Pro-Palestine activists worldwide participated in an international swimming campaign to raise awareness about the Gaza Strip which has been under Israeli blockade since 2007.
Expressing solidarity with Gazans, thousands attended the “Swim With Gaza” campaign in Chile, South Africa, Portugal, and Ireland partnering up with the local Tantish Swimming Academy which holds annual swimming festivals on the northern Gazan beach.
The campaign is being held to point out that the sea is the only free space for fun in Gaza that is being held isolated from the rest of the world.
“They are living on of the world’s biggest open-air prisons,” said the 79-year-old Ann Hallam who is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign group.
“Their human rights have been denied, their medical rights have been denied, their existence is being whittled away,” she added. Stressing that “the blockade must be lifted,” she said the UK government has long been “complicit in this occupation.”
It is worth noting that the Israeli blockade has devastated Gaza’s economy and fuelled an unemployment rate that hovers at approximately 50 percent.
The Israeli land, air, and sea blockade has left more than two million Palestinians living in an open-air prison. They are prevented from leaving unless they are granted permission.
The ongoing blockade, which includes severe restrictions not only on the movement of people but of goods, amounts to unlawful collective punishment under international law.
It has created a humanitarian crisis for the nearly two million Palestinians living in the area:
- Israeli authorities rejected 36% of patients’ requests to exit Gaza
- 78% of piped water in Gaza is unfit for human consumption
- Rolling power cuts averaged 11 hours per day, as it continues
- Fishermen have access to only 50% of the fishing waters
- The jobless rate is rising to more than 46.6%
- 31% of households have difficulties meeting essential education needs
- 62% of families in Gaza require food assistance
- Gaza’s agricultural share is usually near the borderline that is facing daily Israeli violations like spreading harmful chemical materials.
- 80% of citizens in the Gaza Strip depend on aids
- The poverty rate in Gaza is rising to 61.6%
- 66% of the Palestinians in Gaza are refugees
The blockade is the latest chapter in decades of violence and hardship endured by Palestine
Shortlink for this post: https://daysofpalestine.ps/?p=48062
