Ethnic cleansing in the making

According to a recent UN report prepared by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, at the rate things are going, Gaza could become “uninhabitable” and “unlivable” within five years.

“The social, health and security-related ramifications of the high population density and overcrowding are among the factors that may render Gaza unlivable by 2020,” said the report.

The reasons are obvious. Repeated Israeli wars, especially the last three ones over the past six years alone, and the continued punishing Israeli blockade have driven Gazans to desperation and rendered their homeland a hostile environment.

“The blockade” the report says, “ravaged the already debilitated infrastructures of Gaza, shattered its population, left no time for meaningful reconstruction or economic recovery and impoverished the Palestinian population” in the strip.

Nothing new here, but maybe a timely warning to the international community conveniently caught up in other “crises” and thus with no time left to think of Gaza anymore.

Just as Israel wants.

The report made clear that however much aid is poured into Gaza by well-intentioned donors, “the ongoing de-development and impoverishment in Gaza” cannot be reversed without ending the suffocating blockade.

The siege not only prevents important material from reaching Gaza to fix the destroyed infrastructure. It, most importantly, prevents the free movement of people who used to find employment in the West Bank and Israel.

Now, with unemployment at 44 per cent and no hope of finding jobs, the people in Gaza have a bleak future ahead of them.

The socio-economics conditions in Gaza are “at their lowest point since 1967”, says the damning report in a veiled condemnation of Israeli policies for the strip, which are pushing Gazans to leave — if and when allowed — for other parts of the world to earn a living.

Human rights experts call the policy aiming to empty a land of its indigenous population “ethic cleansing in the making”.

If Israel succeeds in Gaza, it could very well do the same in the West Bank by making it equally “uninhabitable and unlivable”.

The West Bank people are not too far from that stage already.

So what is the world waiting for?