Quest for Lebensraum, pt II

A U.S.-financed assessment of the overall malnutrition level of Palestinian children, recently released by the U.S. Agency for International Development (US-AID), found that one in five Palestinian children under the age of five suffers from chronic or acute malnutrition. Such figures, the report noted, are “considered an emergency by most humanitarians and public health officials.” The report points to Israeli-imposed closures and sieges of major civilian centers as the primary cause
The collective punishment policies pursued by Ariel Sharon’s government against the Palestinians are not reactive but deliberate. Sharon is the head of the Likud Party, which to this day vows never to permit the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. Sharon’s solution is to depopulate as much as possible the Occupied Palestinian Territories by making life for its citizens unbearable.

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But how can the slow starvation of a whole population be stopped when that very starvation is being denied by the Israeli government and ignored by the U.S. administration? Major General Amos Gilad, Israel’s coordinator of government affairs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was hardly ruffled by the USAID findings. He asserted, “hunger is when people have swollen bellies and fall over dead. There is no hunger yet.”

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What is most alarming is that Sharon may be having his way. As recently reported in the Jerusalem Post (an English-language Israeli daily), 80,000 Palestinians have allegedly left the Occupied Palestinian Territories for Jordan and other nations to seek economic relief for their families. In parallel, private Israeli efforts have been pursuing their mission of “helping” any Palestinian who wishes to leave the West Bank or Gaza. As the president of one organization that seeks to assist Palestinians to “permanently emigrate,” put it: “Our aim is to empty the state of Arabs.” Another group, Gamla, founded by former Israeli military officers and colonists, has published similar recommendations on its website in a 9,000 word manifesto titled “The Logistics of Transfer.” It argues that the mass expulsion of every Palestinian is “the only possible solution” to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and makes the ludicrous claim that this is “substantiated by the Torah".