Israeli Blockade starves 60 percent ─ UN report

“Gaza food supplies are strangled by 1,000-day blockade.” From UN reports edited excerpts by Carolyn Bennett

Citing UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) findings, the Integrated Regional Information Networks reported in May of this year, “the amount and quality of food available to the estimated 1.5 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip has been severely restricted by more than 1,000 days of a near-complete blockade.”

Sixty-one percent of people living in Gaza are “food insecure” [hungry, undernourished or starving]

• Israel’s import and access restrictions have suffocated Gaza’s agricultural sector, directly contributing to rising food insecurity
• Protein-rich foods such as meat and poultry are especially difficult for Gazans to afford
• The number of Palestine refugees unable to access food and are lacking the means to purchase basic items ─ such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water ─ has tripled since the imposition of the blockade in June 2007.
• Israeli naval forces since January 2009 have restricted the access of Gaza fishing boats to only three nautical miles from shore, often in practice reduced to two nautical miles.
• Reduction in electricity supplies to Gaza as part of the Israeli blockade causes significant damage to vegetable crops due to the lack of refrigeration, adds to production costs
• Movement of goods through tunnels from Egypt then sold at inflated prices and inaccessible to most Gazans is not a viable solution.… Unregulated entry of livestock and veterinary medicines to Gaza from Egypt via tunnels result in animal diseases in Gaza and trans-boundary disease outbreaks in the region.

Sources and notes
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, but its services are editorially independent. Its reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations and its agencies or its member states. Founded in 1995 to improve the flow of vital information to those involved in relief efforts in the Great Lakes region following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, IRIN’s headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya. The principal role of IRIN “is to provide news and analysis about sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia for the humanitarian community.”