Last Straw

Des­pite the Israeli government’s threat to for­cibly stop them the Free Gaza group made a second suc­cess­ful sail­ing to Gaza Strip today. Their first sail­ing, on 24 August, made them the first people to freely enter Gaza Strip in forty-one years.

Israel has imposed an immoral and illegal¹ block­ade on Gaza Strip since June 2007, in an attempt to under­mine Hamas, who won the elec­tions in Janu­ary 2006, and as col­lect­ive pun­ish­ment of Gazans for elect­ing them.

The block­ade means Gazans have been unable to travel in or out of Gaza Strip to see fam­ily mem­bers or go to uni­ver­sit­ies they’ve been accep­ted into, or receive med­ical care. It also means an increas­ing lack of things like spare machinery parts and all the other things that go into run­ning a civ­il­ised world.

This kind of cow­ardly col­lect­ive pun­ish­ment has been car­ried out before in this part of the world and that is estim­ated to have cost the lives of a mil­lion people, half of whom were children.

Let’s hope Free Gaza is just the begin­ning of the break­ing of this siege.

1. Uni­ver­sal Declar­a­tion of Human Rights: Art­icle 13. Every­one has the right to leave any coun­try, includ­ing his own, and to return to his coun­try. [↩]