The UN Said Gaza Would Be Uninhabitable by 2020 – In Truth, It Already Is

• The UN Said Gaza Would Be Uninhabitable by 2020 – In Truth, It Already Is
  by Bel Trew, https://www.independent.co.uk/
  As we approach the UN deadline for Gaza’s habitability, it’s become clear that the region is not a ticking time bomb, but rather a slow-motion explosion.
  –
  Just an hour’s drive down the coast from the tourist trap of Tel Aviv is an 8-mile wide strip of polluted land in which two million people have been penned inside it for over a decade. The journey to Gaza is a galling one: on one side of the separation barrier are sushi bars, malls, beaches and sweeping highways; on the other, dirt tracks snarl through shipwrecked neighbourhoods overseen by Israeli watchtowers. The roads end in a dirty slash of sea; that too is inaccessible.
  –
  Five years ago, the United Nations famously predicted that, if the humanitarian conditions didn’t change, Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020. This warning has been recited ad nauseam as we approach that deadline. But the truth is that Gaza has long been uninhabitable. Gaza is not a ticking time bomb – it is a slow-motion explosion. 
  –
  The enclave has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since 2007, after Hamas – a militant group that has called for the end of Israel and regularly fires rockets indiscriminately at its civilians – swept to power. Over the last decade, Hamas’s armed wing, together with allied groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, have waged three wars with Israel, which the Israelis says justifies the continued blockade.
  –
  So synonymous has Gaza become with the misery created by the blockade that people forget there was a time where Israelis drove to lunch there, when Gazans commuted to Israel. In other words, things have been bad for a while. But over the last year and a half, a new kind of emergency has unfurled.
  –
  Since March last year, thousands of Palestinians have marched towards Israel’s separation barrier demanding the right to return to their ancestral lands from which they were forced from or fled during the conflict which accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948.
  –
  The Israeli army has killed over 300 Gazans during these rallies and injured 35,000 others, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Israelis, who are likely to be investigated by the International Criminal Court for these attacks, have defended themselves by saying those participating in rallies endanger Israelis lives by hurling explosive and incendiary devices over the separation barrier (kilometres of Israeli land has been burned by firebombs tied to balloons).
  –
  read more.

end