"Living conditions in the Gaza Strip are still unbearable"

The people of the Gaza Strip are so desperate and desperate that they approach the barbed wire fence, even though they know that snipers are sitting on the other side of the border and are allowed to shoot. Living conditions in the Gaza Strip have become unbearable.

Since March 30 of this year, tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been marching towards the Israeli border, a border that is heavily guarded by the country's military. So far, 100 Palestinians have been killed and 10,000 injured during these protests.

A United Nations report estimates that the Gaza Strip will be completely uninhabitable by 2020. Mark Frings, a representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Germany, believes, however, that living conditions in the Gaza Strip are already intolerable.

Mark Frings, who lives in Ramallah in the West Bank and travels regularly to the Gaza Strip, knows the situation well. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, he warned of the lack of energy and drinking water in the Gaza Strip. Frings says there is a possibility of epidemics such as cholera in the Gaza Strip.

Lack of drinking water and energy

In 2000, 98 percent of the population in the Gaza Strip had access to drinking water. In 2014, only 14 percent of the population had access to drinking water. The United Nations has warned that the only source of drinking water in the Gaza Strip will become unusable by 2020 if it continues to be exploited in the same way.

This dire situation is also true in terms of energy. Currently, the Gaza Strip has only four to six hours of electricity a day. As a result, health, education, and public services in the region are facing many problems.

All of these intolerable conditions are related to mismanagement and corruption in the extremist organization Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007. The organization has been in conflict with the Fatah movement in the West Bank for years.

Western countries are in contact with the Fatah organization. Fatah recognizes the state of Israel, calls for two neighboring states, Israel and Palestine, and seeks to resolve the differences between the Palestinians and Israel through peaceful means.

Global aid to the Palestinians also reaches the same organization. In order to pressure the extremist organization Hamas, Fatah sharply reduced payments to Israel last year to provide energy to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And so the people of the Gaza Strip are now facing a shortage of electricity.

“A Great Prisoner Called Gaza”

The Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip is also one of the reasons for the disastrous conditions in the region. This blockade has been in place for more than 10 years and is also supported by Egypt. Due to this blockade, the import of goods into Gaza has been severely restricted.

Exiting Gaza and entering the area is possible only in very rare circumstances. These chaotic conditions have severely affected the economy of the Gaza Strip. Omar Shakir, a member of Human Rights Watch, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that the number of unemployed people in the Gaza Strip is more than 50 percent and the number of unemployed people under 30 in the area is more than 60 percent.

Omar Shakir says that the siege of Gaza has turned the region into a large open-air prison, a view that the British newspaper "The Economist" also confirmed in its latest issue.

Omar Shakir, who heads the Israel and Palestine division of Human Rights Watch, continued to speak about this intolerable situation in an interview with Deutsche Welle: "Concert musicians cannot travel outside the region to perform, students cannot visit a university outside Gaza, and doctors cannot even work with their colleagues in the West Bank."

Collective punishment

Omar Shakir, a Human Rights Watch expert, speaks of the “collective punishment” of the people of Gaza due to the Israeli blockade. Shakir continues: “These Israeli actions have nothing to do with ensuring the security of this country. These pressures are political and strategic and are applied to overthrow the extremist organization Hamas, but this strategy does not work because it is illegal and deeply immoral.”

Mark Frings agrees with Omar Shakir, saying, "There are two million people imprisoned here," and goes on to say that the siege punishes people who had no role in the success of the extremist organization Hamas.

A Human Rights Watch expert says that 70 percent of the people in the Gaza Strip are under the age of 29, and "many of them were either not yet born or had not reached the age of majority to be able to vote in 2006, when Hamas won the elections."

The Gaza Strip is getting tighter

Hamas constantly threatens Israel's security by firing rockets into the country and building underground tunnels. To prevent this, Israel has designated a route in the Gaza Strip as a security zone. Anyone who approaches this border within 300 meters is at risk of death.

Under the Oslo Accords, Gaza fishermen are allowed to fish up to 20 miles off the coast of Gaza. However, since 2006, Israel has limited this limit to three to six nautical miles for security reasons.

Jamie McGoldrick, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, also paints a bleak picture of life in the Gaza Strip. He says life in the area has become so difficult that young people in the Gaza Strip have no will to continue living.

McGoldrick continues: “People are committing suicide and young people are hopeless and unhappy… The level of psychological and social pain is incredibly high and doctors say that one in three children faces psychological and social problems.”

Source: DW