Recent attacks have lead to the first unguided rocket attacks launched into Israel in months, which the Jewish state is now using to justify the closing of its crossings with Gaza. As a result of the closure, the UN relief agency providing aid to Palestinian refugees in Gaza has been unable to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided to close Gaza’s borders on Thursday evening, using the non-lethal rocket firings as an excuse for Israel to continue its campaign of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories. Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Ministry, touted his ignorance of the Palestinian experience by saying, “It’s unacceptable that people in [the southern Israeli town of] Sderot are living in fear every day and people in Gaza are living life as usual.” Intensified Israeli incursions have resulted in the murder of at least 32 Palestinians in occupied Gaza this week alone.

Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said that Gazans were already digging up roads because there was no cement for making graves. Gunness added, “It is imperative that these crossings are opened so that the dire situation in Gaza does not deteriorate further, inflicting further misery on one-and-a-half million people.” Gaza’s fuel and humanitarian supplies, which come through Israel, have been subjected to an ever-tightening blockade since June, when the Fatah government was expelled from the territory.

The sharp rise in violence in Gaza comes after President Bush predicted that the most recent “peace talks” would lead to a deal within a year. However, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned of “serious consequences” for the talks if the Israeli strikes continued. Abbas himself, uncomfortable with being tied to the US/Israeli military aggression, has threatened to resign from his post if the incursions and daily killings continue. On Thursday, the PLO Executive Committee issued a statement after an emergency meeting, describing Israel’s operations as “terrorism” which have turned the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a “bloody battlefield.”

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