AP reports:
Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip was meant to push the area's economy "to the brink of collapse," according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks on Wednesday, signaling that Israel was well aware that the policy was taking a heavy toll on the area's civilian population.
Israeli leaders have long maintained that the blockade was necessary to weaken the ruling Hamas militant group. The newly released document, published in Norway's Aftenposten newspaper, indicates that Israel hoped to accomplish that goal by targeting Gaza's 1.5 million people.
According to the March 3, 2008, cable 9Reuters dates it Nov 3, 2008) written by an American official, Israeli officials told American diplomats "on multiple occasions that they intend to keep Gaza's economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge."
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev refused to comment.
Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas militants routed forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and seized control of Gaza in June 2007. Its official policy was that it would never allow a humanitarian crisis to develop in Gaza.
The blockade failed to oust Hamas, though it brought Gaza's economy to a virtual standstill. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost, exports have been largely halted, and for three years, Israel carefully monitored which types of consumer goods were allowed into the territory, while allowing all basic humanitarian goods in.
In fact, the cable reveals that Israeli intelligence was directly involved in micro-managing Gaza's economy, shouldering aside the banking sector, in order to have as much control as possible:
While the GOI [government of Israel] believes that maintaining the shekel as the currency of the Palestinian Territories is in Israel,s interests, it treats decisions regarding the amount of shekels in circulation in Gaza as a security matter. Requests by Palestinian banks to transfer shekels into Gaza are ultimately approved, partially approved, or denied by the National Security Council (NSC), an organ of the Israeli security establishment, not by the Bank of Israel (BOI). As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge (see reftel &D8;).
Of course, this is really not much of a secret. Just the sort of thing that eveyrone in the world knows, but that Israel vehement denies anyway--and everyone in the US has to deny as well, or else be branded an "enemy of Israel" if not an outright "anti-Semite".
Now that it's released in this form, however....
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