Regional Conference, Cremona
Contaminative factors – The effect on mortality – Risk management
Ladies and Gentlemen,
On behalf of the people of Palestine, I would like to thank the organizers of this important Conference for giving me the opportunity to share with you all, in a spirit of dialogue and exchange of experiences, how crucial it is for us, the Palestinians, having access to healthy food.
The Coran says: “Eat and drink, but do not waste anything, because He doesn’t like those who waste”. And in Palestine we seem obsessed with the idea of “wasting” in our daily language expressions. The reason why we hate the waste of food is that in Palestine not all of us can afford food.
For this reason, and to preserve our environment, successful experiments were made for affirming a zero-waste, food-producing, nature-harmonizing way of life in Palestine’s villages, like Palestine’s first eco-village: Farkha, in the West Bank.
I will therefore try to throw some light on our main problem, one of food insecurity and scarcity: if food means freedom, as we know, what does freedom mean in an occupied country like Palestine, and what impact does the occupation have on our food security?
There are two ways in which the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian land affects food security and prevents us from a healthy diet: 1) by stealing our land; and 2) by causing poverty.
Poverty in Palestine
As far as poverty is concerned, the Palestinian economy is in general terms poor, and there are at least four explanations for this, all related to the Israeli occupation: 1) closures and bans to goods imposed by the occupation forces, 2) Israeli withholding of Palestinian tax revenues, 3) labour flow reductions to Israel, and 4) the dependency of Palestinian trade on the Israeli economy.
The poverty line by national standards for Palestine, as set by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in 2011, is 2,293 NIS ($637) per month for a family of two adults and three children. This line is based on the average consumption of essential food, clothing, housing, housekeeping and personal supplies, health care, education, and transportation. The most recent (2014) household survey shows that 25.8% of Palestine’s population lives in poverty (17.8% in the West Bank and 38.8% in the Gaza Strip), with 12.9% of individuals living in “deep poverty” – considered as living on a monthly income of NIS 1,832 (US $509) or less per month for food, clothing, and housing (7.8% in the West Bank and 21.1% in the Gaza Strip)[1].
Linked to poverty levels, the degree of food security enjoyed by a people must be considered as an indicator of human development. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines food security as existing when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”
Food insecurity in Palestine is very high: the majority of households spend more than half of their income on food, and one third of all households were classified as food insecure. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is the largest food aid provider in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and is responsible for providing food aid to the refugee population, while the World Food Programme (WFP) is the largest food aid provider to non-refugees[2]. In their June 2014 joint press release, PCBS, FAO, UNRWA and WFP found that poverty – caused by a 26% rate of unemployment[3] (largely due to the lack of economic empowerment under occupation), high food prices, lower levels of aid, and a slowing of economic growth since 2011 – was the main driver of food insecurity. Their conclusion was that “Food insecurity in Palestine can only be sustainably improved by addressing the root causes of the crisis, such as the ongoing blockade on Gaza and access restrictions in the West Bank”[4].
Land grab
As for land grab, it has been and is being carried out by Israel through its occupation forces and settlements, and the Wall of Apartheid. As a matter of fact, the land of Palestine never stopped shrinking since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In 1967, Israel colonized the Occupied Palestinian Territories by systematically transferring parts of its Jewish civilian population into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in violation of international law. Today, more than half a million Israeli settlers, including over 260,000 in and around East Jerusalem, live in settlements established on land illegally seized from our territories in the West Bank. These settlements range in size from “outposts,” consisting of a few houses, to entire towns inhabited by tens of thousands of settlers. You have recently witnessed on the one hand to the approval by UN Security Council of Resolution 2334, which condemns the Israeli settlements (23 December 2016); and on the other hand to the approval by the Knesset of the “Regularization Law”, which legalizes around 6,000 settlers’ houses built on Palestinians’ private land, previously considered illegal even by Israeli standards.
The aim and effect of Israel’s settlement enterprise, which includes gigantic infrastructures, has been to alter the status of the Palestinian Territories, both physically and demographically, so as to prevent their return to us. The construction of Israeli settlements is designed to illegally confiscate our land and natural resources while confining our population to unsustainable, ever-shrinking enclaves and severing East Jerusalem from the rest of the Occupied Territories. As a result, Palestinians are now living on 50% of the land which belongs to the State of Palestine, as accepted by the historical compromise made in 1988, whereby we relinquished our claim to 78% of the territory encompassed by historic Palestine. As you can see, this reduces our actual territory to 11% of our historical land. By limiting the portion of land, territorial contiguity and economic viability of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israeli settlements pose the single greatest threat to the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, and hence, to a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
If you combine this with the Palestinian land directly confiscated by the Israeli State for so-called “security reason” you obtain, in practical, daily life terms, our deprivation of the possibility to exploit our land to produce our food.
This is evident when it comes to planting and harvesting our olive, lemon and other trees. When they are not uprooted by the occupation forces, there are other major factors which make them impossible for us to reach, namely the Wall of Apartheid built on Palestinian land which often separates us from our trees, and the presence of settlers who assault us on our way to the trees.
The Jordan Valley, in the Occupied West Bank, has the potential to be the Palestinian bread basket and the overall economy could gain an additional $1 billion a year in agricultural revenue if the restrictions on Palestinian use of land, water, mobility and building in the Jordan Valley were removed. Instead, Palestinians see their houses being constantly demolished and can use just 6% of the land in the Jordan Valley, while Israeli settlers, who account for just 13% of the Valley’s people, have control over 86% of its land, have established industrial farms that produce high value crops for sale in markets locally and abroad, and are supported by a range of Israeli government grants and subsidies that facilitate their growth and sustainability.
As a result, the poverty rate for Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley is nearly double than that of the rest of the West Bank, as many struggle to make a living from farming and animal rearing without adequate access to land[5].
The situation in Gaza
Food insecurity due to the siege, poverty and land grab is particularly serious in the Gaza Strip, where the population is also subject to sea grab.
A recent Report on “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza”, approved on 24 January 2017 by the Council of Europe, denounces the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza: 75,000 people are still displaced, 43% of the population is unemployed, and this figure rises to 60% among young people, who cannot seek a job outside the strip. Nearly 40% of the population falls below the poverty line, and the 80% relies on humanitarian assistance. The destruction from three main Israeli aggressions over the past nine years caused damage to the enclave’s water, sanitation, energy, and medical infrastructure. This, coupled with slow reconstruction due to the nine-year blockade, which amounts to “collective punishment”, requires a rapid solution by the international community.
With the 2014 Israeli military operation in Gaza, the situation has worsened significantly: over 2,250 people have died, of whom most were civilians, including 551 children and 299 women; more than 11,230 people have been injured; over 12,620 houses have been totally destroyed and 6,455 severely damaged; and 28% of the population of Gaza has been displaced[6].
Not only is the territory of Gaza suffering from insufficient power supply and lack of drinking water; according to a 2015 Report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, because of severe damage to the coastal aquifer and the overall environmental degradation, Gaza is in danger of becoming unlivable by 2020[7].
As a consequence of the blockade and military operations, 47% of the households in Gaza have insufficient access to food, and if food is available, it is too expensive for many people due to the high unemployment rate. Moreover, even when families can afford enough food, poor quality of water, low level of sanitation and hygiene, shortage of an energy supply and insufficiency of imported cooking gas make food preparation very difficult. The amount of cooking gas imported through the Kerem crossing covers only a third of the estimated demand.
To such food insecurity, directly linked to general poverty, one should add the fact that the buffer zone with Israel covers around 23% of the Strip’s agricultural land, limiting the owners’ ability to cultivate their own land.
But what makes food and economic shortages in Gaza more appalling and devastating is the fact that the main source of food and economic revenues, fishery, is mostly prohibited due to the blockade. Palestine is a land with a long maritime tradition. Seventy years ago the Palestinian fishing fleet worked all over the Eastern Mediterranean. With their fishing fleet now hemmed into a sea area 6 miles wide, the fishermen themselves are now reduced to just fishing to put what little fish they catch on their own family tables.
According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, on an almost daily basis, fishermen are subject to being shot at, which results in deaths and injuries among crew. Their vessels are often attacked with powerful water cannon, they are arrested, unnecessarily inspected, humiliated, and their boats and fishing equipment are often confiscated. Not surprisingly, data from the Fishery Department of the Ministry of Agriculture show a decrease in the amount of fish production during the last five years, from 3,000 tons in 2008 to 1,500 today, but there are still 40,000 people who need to live out of it.
Consequences of food insecurity on health
Around 33% of households in Palestine are food insecure. With this scarcity of resources comes malnutrition. Before the blockade of Gaza and Israeli ban of steel, cement and gravel into the West Bank, malnutrition was not prevalent. However, between 2000 and 2010, it rose by 41.3% in the West Bank and by 60% in Gaza alone. In 2004, stunting and malnutrition affected 9,4% of children under five in the West Bank and 11% in Gaza. In June 2014, 10% of children in Gaza below the age of five were still inflicted by stunting and chronic malnutrition.
Malnutrition and food insecurity have staggering consequences. Malnutrition does not just affect the lives of Palestinians in the present. Since it leads to retarded cognitive and physical development, it also affects Palestine’s future national development.
Since the blockade and restrictions prevent many Palestinians from getting the food and nutrients they need, anemia has risen in Palestine as well. Anemia is a condition where the oxygen-carrying capacity of red blood cells or the number of red blood cells are inadequate.
It mostly affects children and pregnant mothers, causing weakness, fatigue, drowsiness and dizziness. 50% of children under the age of two in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip suffer from anemia, and so do 39.1% of pregnant women in the Gaza Strip and 15.4% of pregnant women in the West Bank. Since anemia is related to increased levels of maternal mortality, the blockade is leading to higher death rates during childbirth.
While malnutrition and anemia remain prevalent, we need to rely on international aid – like World Food Program’s – to assist suffering families, and we need to do it in spite of Israeli attempts to block this aid too[8].
Conclusions
What really needs to be done to defeat food insecurity and all related damages in Palestine is to end the Israeli occupation. This is something that the international community can and must help to achieve, by taking concrete actions against the Israeli settlements and by recognizing Palestine as a sovereign State.
[1] http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_IntPopD2014E.pdf
[2] http://www.ps.undp.org/content/dam/papp/docs/Publications/UNDP-papp-research-PHDR2015Poverty.pdf
[3] http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Downloads/book2188.pdf
[4] http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_FoodSecuir2014E.pdf
[5] https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2012-07-05/palestinian-communities-under-threat-jordan-valley-settlement
[6] http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/06/key-figures-on-the-2014-hostilities/
[7] http://unctad.org/en/Pages/PressRelease.aspx?OriginalVersionID=260
[8] https://www.wfp.org/countries/palestine
