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Gaza's darkness
By Gideon Levy

d practices in Gaza as if there had been no disengagement. So it must be said forthrightly, the disengagement is dead. Aside from the settlements that remain piles of rubble, nothing is left of the disengagement and its promises. How contemptible all the sublime and nonsensical talk about "the end of the occupation" and "partitioning the land" now appears. Gaza is occupied, and with greater brutality than before. The fact that it is more convenient for the occupier to control it from outside has nothing to do with the intolerable living conditions of the occupied.

In large parts of Gaza nowadays, there is no electricity. Israel bombed the only power station in Gaza, and more than half the electricity supply will be cut off for at least another year. There's hardly any water. Since there is no electricity, supplying homes with water is nearly impossible. Gaza is filthier and smellier than ever: Because of the embargo Israel and the world have imposed on the elected authority, no salaries are being paid and the street cleaners have been on strike for the past few weeks. Piles of garbage and obnoxious clouds of stink strangle the coastal strip, turning it into Calcutta.
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More than ever, Gaza is also like a prison. The Erez crossing is empty, the Karni crossing has been open only a few days over the last two months, and the same is true for the Rafah crossing. Some 15,000 people waited for two months to enter Egypt, some are still waiting, including many ailing and wounded people. Another 5,000 waited on the other side to return to their homes. Some died during the wait. One must see the scenes at Rafah to understand how profound a human tragedy is taking place. A crossing that was not supposed to have an Israeli presence continues to be Israel's means to pressure 1.5 million inhabitants. This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment. The U.S. and Europe, whose police are at the Rafah crossing, also bear responsibility for the situation.

Gaza is also poorer and hungrier than ever before. There is nearly no merchandise moving in and out, fishing is banned, the tens of thousands of PA workers receive no salaries, and the possibility of working in Israel is out of the question.

And we still haven't mentioned the death, destruction and horror. In the last two months, Israel killed 224 Palestinians, 62 of them children and 25 of them women. It bombed and assassinated, destroyed and shelled, and no one stopped it. No Qassam cell or smuggling tunnel justifies such wide-scale killing. A day doesn't go by without deaths, most of them innocent civilians.

Where are the days when there was still a debate inside Israel about the assassinations? Today, Israel drops innumerable missiles, shells and bombs on houses and kills entire families on its way to another assassination. Hospitals are collapsing with more than 900 people undergoing treatment. At Shifa Hospital, the only such facility in Gaza that might be worthy of being called a hospital, I saw heartrending scenes last week. Children who lost limbs, on respirators, paralyzed, crippled for the rest of their lives.

Families have been killed in their sleep, while riding on donkeys or working in fields. Frightened children, traumatized by what they have seen, huddle in their homes with a horror in their eyes that is difficult to describe in words. A journalist from Spain who spent time in Gaza recently, a veteran of war and disaster zones around the world, said he had never been exposed to scenes as horrific as the ones he saw and documented over the last two months.

It is difficult to determine who decided on all this. It is doubtful the ministers are aware of the reality in Gaza. They are responsible for it, starting with the bad decision on the embargo, through the bombing of Gaza's bridges and power station and the mass assassinations. Israel is responsible now once again for all that happens in Gaza.

The events in Gaza expose the great fraud of Kadima: It came to power on the coattails of the virtual success of the disengagement, which is now going up in flames, and it promised convergence, a promise that the prime minister has already rescinded. Those who think Kadima is a centrist party should now know it is nothing other than another rightist occupation party. The same is true of Labor. Defense Minister Amir Peretz is responsible for what is happening in Gaza no less than the prime minister, and Peretz's hands are as blood-soaked as Olmert's. He can never present himself as a 'man of peace' again. The ground invasions every week, each time somewhere else, the kill and destroy operations from the sea, air and land are all dubbed with names to whitewash the reality, like 'Summer Rains' or 'Locked Kindergarten.' No security excuse can explain the cycle of madness, and no civic argument can excuse the outrageous silence of us all. Gilad Shalit will not be released and the Qassams will not cease. On the contrary, there is a horror taking place in Gaza, and while it might prevent a few terror attacks in the short run, it is bound to give birth to much more murderous terror. Israel will then say with its self-righteousness: 'But we returned Gaza to them.
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  1.   Gaza Is Illegally Occupied By The Philistines 09:59  |  Yishai Kohen 03/09/06
  2.   Levy: Hamas` Public Relations Director 10:04  |  Avram 03/09/06
  3.   Gaza an open sky prison. 10:05  |  Nabil 03/09/06
  4.   LIBERATE GAZA FOREWER! DESTROY TERROR,DON`T LET KIDNAPPING REPEAT 10:07  |  -VOICE of MOSHIACH)) 03/09/06
  5.   And then Israelis wonder why Gazans fire Qassam rockets at them 10:09  |  Sami 03/09/06
  6.   Gaza,yes, and Nablus too 10:11  |  JW 03/09/06
  7.   Qassam rockets and longing 10:14  |  FOX 03/09/06
  8.   Respondents 1, 2 and 3 10:15  |  ROSEMARY`S BABY 03/09/06
  9.   We were out of Gaza and they brought us back 10:16  |  TM (Jewlicious.com) 03/09/06
  10.   I feel for the Gazans 10:20  |  FOX 03/09/06
  11.   #2 Avram re-writes history 10:23  |  ROSEMARY`S BABY 03/09/06
  12.   Centre stage 10:31  |  sh 03/09/06
  13.   I still don`t understand... 10:37  |  Proud Israeli Jew 03/09/06
  14.   This is exactly what the pals wanted 10:45  |  Judith 03/09/06
  15.   Nabil 10:49  |  Connie 03/09/06
  16.   Death Camp Gaza 10:50  |  Brigitte Meier 03/09/06
  17.   Gaza - Not a prison but a ghetto for the thirsty and starving 10:52  |  Clickfool 03/09/06
  18.   blindness 10:56  |  watcher X 03/09/06
  19.   TRUTH 10:57  |  diana 03/09/06
  20.   #3 10:58  |  MALCOLM X 03/09/06
  21.   GAZA`S DARKNESS 11:08  |  Akram Malik 03/09/06
  22.   Levy go sleep with the enemy 11:13  |  steve s 03/09/06
  23.   1 and 2 are savages 11:16  |  Marilyn 03/09/06
  24.   Re-occupation 11:17  |  Just a little brains 03/09/06
  25.   Gaza was never set free in the first place 11:26  |  www.kibush.co.il 03/09/06
  26.   Had they released Shalit and stopped the Kassams ... 11:28  |  Shalom Freedman 03/09/06
  27.   If this is not a slow-motion genocide, then what is it? 11:32  |  Sylvia 03/09/06
  28.   The Lefts SUICIDE COMPLEX!! 11:33  |  Ben Uziel 03/09/06
  29.   #13 NOBODY WANTS THIS 11:36  |  watcher 03/09/06
  30.   13 11:37  |  Ahmad 03/09/06
  31.   Avram: the Nazis also called pro-humanity Germans who criticized 11:37  |  Sylvia 03/09/06
  32.   Voice of Mashiah - voice of Satan 11:38  |  King 03/09/06
  33.   #14 children are suffering 11:39  |  watcher 03/09/06
  34.   Gideon Levy-Just another article to get a salary 11:39  |  Robert 03/09/06
  35.   They never left ! 11:43  |  fatima 03/09/06
  36.   Completely out of Gaza TM 11:46  |  sh 03/09/06
  37.   WHO CARES, THEY ARE WILLING TO DIE TO DESTROY ISRAEL, LET EM DIE 11:51  |  Pablo 03/09/06
  38.   TM read on 11:56  |  sh 03/09/06
  39.   # 24 Sylvia 12:14  |  Proud Israeli Jew 03/09/06
  40.   Mr Levy: Is the kidnapping of Shalit irrelevant? 12:16  |  KUTW 03/09/06
  41.   GAZA A SUCCESS!!! 12:20  |  Knave Dave 03/09/06
  42.   The end of the "occupation" 12:24  |  KUTW 03/09/06
  43.   33. watcher. Children suffering. Who?s responsable 12:31  |  KUTW 03/09/06
  44.   strange 12:33  |  how 03/09/06
  45.   31. Sylvia, if you were a Jew 12:43  |  KUTW 03/09/06
  46.   Please Imprison more Palestinians 13:10  |  Kiki Bardot 03/09/06
  47.   The so-called ?occupation? 13:18  |  KUTW 03/09/06
  48.   Out of Darkness 13:23  |  Star of David 03/09/06
  49.   missing in article 13:25  |  rachelle aractigi 03/09/06
  50.   35. fatima: They did leave 13:25  |  KUTW 03/09/06
  51.   Gideon Levy is a provocateur. 13:28  |  Vital 03/09/06
  52.   all plestinians should get a german passport 13:36  |  GERMANY 03/09/06
  53.   Who caused this problem? 13:38  |  Roger Mattingly 03/09/06
  54.   Levy- Why don`t u worry about yr own people for once 13:42  |  Sick & Tired 03/09/06
  55.   Disengagement: the hoax of the century 13:48  |  Ben Alofs 03/09/06
  56.   Boycott Haaretz for hiring Levy 13:52  |  Angry reader 03/09/06
  57.   Gaza is overpopulated 13:54  |  arun 03/09/06
  58.   KUTW: you seem to be a fanatical liar 13:55  |  Sylvia 03/09/06
  59.   Proud Israeli Jew: you are ignorant of history 14:02  |  Sylvia 03/09/06
  60.   Gaza reoccupation is 1st step towards expeling the PLO scum 14:04  |  Ehud 03/09/06
  61.   Gideon, please calm down!! 14:05  |  Buzaglo 03/09/06
  62.   filth and crime 14:10  |  christoph 03/09/06
  63.   The IDF kills a child/day. 14:18  |  Osborne Reed 03/09/06
  64.   There was a rare opportunity in Gaza 14:28  |  Shlomo from Tel-Aviv 03/09/06
  65.   GAZA`S DARKNESS AND DESOLATION ?? 14:30  |  Bill. 03/09/06
  66.   Gideon Levy 14:35  |  Monica S 03/09/06
  67.   Oh Dear Mr. Levy 14:41  |  King Leonidas 03/09/06
  68.   Gaza 14:42  |  Ralph 03/09/06
  69.   If not for the IDF Gideon Levy would not have a forum 14:45  |  Jack Cadillac 03/09/06
  70.   Gaza 14:46  |  Ralph 03/09/06
  71.   Gideon Levy 14:46  |  Tzvi 03/09/06
  72.   Gentile anti semitism better then Jewish self hate anti semite