 For the past 15 years, Israel and Egypt have been brutally blockading Gaza, turning it into what has been called the world's largest open-air prison. The impact of this blockade has been incalculable. Israel completely controls the lives of over 2 million people who live in Gaza. In 2021, two out of five people in Gaza were food insecure. The overall unemployment rate reached 50.2% with the figure soaring to 71.8% among young people between the ages of 15 and 29. According to a World Bank report, the poverty rate in Gaza reached 59% in 2021. This blockade has continued with the connivance of the international community. Why was this blockade imposed and why does the international community refuse to speak up against it? Rania Khalek of breakthrough news explains. So the Gaza Strip has been under blockade for 15 years now. And the reason for this blockade, which is done by the Israelis and the Egyptians essentially in coordination with the international community, and it's an air, land, and sea blockade, was put into place after Hamas gained power in Gaza through elections. And this basically ended up legitimizing the blockade of Gaza by the international community because Hamas is considered like a terrorist organization. And actually after they won those elections, the Americans with the Israelis tried to instigate what was essentially like a civil war in Gaza between the Palestinian authority and Hamas. But of course, Hamas is still in charge of Gaza. And the idea around Israel and Egypt's blockade of Gaza is to essentially make life so miserable for people there that they rise up and get rid of the Hamas authorities. It's much the same kind of attitude or logic of US sanctions on various countries around the world. But in many ways, Gaza is kind of like a laboratory where a lot of those kinds of policies are tried and tested. And of course, we've also seen in Gaza throughout this 15 year time period, repeated wars on this very tiny enclave, which is essentially an open air prison, where these Israelis like to say, oh, Gaza is no longer under occupation because unlike the West Bank, the Israelis actually withdrew their forces and settlers from Gaza in the early 2000s. So they like to say, oh, it's not under occupation, but actually internationally speaking under the law, it still is essentially under Israeli occupation because it's under Israeli control, Israel controls anything that goes in or leaves Gaza. People cannot go into enter or leave Gaza without permission from the Israelis. And as a part of this blockade, the Israelis also have put Gaza on a diet. They actually have a formula for calculating the amount of caloric intake that every person in Gaza needs in order to not starve to death. So this is, I mean, it's a very specific, torturous, calculated kind of policy. And I mentioned that periodically, Israel will also go in and launch these bombing campaigns on Gaza, and they have a term for this. It's called mowing the lawn. And this is essentially to keep Hamas's military capability as they see it in check and from reaching a certain threshold so that they can't do as much damage as they might like to to the Israelis. It's also important for people to remember that the people living in Gaza, which is about 2 million people, 2 million Palestinians, 80% of them are the descendants of or are actually refugees from other parts of Palestine who fled to Gaza after the 1948 Nakba, the catastrophe on which Israel was founded, which was founded on top of the ethnic cleansing of some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, so they could be taken over by Israeli Jewish settlers. And the entire idea, the reason that Gaza is treated this way by the Israelis is because Israel wants to be a Jewish majority state, but it's in a part of the world that is not majority Jewish. There's about 6 million, I think, Israeli Jews. There's about between the West Bank and Gaza still living inside, and also inside what's considered present day Israel, about 5 to 6 million indigenous Palestinians. And so they're in an area, they're in borders that aren't majority Jewish. In order to maintain this kind of ethno supremacy in Israel, it requires an extreme amount of violence against those who are not considered a part of the in group, meaning Palestinians. So it actually requires, in order to have that settler colonial ideology that runs the country, the supremacist ideology, you have to carry out horrible levels of violence. You have to carry out occupation and basically population control across the country with this kind of ongoing settler colonial land theft that's continuing. And of course, with Gaza, it's just this open air prison where a lot of Israel has this big weapons industry where they actually sell weapons all around the world. They're known for having the great A stamp of approval, which is being battle tested and combat proven. A lot of Israel's weapons are battle tested in combat proven in Gaza. They actually advertise this in their state sponsored weapons industries at international weapons fairs all around the world. So Gaza plays many roles. It kind of is this like weird laboratory for testing out weapons and testing out policies of blockade, which you've seen replicated in different parts of the world. Some could even say that perhaps the Saudis have learned how to carry out their blockade on Yemen based somewhat on what they've seen Israel do to Gaza. So it is this weapons laboratory for the world. It's this sort of demographic control for the world in a really extreme way. And very quickly, I want to quote this. This is a quote from the Israeli demographer Arnon Sofer, who of Haifa University, who in 2004 actually advised the government of Ariel Sharon to withdraw Israeli forces from Gaza and essentially seal the territory off from the outside world and shoot anyone who tries to break out, which is the policy that has been carried out by the Israelis against Gaza. And he said to the Jerusalem Post at the time, and I'm quoting, when 2.5 million people live in a closed off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill all day, every day. The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings. And now what I just quoted by this Israeli demographer in his words is actually what has taken place over the last 15 years. Like I mentioned, the periodic bombing campaigns, the last one was last year in May of 2021, where Israel massacred entire families in their homes, which they did also back in 2014, which they did also back in 2012, and also back in 2008 on and on and on and on. This is what he's talking about kill and kill and kill. When we talk about the Great March of Return, where you actually had Palestinians protesting at the Gaza border and being shot in the knees, having their legs shattered or sometimes actually shot and killed, including medics, including journalists, this is the kill and kill and kill. And this is part of the reason you asked, why is it that the international community puts up with this horrible policy that's so inhumane that violates all kinds of international laws? It's collective punishment against two million people based on their ethnicity and just where they were born geographically. They have no rights. Why is this allowed to continue? Well, it's allowed to continue because one, these people have been completely dehumanized. Two, we know that international law does not apply to the powerful. It doesn't apply to Israel. It doesn't apply to America. It only applies to the weak. The powerful are never held accountable. So Israel can go on doing what it wants. It can go on violating international law, carrying out these periodic massacres, blocking Palestinians from leaving Gaza. I mean, people spend their entire lives born and dying in Gaza without ever leaving this very, very tiny enclave, one of the most densely populated enclaves in the world, because they've been dehumanized as terrorists and the world just accepts it. And of course, as I mentioned, this is part of a military industrial complex. Weapons companies benefit from having these stateless, rightless people to literally test their weapons out on. They're not considered to have the same human rights as people who have passports from other parts of the world. And that also makes it okay. And of course, Israel is one of the most aggressive, most powerful countries in the Middle East. And it has the backing of the most powerful country in the world, the United States, that repeatedly blocks any attempt in international forums at holding Israel accountable, at giving Palestinians their rights, at ending this conflict in any way that Israel doesn't want. And so as a result, the U.S. has literally acted as a shield for Israel to continue basically torturing Palestinians in Gaza with zero accountability. In recent years, there has been a slight shift in global perceptions of Israel. Many more organizations have called out Israel's apartheid policies. In 2019, the International Criminal Court said it would investigate possible war crimes in Palestine, including by Israeli personnel. Is there the possibility of Israel finally paying for its crimes through such international fora? As long as Israel has the backing of the United States, the cover is given to it by the United States at the UN, at the International Criminal Court, as long as the U.S. continues to be the world hegemon and continues to be so involved in the Middle East, I mean, Israel's entire existence is just it being a client state and an arm of imperialism for the United States in the region to help police the region. As long as this dynamic exists, I don't believe that you're going to see any accountability on the international stage because the U.S. just has so much power to remain an obstacle to any of that and it remains committed to preventing any sort of accountability for the crimes that Israel has committed against Palestinians. That said, I do think that given what's happening internationally, we are entering an era where you do see a weakened U.S., where you do see the United States retreating somewhat from the Middle East because it wants to focus more on Russia and China, but also it can't control everything the way it did even 10 or 20 years ago. Does that mean tomorrow Palestinians will be free? No. Does that mean if the U.S. disappears, Palestinians will be free? No, but it does mean that at some point, as the U.S. retreats more and more from the region and the region is forced to deal with each other, countries are forced to deal with each other without the backing of a country like the U.S. or without as much of a backing of a country like the U.S. as you have a world that isn't just controlled by this one country, I think you will see more opportunities to maybe hold certain people accountable, hold certain countries accountable or perhaps end some of the destructive policies in the region, but until we move closer to that point in time, and I feel this is a very pessimistic view, it does seem like Israel will continue to get away with what it's doing. That's that of course, like you mentioned, as far as popular opinion goes in many parts of the world, there's less and less tolerance for Israel's policies. You have more and more human rights organizations and more and more countries recognizing what Israel's doing as a form of apartheid and even worse. And so that is certainly a positive development. The question really is, I mean at the end of the day, this is not a sustainable situation. Zionism is not sustainable settler colonialism in this area of the world as it continues is not sustainable. So the question really is how many more people are going to suffer and die before this horrible awful supremacist ideology no longer exists? Because one day, I mean, it just it can't exist forever. It can't. It's not possible. It's not sustainable. So that's the real question is how much longer are Palestinians going to have to suffer and die and have their land stolen and live under blockade before enough is enough. And that's, you know, I can't answer that question. That just the time will tell.