One of the things that has me depressed on blue monday, allegedly the most depressing date of the year is the realisation that nothing ever changes in how the media reports on Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. There were quite a few reports on the forced shutdown of an important powerplant in Gaza this weekend. Most reports explained correctly how this shutdown was due to lack of fuel and how this was due to Israel stopping fuel getting into Gaza, as retaliation for increased rocket attacks from Gaza. Some reports went even so far as to gently condemn Israel for this, or at least allow some Palestinian spokeperson to do so.
Missing from most, if not all reports however, was the real context of this story. Israel withdrew its settlements and army from Gaza in 2005, but it has never given up control over it. All border crossings, including the sea and along Gaza’s borders with Egypt, are controlled by Israel; Gaza doesn’t have control of its own airspace, and much of its infrastructure, e.g. the electricity network is dependent on Israel. As one look at a map of its territory shows, the Gaza Strip has no hope of ever being self sufficient in most products. The Gaza Strip depends on being able to exports the few things it can (e.g. cut flowers and citrus fruit) to pay for the import of everything it lacks; therefore when the Israelis close the border Gaza starts to starve. And the Israelis have been playing this game at least since the Oslo Accords, when the Occupied Territories gained a nominal autonomy, trying to starve the Palestinians in submission, with added airstrikes when necessary. In a sense, far from being an independent territory, Gaza is Israel’s largest, open air prison.
But if you depend on the mainstream media to tell you about Gaza, you’d think the problems only started last week, when those thankless Palestinians started launching rockets at Israel, for no apparant reason. The blockade, even when condemned, is only described as a reaction to these bombardments, with all context carefully removed. That these rocket attacks happened in response to earlier Israeli airstrikes, is never explained. Instead every cycle of violence is presented as started by the Palestinians, with a collective amnesia for anything that happened earlier than whatever the latest outrage Israel said was the reason for their actions.