The military authorities controlling the vital lifeline of the Gaza Strip’s million and half inhabitants have decided to celebrate Israel’s sixtieth anniversary by holding up vital medical supplies urgently needed within the Strip.

Sunday May 4, Gush Shalom activists accompanied a relief truck, carrying medical supplies worth 60,000 Dollars, purchased through donations collected all over the world in the framework of the Israeli Coalition Against the Gaza Siege. This was already after considerable delays in getting the permit to get the supplies into the Strip, and prolonged negotiations with the military authorities carried out by the “Physicians for Human Rights” association.

Two days later, May 6, Gush Shalom was informed that the medical supplies are still held up by the army at the Sufa Crossing at the Southern Gaza Strip, that due to Israel’s Independence Day and Sixtieth Anniversary celebrations, the Gaza crossings had been completely closed and that they would only be reopened after Independence Day and the weekend – i.e., next Sunday.

Together with the medical supplies from the donations collected by Gush Shalom, other consignments of medicines and medical supplies are held up, sent by the Israeli “Physicians for Human Rights” and the West-Bank Palestinian “Medical Relief Commitees`. The supplies are intended for the Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the European Hospital in Han Yuneis, the Al Wafa Revalidation Hospital and the mobile clinics which visit outlying neighbourhoods and villages throughout the Strip.

All approaches to the military authorities and explanations that these are vital medical supplies needed urgently within the Strip, whose delay causes great suffering to patients, met a deaf ear.

This is not the first time we discover that, despite the empty words uttered to the international media and Secretary of State Rice, the military authorities make use of any opportunity to increase their pressure on the Palestinian population. Defence Minister Ehud Barak and his generals have apparently not yet heard that we no longer live in the Middle Ages, and that in our time the imposition of a siege on and collective punishment of a civilian population are in direct contravention of International Law.