Will aid to Gaza via the sea reduce or enhance Israel’s control?
JVL Introduction
This piece from Ha’aretz about aid for Gaza coming via the sea raises many questions and is also rather over confident that using the sea rather than the land routes will reduce Israel’s ability to use “aid as a tool for warfare”. Rather than stopping funding of arms, the US is planning to build a port, which will take about two months to complete and will require the presence of US soldiers – but not in the Gaza Strip. Israel will still inspect the shipments and “Israeli soldiers will have to secure and distribute the aid, with help from local and international aid organizations, on top of their ongoing military operations.” Given the attacks on UNWRA which would have been best placed to distribute aid even in the horrendous circumstances, this is probably the only way Israel will allow aid in. Ha’aretz raises the concern that “(t)his could prove the first stage of a dangerous process of turning the IDF into an army of occupation and police force in Gaza.” Was this the intention all along?
LL
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Mon 11 Mar 2024. Read the original here.
U.S.built Port Could Turn Israel Into a Gaza Policing Force - Israel News
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My guess is, this is a long term project in connection with the gas and oil reserves, off the Palestinian coast. Easing the door open, on its rusted-up hinges, with a view to a gas and oil terminal, on the coast of Gaza.
Whether that would be in cooperation with the Palestinian, or Israeli authorities, is anyone’s guess, at the present time. Obviously, each would prefer it was them, but how to bring it about?
As the Israelis have shown, over the past seventy-five years, they don’t like to share. The result being, the Palestinians would, naturally, be wary about ‘supping with the devil’.
It’s a diplomatic conundrum that would appear to have no good outcome – let alone the diplomats to bring it about.
Blinken & Co have been less than impressive, over the past five months.
Meantime – the hundreds of trucks, laden with desperately needed supplies, sit idle by the roadside, on the borders of Gaza.
The JVL comment is apt; this looks like facilitating Israel’s attack on UNRWA and its duty to facilitate the right of return.
That last sentence is spine chilling.