Chronic Malnutrition in Gaza Blamed on Israel

Chronic Malnutrition in Gaza Blamed on Israel

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21248.htm

Donald Macintyre reveals the contents of an explosive report by the
Red Cross on a humanitarian tragedy
By Donald Macintyre

November 17, 2008 "The Independent" -- - November 13, 2008 - - The
Israeli blockade of Gaza has led to a steady rise in chronic
malnutrition among the 1.5 million people living in the strip,
according to a leaked report from the Red Cross.

It chronicles the "devastating" effect of the siege that Israel
imposed after Hamas seized control in June 2007 and notes that the
dramatic fall in living standards has triggered a shift in diet that
will damage the long-term health of those living in Gaza and has led
to alarming deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D.

The 46-page report from the International Committee of the Red
Cross – seen by The Independent – is the most authoritative yet on
the impact that Israel's closure of crossings to commercial goods
has had on Gazan families and their diets.

The report says the heavy restrictions on all major sectors of
Gaza's economy, compounded by a cost of living increase of at least
40 per cent, is causing "progressive deterioration in food security
for up to 70 per cent of Gaza's population". That in turn is forcing
people to cut household expenditures down to "survival levels".

"Chronic malnutrition is on a steadily rising trend and
micronutrient deficiencies are of great concern," it said.

Since last year, the report found, there had been a switch to "low
cost/high energy" cereals, sugar and oil, away from higher-cost
animal products and fresh fruit and vegetables. Such a
shift "increases exposure to micronutrient deficiencies which in
turn will affect their health and wellbeing in the long term."

Israel has often said that it will not allow a humanitarian crisis
to develop in Gaza and the report says that the groups surveyed
had "accessed their annual nutritional energy needs". But it warned
governments, including Israel's, that "food insecurity and
undernutrition, including micronutrient deficiencies" were occurring
in the absence of "overt food shortages".

A 2001 Food and Agriculture Organisation definition classifies "food
security" as when "all people, at all times, have physical, social
and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that
meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and
healthy life."

The Red Cross report says that "the embargo has had a devastating
effect for a large proportion of households who have had to make
major changes on the composition of their food basket." Households
were now obtaining 80 per cent of their calories from cereals, sugar
and oil. "The actual food basket is considered to be insufficient
from a nutritional perspective." The report paints a bleak picture
of an increasingly impoverished and indebted lower-income
population. People are selling assets, slashing the quality and
quantity of meals, cutting back on clothing and children's
education, scavenging for discarded materials – and even grass for
animal fodder – that they can sell and are depending on dwindling
loans and handouts from slightly better-off relatives.

In the urban sector, in which about 106,000 employees lost their
jobs after the June 2007 shutdown, about 40 per cent are now
classified as "very poor", earning less than 500 shekels (£87) a
month to provide for an average household of seven to nine people.

The report quotes a former owner of a small, home-based sewing
factory, who said he had laid off his 10 workers in July
2007. "Since then I earn no more than 300 shekels per month by
sewing from time to time neighbours' and relatives' clothes. I sold
my wife's jewellery and my brother is transferring 250 shekels every
month ... I do not really know what to say to my children." Others
said they were not able to give their children pocket money.

In agriculture, on which 27 percent of Gaza's population depends,
exports are at a halt and, like fisheries, the sector has seen a 50
per cent fall in incomes since the siege began. Among the two-fifths
classified as "very poor", average per capita spending is down to
50p a day. In the fisheries sector, which has been hit by fuel
shortages and narrow, Israeli-imposed fishing limits, "People's
coping mechanisms are very limited and those households that still
have jewellery and even non-essential appliances sell them".

The report says that if the Israeli-imposed embargo is
maintained, "economic disintegration will continue and wider
segments of the Gaza population will become food insecure".

Arguing that the removal of restrictions on trade "can reverse the
trend of impoverishment", the Red Cross warns that "the prolongation
of the restrictions risks permanently damaging households' capacity
to recover and undermines their ability to attain food security in
the long term."

The detailed Gaza fieldwork for the report was carried out between
May and July. An International Monetary Fund report confirmed in
late September that the Gaza economy "continued to weaken".

Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,
said that, contrary to hopes when Israel pulled out of Gaza, the
Gazan people were being "held hostage" to Hamas's "extremist and
nihilist" ideology which was causing undoubted suffering. If Hamas
focused resources on the "diet of the people" instead of on "Qassam
rockets and violent jihadism" then "this sort of problem would not
exist", he said.