Yes, Gaza is still under siege

By Ali Abunimah

At Rafah, Israeli-built walls still stand between Egypt and Palestinians in Gaza.

".........My trip underground, a few days ago, along with other members of the Palestine Festival of Literature (palfest.org) delegation in Gaza, was coordinated for us by community members from the border city of Rafah.....

While there’s no doubt that a lot of consumer goods come through the tunnels (and why shouldn’t they?), the scope of what we saw indicates that the underground link plays a fundamental role in keeping the Gaza economy from collapse.
Tunnels operate on a large scale in an area that was once residential – thousands of homes were demolished by Israel in this area in 2003-2004 and we were not far from where Rachel Corrie was murdered.
Now, the area is full of equipment, warehouses and tunnel heads that are covered by canopies or steel sheds.
We saw impressive quantities of goods coming in..........

And Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood government has continued Mubarak’s policy of acting as a US-Israel subcontractor when it comes to the Palestinians.

All this militates against the Egypt-Gaza border turning into a large-scale commercial crossing any time soon. The tunnels, it would seem, are a compromise that comes at a high price in human life: desperately-needed imports come in, sustaining the economy, but without formally legitimating or succumbing to Israel’s plan to permanently separate Gaza.........

Instead of “easing” the closure, as has been repeteadly promised, it has just become institutionalized with the consent and legitimation of the UN, the European Union and other international bodies.
Everywhere that Israel rules Palestinians, it has successfully reduced them to worrying about daily life – the next meal, the next payment, the next permit – too preoccupied, too hungry, mentally even more than physically, to mount a successful resistance.
All of this is buying Israel the peace and quiet it needs to pursue the project that is really important to 21st Century Zionism: completing the colonization of the West Bank. And when that’s done?......

I know all of this and yet I did not come away from Gaza depressed or hopeless. The feeling I came away with is that for all the hardships they face, people in Gaza have not surrendered and won’t surrender any time soon.
Rather, the worry I heard from more than one person in Gaza is that the rest of the Palestinian people might forget about them, or give up first."