Why There Is A Blockade on the Gaza Strip

it needs to remembered why their is a partial blockade on Gaza. In a perfect world both Israel and Egypt wished they wouldn't have to enact a blockade on Gaza but unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world. It must be remember since Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005 with hopes of peace, in return it received more than 10,000 rockets and terrorist attacks.

Constantly when Israel has opened the borders in Gaza, rather than food and fuel going in, which may be needed, Hamas instead, showing that in reality it couldn't give two figs about the palestinian people, smuggles weapons in, all sorts of ammmunition, and has even been known to hide in sugar packets ammonium nitrae,and also uses building materials such as pipes to use in mortar bombs and rockets. Therefore the whole point of the blockade, jointly carried out by Israel and Egypt I must add, although strangely enough you do not hear much condemnation of Egypt, is there to stop attacks on Israeli Civilians, it is there to weaken a terorist movement in Hamas. If Hamas stopped trying to smuggle in weapons to attack Israeli civilians there would be no need for the blockade and Israel would stop it.

Additionally it is important to remember that it is only a partial blockade, Israel still provides at least by conservative estimates about 15,000 tons of supplies and humanitarian aid every week to the people of Gaza. Not only this but there are often even in times of war, treatment of gaza civilians in Israeli Hospitals, hardly the actions of a callous government. Indeed to prove this Israel has said that it will deliver any humanitarian aid to Gaza, as it does daily. This has all meant that since the ceasefire in January 2009 well over a million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Israel. That is almost a ton of aid for each man, woman and child in the Strip. Indeed Israel even offered to help the Gaza Flotilla with its goods through offering to accommodate them in any way possible, and deliver the donated goods through Ashdod, using normal search procedures. The activists rejected the offer. Clearly petty political games, are more important than aid to Gaza.

Due to the obvious tight security checks about anything coming into Gaza any illegal entry of a vessel into waters, would be checked and this was indeed what Israel intended to do, again as all part of the security measures they have had to initiate thanks to Hamas. If the flotilla was peaceful they would have been fine, but as highlighted in my previous post they were not.

Its also important to note as highlighted by Tom Gross that everything you hear about the blockade and the continued lack of goods in Gaza may be stretching to this-to learn about this go to http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001114.html.