PROJECT CENSORED– Israeli and international corporations are directly involved in the
occupation of Palestine. Along with
various political, religious and national interests, the Israeli occupation of
the West Bank, Gaza,
and the Golan Heights is fueled by corporate interests.
These occupying companies and corporations lead real estate deals, develop the
Israeli colonies and infrastructure, and contribute to the construction and
operation of an ethnic separation system, including checkpoints, walls and
roads. They also design and supply equipment and tools used in the control and
repression of the civilian population under occupation.
An extensive, on-going grassroots investigation, which exposes hundreds of
international companies and corporations involved in the occupation, is being
conducted and posted online at http://www.whoprofits.org
by the Israeli group Coalition of Women for Peace.
The project currently
focuses on three main areas of corporate involvement in the occupation: the
settlement industry, economic exploitation, and control of the population. At
this stage they are not investigating the vast industry of military production
and arms trade (see story # 9).
The ongoing business of construction in the occupied territories of the West
Bank and Golan Heights includes housing
developments as well as extensive infrastructure projects such as roads and
water systems for the exclusive use of Israeli settlers, on lands confiscated
from Palestinians. The construction industry includes real estate dealers,
contractors, planners, suppliers of materials, as well as security,
surveillance, and maintenance services.
While the US
government has on numerous occasions affirmed the illegality of Israeli
settlements on Palestinian land, it encourages American support by providing
tax deductions for donations to these settlements, which have nearly doubled
within a year and are rapidly accelerating. An audit conducted by Reuters of
American tax records found that thirteen tax exempt groups linked explicitly to
settlements managed to collect more than $35 million in the past five years
alone. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice defended the tax incentives as
“humanitarian,” and rejected any comparison to Palestinian charities facing US
sanctions for suspected links with Islamic parties, such as Hamas.
Israeli industrial zones within the occupied territories hold hundreds of
companies, ranging from small businesses serving the local Israeli settlers to
large factories that export their products worldwide. Settlement production
benefits from low rents, special tax incentives, lax enforcement of
environmental and labor protection laws, and other governmental supports.
Palestinians employed in these industrial zones work under severe restrictions
on movement, on organization, and with almost no government protections. These
“advantages” often result in the exploitation of Palestinian labor, Palestinian
natural resources, and the Palestinian consumer market.
All Palestinian imports and exports are controlled, restricting competition
with Israeli producers, and making Palestinian consumers a captive market for
Israeli goods. Restrictions are imposed on the development of Palestinian
businesses, and all utilities and basic services are routed through Israeli
firms.
Severe restrictions on movement of Palestinian labor and products inside the
occupied territories and to neighboring areas have further increased the
dependency of the Palestinian economy on Israeli companies as employers and
retailers. The growing network of checkpoints and walls has all but destroyed
Palestinian local production and the Palestinian labor bargaining power.
Eighteen months ago, outraged when the Palestinians of Gaza voted for the
leadership of Hamas in democratic elections, Israel
imposed a total lockdown on the entire population of Gaza.
The Palestinians, determined to continue to resist occupation, found a way to
circumvent total starvation. Author Sara Flounders notes, “The Israeli blockade
led to a new economic structure, an underground economy. The besieged
Palestinians have dug more than 1,000 tunnels under the totally sealed border.
Many thousands of Palestinians are now employed in digging, smuggling or
transporting, and reselling essential goods.” Smuggling constitutes approximately
90 percent of economic activity in Gaza,
according to Gazan economist Omar Shaban.
The tunnels connect the Egyptian town of Rafah
with the Palestinian refugee camp of the same name inside Gaza.
They have become a fantastic, life-sustaining network of corridors dug through
sandy soil. Tunnels are typically three-tenths of a mile long, approximately
forty-five to fifty feet deep. They cost from $50,000 to $90,000 and require
several months of intense labor to dig.
Food is towed through on plastic sleighs. Livestock are herded through
larger tunnels. Flour, milk, cheese, cigarettes, cooking oil, toothpaste, small
generators, computers, and kerosene heaters come through the tunnels. Every day
300 to 400 gas canisters for cooking come through the lines. On the Egyptian
side, the trade sustains the ruptured economy, while corrupt or sympathetic
guards and officers look the other way.
The Israeli siege of Gaza,
followed by twenty-three days of systematic bombing and invasion, has created
massive destruction and scarcity. Food processing plants, chicken farms, grain
warehouses, UN food stocks, almost all of the remaining infrastructure, and 230
small factories were destroyed. At the time of this printing, hundreds of
trucks packed with essential supplies from international and humanitarian
agencies sit outside the strip, refused entry to Gaza
by Israeli guards.
As soon as the Israeli bombing ended, work on the tunnels resumed.
However, Ann Wright, retired US Army colonel, former State Department
official, and current peace activists, asks, “How do you rebuild 5,000 homes,
businesses and government buildings when the only way supplies come into the
prison called Gaza is through tunnels? Will the steel I-beams for roofs
bend 90 degrees to go through the tunnels from Egypt?
Will the tons of cement, lumber, roofing materials, nails, drywall, and paint
be hauled by hand, load after load, seventy feet underground, through a tunnel
500 to 900 feet
long, and then pulled up a seventy-foot hole and put into waiting truck in
Gaza?”
For the people of Gaza, rebuilding
their homes, businesses, and factories is on hold. Over 5,000 homes and
apartment buildings were destroyed and hundreds of government buildings,
including the Parliament building, were smashed. Two cement factories in
northern Gaza were completely
destroyed by Israeli bombs.
Building supplies, cement, wood, nails, glass will have to be brought in
from outside Gaza. Israel
controls 90 percent of the land borders to Gaza,
including the northern and eastern borders and 100 percent of the ocean on the
west side of Gaza. Egypt
controls the southern border with Gaza.
Wright concludes, “The Israelis who bombed Gaza
will be the primary financial beneficiaries of the rebuilding of Gaza.
They bombed it and now will sell construction materials to rebuild what they
have bombed, exactly like the United States
has done in Iraq.”
Update by Sara Flounders
Much has been written about the suffering of the Palestinians, and most of it
is true. What gives the history of Palestine
its special potency is not the suffering, however, but the indomitable will of
the people to continue fighting, even when it seems impossible. This part of
the story—suffering and determination—has continued in the six months since the
massive Israeli bombing of Gaza ended last January.
The Israeli invasion laid waste to much of the Gaza’s
fragile infrastructure. The siege of Gaza
continues, reducing the entire strip to a prison economy with all the
desperation that implies. Every effort is being made to increase the isolation.
The Israelis have forbidden the entry of even the most basic building materials
that are essential to reconstruct the thousands of homes that Israeli bombs
destroyed during the December/January assault on Gaza’s
population.
Tens of millions of dollars of medical, food, clothing and other everyday
aid has been collected from people from all around the world to send to the 1.5
million Palestinians living in Gaza,
the largest open-air prison of the world. The great bulk of this aid is stalled
at the border crossing points, prevented by the Israeli occupation authorities
from entering.
My article, “The Tunnels of Gaza,” written last February, was about the
1,000 tunnels that the Palestinians courageously dug and maintained to bring
material in from Egypt.
These tunnels built during the months of siege and reopened after the invasion
continue to be an important lifeline for Gaza’s
population and a symbol of continued resistance. Now, they have even become a
source of desperately needed building materials.
Some Gazans have turned to making dried mud bricks, a homebuilding material
from an ancient age, to rebuild their bombed homes. And the best mud comes from
the tunnels themselves, as an article in Bloomberg on June 3 pointed out.
Again, a source of possible despair has become a story to inspire confidence in
ultimate victory.
But it is important that the rest of the world refuse to allow the
systematic isolation and total destruction of Gaza.
One way to do this is to join in the work of Viva Palestina, one of several
Gaza Solidarity Campaigns determined to bring in a small portion of supplies
needed by the Gazans, and what is perhaps even more important, to keep world
attention upon the continuing Israeli siege.
An MP in Britain, George Galloway, organized the first Viva Palestina
caravan that took off from London and in twenty-three days crossed North Africa
to deliver to Gaza 107 vehicles—including ambulances and a fire engine—255
people, and $2 million of aid last March. Now Galloway and Vietnam anti-war
veteran Ron Kovic are organizing a similar caravan starting from the United
States that aims to bring 500 vehicles and $10 million in aid—and to impact US
political policy toward Palestine and Gaza (see vivapalestina-us.org).
The International Action
Center is helping the Viva
Palestina effort, and hopes that more and more people and organizations from
all over the world will join to help lift the siege of Gaza
and show solidarity with the Palestinian people, who once again are showing
that they won’t give up.
Sources:
WhoProfits.org
Title: “Who Profits? Exposing the Israeli Occupation Industry”
Authors: The Coalition of Women for Peace
Palestine News Network, August 26, 2008
Title: “US Tax Breaks Support Israeli Settlers”
Workers World Newspaper, February 9, 2009, and Global Research, February 11, 2009
Title: “The Tunnels of Gaza, An underground economy and resistance symbol”
Author: Sara Flounders
CommonDreams.org, February 24, 2009
“Can Gaza Be Rebuilt Through Tunnels? The Blockade Continues-No Supplies, No Rebuilding”
Author: Ann Wright
Student Researchers: April Rudolph, Natalie Dale, and Kerry Headley
Faculty Evaluator: Jeff Baldwin, PhD
Sonoma State University
Photo flickr user frecklebaum
PROJECT CENSORED