The Blockade and it's Full Effects

Since Hamas took control of Gaza, its 1.5m people have been relying on less than a quarter of the volume of imported supplies they received in December 2005. Some weeks, significantly less than that has arrived.

Only basic humanitarian items have been allowed in, and virtually no exports permitted, paralysing the economy. Reduced fuel supplies and a lack of spare parts have had a heavy knock-on impact on sewage treatment, waste collection, water supply and medical facilities.

In the wake of the Hamas takeover, Israel said it would allow only basic humanitarian supplies into the Strip. No specific list of what is and is not classed as humanitarian exists, although aid agencies say permitted items generally fall into four categories - human food, animal food, groceries (cleaning products, nappies etc) and medicines.

FOOD

About three-quarters of Gaza's residents rely on some form of food aid. Aid agencies operating in Gaza say they have largely been able to continue to transport basic supplies such as flour and cooking oil into the territory - except during a few short periods when all the crossings have been closed. Israel says it only closes crossings in response to Palestinian militant attacks or for other security reasons.

While most basic foodstuffs have generally been allowed into Gaza, a joint survey by three UN agencies in May 2008 found that all Gaza retailers had run out of flour, rice, sugar, dairy products, milk powder and vegetable oil on at least three occasions since June 2007.

Some 750,000 people rely on food aid from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees Unrwa for their staple foods. The rations provide about two-thirds of their daily nutritional needs, and must be supplemented by dairy products, meat, fish and fresh fruit and vegetables bought on the open market.

While availability of some of these has dropped - for example, according to the UN, commercial food imports were less than half the need in December 2007 - the main problem for Gazans is paying for them.

The bureaucracy of the import process and fuel shortages for transport, together with rising global prices, have pushed up costs, at the same time as the decline of the economy and rising unemployment have squeezed household budgets.

The UN survey found more than half Gaza's households had sold their disposable assets and were relying on credit to buy food, three-quarters of Gazans were buying less food than in the past, and almost all of them were eating less fresh fruit, vegetables and animal protein to save money.

And some items, the report said, including baby food, olive oil, nuts, chocolate, spices, juices and carbonated drinks had been in short supply since the early days of the closure.

FUEL AND POWER

Israel began restricting fuel imports in late October 2007. As well as shortages for drivers, many of whom have begun running their vehicles on cooking oil, the consequences have been far reaching:

• Gaza's electricity supply is made up of 144MW from Israel, 17MW from Egypt and the rest from an EU-run power plant in Gaza which can generate up to 80MW. For much of 2008 it only received enough fuel to generate 55MW, although this increased to 65MW after the truce was agreed in July 2008. The plant has also shut down completely three times because it ran out of fuel. Power cuts - ranging from two to about 10 hours, remain common across much of Gaza.
   

• Power cuts and shortages of fuel for back-up generators have affected Gaza's three sewage plants. Gaza's sewage body said less than 40% of the fuel required was available in the first half of 2008, and estimated it was releasing 50-70m litres of raw or poorly-treated sewage into the sea daily.
   

• Aid agencies say water pumping stations have also struggled with power and fuel shortages, as well as a lack of spare parts. In May, 15% of people had access to water 4-6 hours a week, 25% had it every four days, and 60% had it every other day.
   

• 70% of agricultural water wells require diesel for their pumps and many farmers have lost crops due to lack of irrigation, according to aid agencies. Other food production has also been affected - for example, rising fishermen's fuel costs pushed up the price of sardines, and one poultry farmer had to slaughter 165,000 chicks because he did not have the fuel for the incubators to keep them alive.

In January 2008, Israel's Supreme Court dismissed a challenge by human rights groups to the practice of restricting fuel supplies.

The court set minimum thresholds that fuel deliveries should not fall below - compared with before the restrictions, these were 63% of industrial diesel supplies, 18% of petrol and 57% of diesel imports.

But figures monitored by international agencies show fuel deliveries dropped even below these minimums at several points in the first half of 2008.

Israel has also closed off fuel supplies completely in response to specific attacks - once after a Palestinian militant attack on a fuel depot near the Nahal Oz fuel crossing point, again after mortar attacks on a crossing itself and in November 2008 after a barrage of rockets in the wake of an Israeli incursion. All three times, the UN came close to suspending food aid deliveries.

The first time Gaza's power plant was shut down, in January 2008, Israel said there was enough fuel in Gaza and accused Hamas of faking a crisis, but officials from the EU, which runs the plant, said at the time that fuel supplies were "very low".

OTHER IMPORTS

Few items other than food and medicine have entered Gaza in the past year, according to aid agencies. Restrictions on construction materials, particularly cement, and spare parts for machinery have had a big impact on projects ranging from water treatment to grave digging.

• UN refugee agency Unwra says a lack of construction materials has prevented it providing accommodation for 38,000 people living in inadequate conditions
   

• All factories making construction materials have shut down (13 making tiles, 30 concrete, 145 marble and 250 making bricks)
   

• The construction and maintenance of roads, water and sanitation infrastructure, medical facilities, schools and housing/re-housing projects have largely been on hold.
   

• Lack of paper and printing materials meant school books were distributed four months late for the 2007-8 school year, Unrwa says, although Israel says it has facilitated access for school supplies and blamed delays on the Palestinian side.

Small amounts of cement and spare parts for specific projects have been allowed in at certain points during the year. After the truce, trucks of cement and gravel began to enter Gaza, as well as shipments of items such as clothes, shoes and refrigerators. Aid agencies said the range and volume of products had increased, but the total volume of goods was only 28% of that entering before the Hamas takeover.

EXPORTS

The closures have devastated the private sector of Gaza's economy. Nothing, apart from a small number of trucks of strawberries and flowers, has been exported since June 2007.

Combined with the lack of raw materials, and agricultural inputs such as fertilisers, this has left approximately 95% of Gaza's industrial facilities closed or operating at minimal levels.

Before the closure, up to about 750 trucks of furniture, food products, textiles and agricultural produce left Gaza each month. This was worth half a million US dollars a day.

By December 2007, 75,000 of Gaza's 110,000 private sector workers had been laid off and 3,500 of its 3,900 factories had closed, according to a UN report.

Some 25,000 tonnes of potatoes and 10,000 tonnes of other crops have perished or been sold at a fraction of their value, it said. Farmers burned and fed to livestock the flowers they could not export for Valentine's Day.

The UN says the economy has suffered "irreversible damage", and that 37% of breadwinners are now unemployed, with on average 8.6 dependants per employed person.

MEDICAL

Medicines have generally been allowed into Gaza, but Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) say the health system is "collapsing" and has suffered a "severe deterioration" under the pressure of shortages of equipment and spare parts, fuel and trained staff.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Gaza health authorities said in April 2008 that 85 urgently needed drugs and 52 lines of medical supplies (items such as swabs) were out of stock. The WHO says that the shortages cannot be directly attributed to the Israeli restrictions, but other humanitarian organisations say the bureaucracy of gaining permission for imports has affected the supply chain.

Aid agencies say medical institutions have been largely unable to import spare parts for equipment. The UN said that by December 2007, the majority of diagnostic equipment, such as X-ray machines and MRI scanners, in municipal facilities was no longer functioning.

PHR says the inability to send staff outside Gaza for training is also a problem, giving the example of a new radiotherapy facility that could not be used because there were no trained staff to use it.

Fuel shortages have also affected hospitals, with ambulances running out of fuel at points in early 2008, and back-up generators - needed during power cuts - running low on fuel and lacking spare parts.

Patients in need of urgent medical care are allowed through Erez crossing points, but PHR says the proportion of patients being granted permits dropped from 89% in January 2007 to just over half in June 2008.

Rafah crossing has been closed since June 2007, although special cases are sporadically allowed to pass through it. According to figures from the Israeli rights group Gisha, about 4,600 people in total, including 2,200 pilgrims to Mecca for the Muslim Hajj, have left Gaza through the crossing in a year - compared to about 20,000 people a month when it has previously been open regularly.

PHR says 200 patients died while waiting for permits in the past year. The WHO attributes at least 20 such deaths, in a two-month period, to the fact the patients could not leave the Strip for treatment.

Source: BBC