Flowers, Strawberries, and Missiles in Gaza

In an average year, Gaza’s 6,000 strawberry farmers harvest nearly 2,000 tonnes of the fruit that sell altogether for about 10 million dollars. Two-thirds is normally shipped out through Agrexco, the agriculture exchange half-owned by the Israeli government that Gaza’s fruit and flower growers are required to use…Gaza has an airport and sea port, but Israel prevents their use. On the other hand the border crossing at Rafah into Egypt is sealed by Egypt, under heavy U.S. pressure.

It is an old Israeli tactic to make economic conditions as hard as possible for Palestinian producers. The impression is sometimes given that Gaza is barren, and economically hopeless, but this is a myth. Agriculture thrives, the problem is the Israeli state which, even before the current blockade, tightly controlled and limited Palestinian exports to the outside world.

Now, Gazan strawberries are being squeezed out of world markets and left with little hope of recovery. Israel is creating an economic desert where before there was none.

Just 300 yards from the hidden eyes in the Israeli tank, Ahmed Felfel picks his strawberries. But it isn’t the Israelis in the tank who worry him as much as those others who will not let him sell them.

Earlier, it was flowers grown in Gaza and then fed to camels because the Israeli blockade would not let them through. Now it is strawberries grown and wasted.

It is Gaza’s irony that the most desperate conditions produce some of the finest people seek. Nature itself has been kind to Gaza; the soil is rich, there is plenty of sunshine, and predictable rainfall. All that produces strawberries of a quality that the best restaurants in Europe like to serve.

After Gaza elected Hamas, Israel moved swiftly with U.S. backing to isolate the 23-mile long strip of land with Israel on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. It’s a siege that will not let even flowers and strawberries through.

Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.

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