1948 Creation & Catastrophe

islamispeace wrote: About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth."

In 2005, as Israel withdrew from Gaza and forcibly removed the Jewish residents of the area, a group of Jewish American donors came together to ensure that the famed Israeli greenhouses that produced $200 million of produce per year would not go to waste. The greenhouses were purchased for $14 million � much of it provided by the Gates Foundation - and turned over to Gaza Arabs.

But within hours of the withdrawal, many of the buildings had been damaged beyond repair. Terrorists and looters stripped them of their piping and electronic equipment and tore down their walls. Some greenhouses remained, several of which were destroyed in a second round of looting in 2006.

Now Gaza Arabs are going to get a second chance to try to recreate the thriving greenhouses of Gush Katif. The United States Agency for International Development is to sponsor a project termed Family Agricultural Greenhouses, which will construct three new greenhouses.

USAID hopes the three greenhouses will support 900 families in the Hamas-run Gaza region.

  a bloc of 17 Israeli settlements of Jewish persons, in the southern Gaza strip. In August 2005, the Israeli army moved the 8,600 residents of Gush Katif to Israel. They were evicted from the area and their homes demolished as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip portion of the Palestinian Territories.
(my own personal note here... why were the homes demolished instead of leaving them for others to inhabit... seems mean spirited and spiteful... not peaceful at all.)

 For the former Jewish settlers, who began coming here in the 1970s, the loss of their livelihoods and homes when the Israeli Army removed them remains a source of trauma. The way they mourn and remember their loss bears at times a striking resemblance to the way Palestinian refugees mourn theirs.

 Out the window and across the field, Gadid�s former synagogue could be seen, a six-sided structure dear to the hearts of many former settlers. Today it is a mosque.

 James Wolfensohn, a former president of the World Bank who served as international representative to the conflict at the time of the handover, was the one who raised the $14 million for the greenhouses. He called friends like Bill Gates. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the publisher of The Daily News, threw in a bit of his own, and in a few weeks he had the money.

�There was nothing but hope then,� Mr. Wolfensohn said when reached by telephone in London. �We thought about tourism and hotels and turning Gaza into the Arab Riviera.�

But between the looting, security delays and corruption of border guards � both Israeli and Palestinian, he noted � and then after Israel�s three-week offensive in 2008-9 and the naval blockade, the economy fell apart.

Told of the newly revived farmlands, he was delighted.

�It saddened me that something I thought was a really good contribution had gone sour,� he said. �I thought if people were vested in the economics of their activities and there was interdependence between Israelis and Palestinians, the risk of violence would be greatly reduced. The area would flourish. But the problem with the Middle East is that it is not always rational.�

 GAZA � Hundreds of acres of watermelons, orange saplings and grapevines stretch in orderly rows out to the horizon. Irrigation hoses run along the sand, dripping quietly. Apple trees are starting to blossom nearby. Avocados and mangoes are on their way.

Gaza, cut off by Israel and Egypt for the past four years and heavily dependent on food aid, is expanding an enormous state-run farm aimed at gaining partial food independence. Most striking is that the project sits in the center of the coastal strip on the sites of the former Israeli settlements whose looted greenhouses and ruined fields became a symbol of all that had turned sour in the Israeli withdrawal six years ago.

Israel pulled out its 9,000 settlers and all of its soldiers from Gaza in 2005. The settlers� high-tech greenhouses, which were bought for the Palestinians with $14 million in donations, were left unguarded and within days were stripped of computer equipment, irrigation pipes, water pumps and plastic sheeting.

Planting did resume, but after an attack on the border, Israel imposed security procedures on exiting trucks that left fresh produce baking in the sun, rendering it worthless. The greenhouse areas were abandoned and lay fallow, a symbol of hopelessness and hostility.

But in the past couple of years, as Gaza � ruled by the Islamist group Hamas � has struggled with its isolation and economic decline, the settlement areas have been reborn.

Renamed Al Muhararat � meaning the liberated lands � they make up 30 percent of the coastal strip�s land area. The farms on part of them, which are expanding every year, provide jobs for 500 people, as well as fruits and vegetables for large segments of Gaza�s 1.6 million inhabitants.

In food shops and market stalls across Gaza today, most of the onions, melons and grapes come from here. Last month alone, 100 tons of grapes and 23,000 tons of watermelons were produced. The greenhouses remain mostly stripped and unused, but the land under them is productive.

�We are making ourselves free of Israel economically and are on our way to food security,� Abdel Qader al-Astal, the director of the project, said in his office in what used to be the Israeli settlement of Gadid, renamed Al Yarmouk.

islamispeace wrote: The other example of Israel's continuing criminal practices is the destruction of Bedouin homes.  That also does not seem to bother you.  Settler violence against Palestinian farmers and the Israeli government's refusal to stop it does not seem to bother you.