IPF: Israel’s Dependence on Gaza

April 9, 2008/Volume 6.15 

Israel’s Dependence on Gaza

By Sadie Goldman with IPF Staff 

When Shalom Simhon heard that government officials were discussing cutting Gaza off from receiving Israeli goods, he could not have been too surprised. After all, as Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, he has faced one obstacle after another as he has tried to build Israel’s farming sector. 

From the smuggling of rancid eggs to the illegal importation of Iranian pistachios (which enraged the United States) to the impact of army firing zones on Bedouin grazing land, he is used to being caught in the middle of situations not directly involved with Israeli farming. Nonetheless, while attention was being paid to the disastrous effect Israel’s blockade would have on Gaza, Simhon thought of the effect it would have on Israel’s farmers. 

“The state of Israel produces one and a half times its agricultural needs. Half of the surplus is exported to Europe and America. The rest goes to the territories—half to the West Bank, half to Gaza,” Simhon said in an interview to Nahum Barnea in Yediot Acharonoth on Friday. 

That puts exports to the West Bank and Gaza right behind those to the France and Italy—around $1 billion in 2006 according to Meron Rapoport’s February 10th article in Haaretz. 

In other words, for Israeli farmers, the Gaza situation is more than just a security issue. It’s about their livelihood. 

Gaza imports nearly all its staples, from medicine to cement, from Israel. According to Rapoport, if Israel was cut off from exporting to the West Bank and Gaza, it would lose about $2 billion dollars a year and some 76,000 jobs. “Gazans buy from Israel between 60 and 80 tons of fruit per year—bananas, apples, pears, peaches, and avocados,” Rapoport wrote in Haaretz. 

While this makes agricultural exports to Gaza approximately 10 percent of the total, for some farmers, “it is 100 percent of their harvest.” “This is the livelihood of Israeli farmers,” Simhon told Barnea, “We can’t push a button and say that we’re stopping from this moment.” 

The statements of Israel’s deputy of defense, Matan Vilnai, that “we want to disconnect” from Gaza, and of Housing and Construction Minister, Ze’ev Boim, that "we’ll shut off the electricity in Gaza and they can choke inside there," do not only threaten Palestinians. They also do not make sense from the point of view of the Israeli farmer. 

From the vantage point of a farmer, not to mention the vendor or the family buying food, you cannot simply disconnect neighboring countries from each other. 

As Simhon puts it, “You can make a thousand and one borders, a thousand and one manipulations. You can’t disengage. The same water, the same sewage, the same agriculture flows between the Jordan River and the sea.” 

Simhon gives the example of cattle. Following the closure of Gaza’s borders, cattle—no longer supplied from Israeli ranchers—was smuggled in from Egypt. This has caused fears that foot-and-mouth disease (which has been found in Egyptian cattle) would break out in Gaza, and possibly make it across the border to Israel. 

Contaminated water is a particularly dangerous issue for both Israelis and Palestinians, and one worsened by Gaza’s closure. Alex Renton wrote in the UK’s Sunday Herald on Saturday that “Because Israel won’t allow spare parts into Gaza, the Strip’s antiquated sewage system . . . is near total collapse.” Renton explains that Gaza’s sewage system works through a system of pumps, which run on fuel, and then “remove excess sewage and dump it straight into landfill sites and into the sea.” 

Omar Abbas, a resident of Gaza who lives next to a sewage plan, describes the effect of closure: “When the electricity cuts out . . . an hour later the sewage starts to rise thorough the manholes . . . and the dirty water flows down the roads and into the fields.” Contaminated sewage affects Gaza’s farmers as well as its civilians. A year ago, and before Israel declared Gaza a hostile entity and moved to cut electricity, a sewage reservoir burst next to a village in the north of the strip, killing four. While, according to Reuters on March 27, 2007, residents blamed the municipal government, fears of another spill are heightened as long as the situation in Gaza does not improve. 

The closure of Gaza’s border particularly affects Gaza’s farmers. According to the Minister of Agriculture in the Gaza government, Dr. Mohammad al-Agha, Gaza’s agricultural sector has been losing more around $150,000 a day since Israel began reducing supplies. “This figure will exceed $125 million at the end of the year if nothing changes,” he said on March 27th in an article distributed by UPI. 

Ironically, Gaza’s farmers could have made a profit this year from Israel’s ultra orthodox community. This year is a year of shmita, an agricultural Sabbath every seventh year, when the bible instructs Jews to let their fields lay fallow, and some religious Jews look outside of Israel’s border for food. 

But, to Simhon, the most serious effect of cutting ties between Gaza and Israel will not only be felt by farmers, but by Israelis and Palestinians at large, “this is a sabbatical year,” he said, “the farmers in Gaza could have made a lot of money by selling vegetables to the Israeli market. What did they do by closing the crossing points? We pushed the Gazans into the mosques and to Hamas.” 

The political and security situation certainly affects farmers on both sides of the border. Some of them are in the firing line of rockets and sniper fire. But they are all also threatened by the loss of their livelihood. It is about the economy, but it’s also about clean water and disease- free food for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

http://www.ipforum.org/display.cfm?id=10&Sub=12&dis=1

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