COVID-19 in Gaza
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- Published on Thursday, 16 April 2020 10:34
- Written by editor
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2060 ... April 16, 2020
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COVID-19 in Gaza
The Covid-19 pandemic is confronting governments around the world with an emergency health situation, requiring self-isolation, population lockdowns of many economic activities and households, mass virus testing, screening and hospitalizations, and much more. In areas of the world in the midst of armed conflict, military occupation, hosting refugee camps, or large pools of migrant workers, harsh living conditions are becoming spaces of extraordinary vulnerability to the pandemic and what Friedrich Engels once called "social murder."
In this context, Socialist Project reaffirms our commitment to the longstanding international demand that Israel end its illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and the brutal siege on Gaza. It is imperative that Israel work to restore access to water and electrical power, and immediately lift all restrictions on medicines and equipment necessary to deal with the pandemic.
The global health crisis makes these needs particularly acute. We insist that primary responsibility for the suffering Palestinians face is the neo-colonial occupation, in the form of the apartheid regime that Israel has constructed with the compliance, and indeed... support, of the most powerful states in the international community, under which they live. We call on governments to stop colluding with Israel in their silence, military contracts, and investments and the need to deepen the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS). It is this political system, not merely an act of nature, against which we must mobilize an international response of immediate relief for the health emergency, and of struggle and solidarity.
Judith Deutsch
The spread of COVID-19 into Gaza is an anticipated disaster -- and possibly a holocaust given the region’s living conditions -- that is still preventable if immediate measures are taken. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas of the world, and has been under Israeli siege for 13 years. Israel has so far blocked all efforts to break the siege it has imposed on Gaza: most recently, through its harsh reaction to the Great March of Return, killing of activists on the Mavi Marmara who were bringing medical supplies to Gaza, and subverting legal challenges to its innumerable violations of international law.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has further just demanded sanctions "against the International Criminal Court, its officials, prosecutors, everyone." Allied governments have sought to suppress criticism of Israel by criminalizing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS), which has been the primary form international solidarity efforts have taken in recent years.
The pandemic crisis is a vivid illustration of the continued colonial project of the Israeli state over the Palestinian territories and lands. Israel retains extensive control over the Palestinian Authority’s tax revenues, and thus over government expenditures, including for healthcare. Israel maintains military and administrative control over the West Bank and Gaza. We join those around the world in condemning the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land, including its brutal siege on Gaza. Further, we demand that all possible pressure be brought to bear on Israel to expediently allow all necessary medicine and humanitarian aid to reach the Palestinian people. In doing so, we emphasize that the current public health crisis is sharply intensifying the ongoing humanitarian disaster created by Israel’s imprisonment of the population of Gaza, carried out with the collaboration of Canada, the US, and their regional allies.