The Egyptian authorities erected a separation wall on the border with Gaza (French)
Since the victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, the occupation has imposed a political and economic siege on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This siege then focused on Gaza following the military decision and Hamas’ monopolization of rule of the Strip and its exit from the scene of governance in the occupied Bank in 2007.
The occupation's goal, through its siege, is to punish the Palestinians for electing a movement that raises the slogan of resistance and to "cauterize their consciousness" in a way that prevents them from repeating such an act, in addition to trying to change the thought and strategy of Hamas to accept involvement in the path of a peaceful settlement and abandon the work of resistance.
The issue of the siege was not absent from Hamas' motives for carrying out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, and it is still at the heart of the debate regarding the conditions for stopping the war that are being negotiated.
In light of the centrality of the blockade issue politically, economically and militarily, we explore below the concept of the blockade, its objectives, the traditional methods of resisting it, and the experience of the Gaza Strip in this regard.
Siege tactics and objectives
Siege has historically been associated with a state of war, as it was a tactic aimed at forcing a country or city to surrender, by cutting off supplies and military supplies for a long period.
One of the oldest experiences in this regard is the Spartans’ siege of the Athenians in the fifth century BC. Blockades in times of peace, and economic sanctions arrangements, were also present in ancient Greece.
The famous Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu discussed the siege tactic in his book “The Art of War,” warning of its dangers to attackers in most cases.
The siege has continued as a central tactic from the Middle Ages to the present time, with the development of its forms and its support with international political cover from the United Nations, as happened in the sieges of Iraq, Libya and Sudan.
Siege of Iraq
The siege of Iraq is an example of using the siege in peacetime to achieve political goals, as UN Resolution No. 661, in August 1990, imposed stifling economic sanctions on it to force it to immediately withdraw from Kuwait, but they continued after that for about 13 years, and were destroyed. War is the components of both a civil and military state. This is what prompted Dennis Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, to resign in 1998.
Halliday described what he saw when he visited Iraq at the time - in an interview he conducted with the “The World After War” website - by saying: The sanctions were comprehensive and open-ended, meaning that they required a Security Council resolution to end them.
In the Gulf War, the United States, with the support of Britain and some countries, bombed Iraq and targeted civilian infrastructure, including communications and electrical power systems, eliminating food production, gardening, and all basic necessities of life. They also closed exports and imports, making sure that Iraq was unable to export its oil, which was its main source of revenue at the time.
The besieged people used depleted uranium weapons, and the massive accumulation of nuclear waste led to the spread of leukemia among children. At the same time, Washington and London banned some components of the treatment, and it once again appeared as genocide as Iraqi children were denied their right to survive.
In their analysis of the blockade and its objectives, the Iraqi researchers Tariq Youssef Ismail and the American William Haddad saw in their book “Iraq: The Human Tax of History” that the blockade was in violation of international law and that the real motives of Washington and London were to dominate the Middle East, which contains the largest and richest oil resources, and to seek to neutralize Iraq's influence.
Given this behavior by the United States and Britain and the international silence towards it, it can be understood that the occupying state dares to impose a siege on the Palestinians for political reasons, namely their high vote in favor of Hamas in the legislative elections, and its tightening of the siege on the Gaza Strip after Hamas took control of it, leading to cutting off water, electricity and fuel from it after "Al-Aqsa Flood" without fear of international prosecution or accountability.
Types of siege
The term blockade is usually applied to two types: comprehensive blockade and economic sanctions. Definitions of blockade differentiate between what is effective, ineffective, or formal, and the matter is related to the extent of the ability to enforce it.
For example, Iran has been able to circumvent international sanctions through barter agreements, supported by political and military moves that seek to delegitimize the sanctions, threatening to use hard force to protect its exports, and targeting the interests of countries seeking to implement blockade measures. Such behavior aims to keep the blockade ineffective.
Six decades of US sanctions on Cuba did not succeed in changing its policy, despite their contribution to the widespread suffering of the Cuban people. This is similar to the case of North Korea, where the regime strengthened its alliance with Washington’s opponents, and developed a nuclear program and military industries that strengthened its power and weakened the possibility of it being exposed to an external attack.
The Bosnians were able to neutralize the effectiveness of the Serb siege of their capital, Sarajevo, in the years 1992-1996 by digging a tunnel that provided the city with fighters and civilian and military needs, which led to changing the course of the war and contributed to their gaining autonomy.
Gaza blockade
What the Gaza Strip is being exposed to is a mixture of economic sanctions in times of calm and a comprehensive siege in times of war. The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory documents this by saying that Israel imposed the siege on the Gaza Strip after the Hamas movement won the legislative elections, and then tightened it after it took military control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, as I declared this sector a hostile entity.
Israel also imposed additional sanctions that directly affected the basic rights of the population, including imposing severe restrictions on the entry of fuel and goods and the movement of individuals to and from the Gaza Strip.
Over the years, the Israeli authorities have worked to establish a policy of isolating the Strip, by separating it from the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in addition to controlling the quantity and quality of goods and materials entering the Strip and banning hundreds of them, causing a comprehensive economic recession and a sharp rise in poverty rates. And unemployment.
Moreover, the Israeli blockade has particularly affected the health sector in Gaza, as many basic medical items and supplies are not available, and many patients are forced to wait months for surgical operations.
After the "Al-Aqsa Flood"
After October 7, Israel announced a comprehensive blockade on Gaza 48 hours later by Defense Minister Yoav Galant, and Energy Minister Yisrael Katz ordered the water supply to Gaza to be cut off.
The report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) - in January 2024 - described the impact of the blockade accompanied by the Israeli military strikes on the Gaza Strip, saying: “Living conditions in Gaza are at their lowest levels since the beginning of the occupation in 1967.”
While the UN-backed “Integrated Interim Classification of Food Security” report, issued on December 21, 2023, indicated that “more than 25% of families in the Gaza Strip suffer from extreme hunger.” He also stressed that all Gaza residents "are suffering from a crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity."
It also showed that 26% of the population (about 577 thousand people) have exhausted their food supplies and adaptive capacities, and are facing catastrophic hunger (IPC 5) and acute hunger.
The report said that there is a risk of famine in Gaza during the six months following its issuance “if violent conflict continues and humanitarian access is restricted.”
According to the United Nations, famine is defined as “hunger in which at least 20% of families face severe food shortages, and at least 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and in which more than two deaths occur daily for every 10,000 people.” Due to extreme hunger or as a result of malnutrition and disease together.”
Resisting the siege of Gaza
Since Hamas won the legislative elections and the emergence of signs of international rejection of the Palestinian people’s choice, it has sought to form a government that brings together the various types of the Palestinian political spectrum in a way that weakens the legitimacy of any international punitive measures against the Palestinians. However, international pressure and the bet on the failure of any government led by the resistance prevented the formation of such a government at that time.
Hamas also sought to export a political discourse that would ease international pressures and their living repercussions on the people of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, so it adopted the “National Reconciliation Document” as the basis for the program of the National Unity Government headed by Ismail Haniyeh, with the participation of ministers from the Fatah movement, the Democratic Front, and other Palestinian forces. However, this did not prevent the siege from continuing.
In 2007, the authority of the government headed by Hamas was limited to the Gaza Strip, and the occupation tightened its siege on the Gaza Strip. Egypt cooperated with the occupation’s requirements and granted it the right to decide what enters and exits through the Rafah crossing.
Easing the siege
In the face of this reality, Hamas sought to ease this siege through several means:
At the political level, it conducted long negotiations for reconciliation with Fatah, and one of its most important goals was to ease the siege on the Gaza Strip, and for the Authority to assume responsibility for providing living requirements for the people of the Gaza Strip. However, the Authority’s declared linkage of reconciliation to requiring Hamas’ approval of the Oslo Accords was a major reason for the failure of this path.
At the level of relations with Egypt, Hamas avoided media and political escalation in order to ease the conditions of the siege, and cooperated with it in controlling the border security situation, which contributed to the existence of conditions that eased the siege for many periods.
Lifting the siege was a primary goal in the rounds of military escalation and wars that the resistance fought with the occupation in the years: 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2023, in addition to the return marches that continued from March 2018 until September 2019.
While this strategy contributed to easing the siege temporarily, However, the occupation was intending to deepen the people's wounds through the widespread destruction caused by its aggression on the Gaza Strip, and its obstruction of reconstruction through an understanding with the Egyptian authorities, and with American and European cover.
To provide civilian and military supplies and confront the siege, the people of the Gaza Strip resorted to digging tunnels and smuggling across the sea and land, which contributed to building the resistance’s combat system over the course of nearly two decades.
However, since October 2013, the Egyptian regime launched a massive campaign to destroy the tunnels and establish a buffer zone within the Egyptian borders, which reduced the ability of the tunnels to provide for the sector’s needs.
In another reaction to the siege, the people of the Gaza Strip resorted to crossing the border with Egypt in large numbers to supply their necessary needs twice, first in September 2005, and the second time in January 2008. However, the Egyptian authorities subsequently erected a separation wall and strengthened their security deployment to prevent Repeating the event.
There was an international solidarity movement in which land convoys and naval flotillas carried humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip, seeking to put pressure on the occupying state and the Egyptian authorities to lift the siege. The most prominent of these are the “Miles of Smiles” land convoys and the freedom flotillas in 2010, 2011, 2015 and 2016, the arrival of which was prevented by the occupation forces.
The Israeli attack on the First Freedom Flotilla in 2010 led to the martyrdom of 9 Turkish activists, and led to a diplomatic crisis for years with Ankara. Since the beginning of the siege, the interest of the people of the Gaza Strip in plant and animal production projects has increased, including various types of agriculture, raising livestock, poultry, and fish, in addition to fishing. This has remained a subject of conflict with the occupation, which has been destroying these projects in wars and restricting them by closing the crossings, obstructing the entry of their supplies, and impeding their export. This contributes to In these occupation efforts, the Egyptian authorities keep the Rafah crossing designated for the crossing of individuals and not goods.
In conclusion, the review of the process of the siege and its resistance shows that it is one of the most important areas of the war for liberation from the occupation, and that its fate is linked to the fate of this war, as its end depends on one of two things: the cessation of Palestinian resistance to the occupation, which is unexpected, or the collapse of the will of the occupation and the emergence of an international or regional circumstance that prevents the continuation of this. The crime has been continuing for 17 years, and is driven by, among other things, the decline in the international legitimacy of the occupying state, the high cost of supporting its policies for its Western sponsors, and the apparent insistence of the Palestinians to renew their revolution against the occupation and their resistance to it by various means.
Source: Al Jazeera