sided “wars” on Gaza with the backing of the U.S., killing thousands of people, overwhelmingly children and other non-combatants. Civilian infrastructure including hospitals and other medical facilities and a power plant, as well as densely populated residential neighborhoods were specifically targeted by Israeli bombs. Repairs and rebuilding have been made impossible by a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt (which also borders Gaza). One legacy of these massacres is a healthcare system in critical condition. In 2018, a UN report warned that as a result of the Israeli blockade, devastating wars and poorly paid health workers “the availability of medical services and hospitals beds are seriously inadequate to service the many health needs of the two million Gazans. A meager electrical power supply, a badly-depleted water aquifer, the inability to treat sewage and the world’s highest unemployment rates have only intensified the social-health crisis.”

Now that the first cases of COVID-19 have been identified in Gaza, cramped living conditions make social distancing extremely difficult. Unsorted, untreated waste due to denial of access to recycling technology has resulted in massive dumps that are breeding grounds for disease, and an “industry” of desperate people picking through the garbage to find sellable but dangerously contaminated household items.

And the outbreak of coronavirus in Gaza has had an immediate shock on an economy in permanent crisis due to the blockade. Without reliable electricity for refrigeration, people in Gaza rely on outdoor markets for daily food. Now those markets have been closed by the authorities making access to food a critical problem. The relatively small numbers of people who are permitted to cross into Israel to work each day (a few thousand) bring home pay that is vital not just for themselves and their families but all of Gaza. That movement has been stopped. Imported medical supplies, in short supply around the world and in extreme shortage in Gaza, are at the mercy of Israeli authorities. At this writing, Israel has allowed only 200 Coronavirus testing kits into Gaza, not because of any recognition of the value of the lives of Palestinians, but because, in the words of a mainstream Israeli newspaper, “an outbreak [in Gaza] may endanger the health of the people of Israel.”

The people of Gaza cannot be abandoned. Creative ways must be found to expose what is going on; to mobilize global outrage to demand Israel and Egypt completely lift the blockade of Gaza right now; and to call out the utter intolerability of the system that has subjected the Palestinian people of Gaza to this nightmare on top of a nightmare.

Now that the first cases of COVID-19 have been identified in Gaza, cramped living conditions make social distancing extremely difficult. Protected workers spray disinfectant as a precaution against the coronavirus in a market in Gaza City, March 19. Photo: AP

Unsorted, untreated waste due to denial of access to recycling technology has resulted in massive dumps that are breeding grounds for disease, and an “industry” of desperate people picking through the garbage in Gaza, 2014. Photo: Ezz Zanoun