Israel initiated its blockade of Gaza in 2007, not only in response to reports of rocket attacks on the Jewish state by Hamas, but also in reaction to the election of a Hamas-controlled government by the Palestinians. Israel has maintained that the militarily overmatched Hamas Party's refusal to accept her right to exist is the primary objection to a Hamas-led Palestinian government despite polls --including one taken in 2006 by the Jerusalem Post --which revealed that 75 percent of those Palestinians who voted for Hamas oppose the destruction of Israel. Meanwhile, according to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IMFA), from September of 2004 until January of 2008, Hamas launched not a single suicide attack inside Israel. The IMFA also reported that since January of 2008 there has been a just one attack, which occurred in February that year. Thus, as of this writing, there's been but a single suicide bomber attack in Israel since September of 2004.
Life in Hell
It's doubtful that all but the least-forthcoming of those who support Israel would deny that conditions are appalling inside Palestinian refugee camps on both the Gaza Strip; a 25-mile long, six-mile wide territory along the Egyptian border south of Israel, as well as on the West Bank. Neither territory enjoys the political status afforded sovereign nations, including Israel. A persistent state-of-emergency and the extreme limitations on movement are just part of what comprises an environment of hyper-surrealism imposed on Palestinians by the Israeli blockade. In stark contrast to the period when they were in full control of cities like Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah, today, Gaza's approximately 1.5 million Palestinians, nearly half of them children, (and an additional 2.5 million on the West Bank) find themselves interned at what is essentially the world's largest open-air, super-max prison; absurdly held captive by a people who considering their own history of persecution clearly ought to know better.
According to the International Red Cross (IRC), over 80 percent of Gaza's population is dependent on humanitarian assistance -- handouts -- for their survival. The unemployment rate is 40 percent, and up to 30 percent of all Gazans have no running water. Living conditions are characterized by needless shortages of basic essentials including, medicine, electrical power and certain kinds of food. Extreme heat forces families to sleep outdoors. Along with this, in a mindlessly cruel exercise that needlessly terrorizes their children who assume it's yet another Israeli bombing run, Palestinian are forced to cope with pre-dawn sonic booms regularly and deliberately caused by Israel's U.S.-supplied F-16s during flight runs over Gaza.
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