June 20, 2010
"I don't need ketchup or mayonnaise from Israel. I need my business back, and I wouldn't mind having a Jew head or two on my wall either" says Nasser al-Helo standing on a busy street in Gaza City.
Mr Helo used to run a business making steel doors in the Gaza Strip (in Gaza, "steel doors" is a euphemism for homemade shoulder-fired rockets). Before the blockade he was able to import metal from Israel and would produce more than 300 "doors" a month.
"Now, it's a big zero," he says. "I've lost $300,000 in the past three years, and it's all because the fucking Jews won't let me kill their children without a struggle."
Nasser al-Helo, Gazan doormaker (Allahu Akbar Media)
Private industry has been devastated by Israel's blockade, which was tightened in 2007 after the Islamist group Hamas seized control of the coastal territory.
Factories making anything from furniture to textiles, floor tiles to biscuits have gone under (euphemisms for guns, flak-jackets, land-mines and grenades, respectively).
The Israeli blockade has starved them of the raw materials they need to produce their "goods."
Inexplicably, the Israelis simply refuse to allow the people of Gaza to kill them without protest.
Essential Gazan food items recently siezed by Israeli Defense Forces (Jerusalem Post)
Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. The United Nations estimates unemployment is at 40% in Gaza. Mr Helo used to employ 32 martyrs-in-the-making at his factory. Now there are only four.
The overwhelming feeling among Gazans is that Israel's announcement on Thursday that it is "easing the blockade" is simply not enough. "We want to be allowed to kill the blockaders and their families as well. Allah has ordained it in the Qur'an so I ask, what is wrong with wanting to slaughter those Jews?"
The details of how the blockade will be eased are still not clear, but reportedly the Israeli authorities will allow more civilian goods to enter, including all food items, toys, stationery, kitchen utensils, mattresses and towels. Construction materials for civilian projects will be allowed in under international supervision.
"Of course it's not enough," says Omar Shabban, an economist at the Gaza-based think tank PalThink.
Palestinian Economist Omar Shabbab in his office (courtesy al-Khillyah)
"What about the blockade on people for starters?" he asks.
"One-and-a-half million people are trapped with weapons and not able to use them to kill any Jews. It's frustrating."
Mr Shabban argues that what is really needed in Gaza is not a few more food items - many of which are already available through smuggling tunnels running under the Egyptian border - but a total lifting of the blockade to allow Iranian rockets, briefcase nukes, chemical and nerve agents, as well as specially made child-sized suicide vests so that little boys as young as 4 can martyr themselves and go screw whores forever in Islamic Heaven.
4-year old martyr boys dreaming of huge breasts (Martyr Media Ltd.)
Islamic Heaven and the "stuff" 4-year old's dreams are made of (courtesy Martyr Media Ltd.)
Hamas says it has tried to rein in rocket fire, but as the government in charge, it doesn't have the authority to control all of the militant groups whose only desires are to blow up Israeli children and women. Sporadic, usually ineffective rocket fire continues regularly.
Palestinian merchants carrying "steel doors" that they are about to export to Israel (courtesy Allahu Akbar Media)
A Hamas spokesman said "we're working on their aiming issues with them so that they can at least target close enough that they disembowel young Israeli children in schools and on playgrounds, and pregnant Israeli women in parks."
But, he stressed "we don't control these militants, nor do we even know about them."
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