To say the situation in Gaza is deplorable and desperate is an understatement.
That impoverished strip of land on the Eastern Mediterranean has been deplorable and desperate for decades.
I travelled to Gaza many times during the 1990s in my capacity as co-chairman of Builders for Peace, a project launched by US Vice-President Al Gore to help grow the Palestinian economy.
My colleagues and I were unprepared for what we found.
Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, who led one of these delegations, described what he saw as “worse than Soweto”.
During the first quarter century of its occupation, Israel pursued a policy described by Sara Roy as the ”de-development of Gaza”.
There was no investment in infrastructure and the local population was reduced to a cheap pool of labour, working either as day labourers in Israel or poorly paid subcontractors for Israeli exporters.
The poverty of the place was palpable, as was the congestion. Gaza is among the most densely populated places on earth.
Seventy per cent of Gazans are refugees living in camps and in one, Jabalya Camp, we saw children walking through a pool of water in the middle of a dirt road.
Since it hadn’t rained for days, we asked about the source of the water and were horrified to learn it was open sewage.
The Strip’s best agricultural land had been taken by Israeli settlers.
Palestinians who farmed the land that remained had difficulty exporting their product unless they worked with Israeli middlemen, reducing their ability to make a sustainable profit.
We heard the same complaint from small manufacturers.
Potential American investors in Palestinian businesses were discouraged by restrictions on imports of raw materials and exports of finished products.
A visit to the border revealed hardships faced by tens of thousands of Gazans who relied on day labour employment in Israel.
Under Israeli law they could not stay overnight in Israel, so were forced to leave home before dawn to reach the border before 6am in the hope of being selected for a day’s work in construction, agriculture or janitorial services.
Those chosen got home late at night to sleep, only to repeat the process the next day.
Yet subsequent Likud hardline policies, violence and provocation – coupled with Hamas-instigated acts of terrorism – made a bad situation worse.
Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza and his refusal to allow an orderly handover to the Palestinian Authority paved the way for an eventual Hamas takeover.
What followed was a complete Israeli blockade of Gaza, creating even greater Palestinian impoverishment.
Three punishing Israeli wars on Gaza (in 2008, 2012 and 2014) left over 3,800 Palestinians dead, 15,000 wounded and an already dilapidated infrastructure even more devastated by deliberate Israeli targeting of civilian sites – like a sewage reservoir and a chicken processing plant.
In all three wars there was clear evidence of Israeli war crimes.
Ninety-five per cent of Gaza’s water is contaminated and undrinkable.
Most residents receive just two to four hours of electricity daily.
Poverty levels have reached extreme levels, as has unemployment.
To their credit, the people of Gaza have in the past three weeks embarked on a mass, non-violent protest dubbed the “Great March of Return”.
The Israelis have responded with overwhelming violence, while attempting to cover their unconscionable behaviour with denial and deceit.
They positioned 100 snipers on their side of the border and, during the past three weeks, have shot and killed 32 Palestinian protesters, wounding another 1,300.
A recently released video shows a sniper shooting a Palestinian while his fellow marksmen cheered.
The Israeli response was for the person responsible for the video to be punished, not the sniper who killed an unarmed protester.
Suggestions that the protests are a Hamas ploy are false and cruel.
I hope Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan, will join this “Great March”.