Gaza Under Blockade

For 15 years, Israel has imposed an air, land, and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip, barring most Palestinians in the coastal enclave from leaving the area under any circumstances. Fishermen who venture out past an Israeli-imposed limit are shot at and arrested, while Palestinian farmers have been killed by soldiers for working land that lies near the boundary fence. Israel also tightly controls the entry and exit of goods, and its restrictive policies have devastated the Gazan economy and led to an unemployment rate of about 50%. In the same period, Israel has waged five military assaults on Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians. To discuss Israel’s severe restrictions on Palestinian movement from Gaza and what it’s like to live under blockade and bombardment, Jewish Currents staff reporter Alex Kane interviewed an anonymous writer and Miriam Marmur, the director of public advocacy for Gisha—Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, the leading Israeli group focusing on Israel’s blockade of Gaza. This episode also features a special segment from Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka’s podcast Rethinking Palestine that analyzes Israel’s extrajudicial killings of Palestinian fighters in Nablus and the psychology of the new generation of Palestinian armed resistance fighters.ARTICLES MENTIONED“Ramadan in Gaza,” Anonymous, Jewish Currents“A Butterfly in Gaza,” Anonymous, Jewish Currents“From Jenin to Gaza to Nablus: Palestinian Resistance Under Attack,”Rethinking Palestine, Al-ShabakaThanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”