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Gaza, the Ruin
Gaza Unsilenced edited by Refaat Alareer and Laila El-Haddad, Charlottesville: Just World Books, 2015; pp 320, $21.
Gaza: A History by Jean-Pierre Filiu, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014; pp 422, Rs 2,722.98.
The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza by Max Blumenthal, New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2015; pp XXV +261, Rs 325.
Shell-Shocked: On the Ground under Israel's Gaza Assault by Mohammed Omer, New York: OR Books, 2015; pp 304, $20.
Gaza is a ruin, populated by nearly two million people. The July–August 2014 bombardment of this tiny enclave by Israel resulted in over 2,500 dead Palestinians and an infrastructure—already weak—utterly destroyed. A garrotted sliver of land that sits on the Mediterranean Sea, Gaza cannot import goods to survive, let alone to reconstruct the damage. Oxfam says that it would take over a hundred years to bring Gaza back to the conditions in June 2014 because of the ongoing Israeli siege. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), an agency tasked with the provision of relief to the Palestinian refugees, complained that “people are literally sleeping amongst the rubble; children have died of hypothermia” (Gaza Situation Report 77). Pledges for relief are not delivered, and even if they would be handed over to the United Nations (UN), the Israeli embargo makes it impossible for goods to enter Gaza. Gaza, like the rest of Palestine, is condemned to purgatory.
Formidable History
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