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Disaster in the making

"Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world's attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq.

A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets."

Whilst the world has focused on Hezbollah and the recent Hezbollah-Israel war, things in Gaza go from bad to worse. How long can the world look on as this absolutely terrible state of affairs in Gaza is allowed to continue? And for Israel it's a time-bomb ready to explode. Read this devastating article from The Independent on the dire conditions and situation in Gaza.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank things aren't much better as this piece, also in The Independent, highlights:

"The Israeli pressure on Palestinian cities, towns and villages on the West Bank is now so heavy that their inhabitants doubt their own ability to survive. The 540 Israeli checkpoints and barriers so fragment this small piece of territory that they are destroying the Palestinian economy."

UPDATE: Again, Patrick Cockburn writing in The Independent:

"The Israeli military and economic siege of Gaza has led to a collapse in Palestinian living conditions and many people only survive by looking for scraps of food in rubbish dumps, say international aid agencies.

"The pressure and tactics have not resulted in a desire for compromise," Karen Abuzayd, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency is said to have warned. "But rather they have created mass despair, anger and a sense of hopelessness and abandonment."

Read the full article, of despair, in despair, here.

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