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Israel counted calories residents of Gaza needed

Dunya News

Israeli military calculated the number of calories Gaza's residents would need during a blockade.

A document the Defense Ministry released under a court order ssys this.Critics claim the document is evidence that Israel limited food supplies in order to put pressure on Hamas, the violently anti-Israel militant group that seized power in the coastal strip in mid-2007.Israels military spokesman Maj. Guy Inbar said Wednesday that a mathematical formula was devised to identify food needs and avoid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. However, Israel never used the calculation to restrict the flow of food to Gaza, he added.The Israeli rights group Gisha contends that Israel calculated the calorie needs for Gazas population in order to restrict the quantities of goods and basic products it allowed in during the three-year period.Israel imposed the blockade after identifying Gaza as a hostile territory in September 2007, following the Hamas takeover. Seeking to weaken the militants, Israel called for severe restrictions on civilians that included limitations on food.Israel maintained the blockade was necessary to weaken Hamas, but critics accused the Israeli government of targeting Gazas more than 1.5 million people in its ultimately failed effort to achieve that goal.In the food calculation, Israel applied the average daily requirement of 2,279 calories per person, in line with World Health Organization guidelines.The official goal of the policy was to wage economic warfare which would paralyze Gazas economy and, according to the Defense Ministry, create pressure on the Hamas government, Gisha said Wednesday.The Defense Ministry handed over its document on the food calculation to Gisha only after the group filed a Freedom of Information petition.Similar to the calculation of the calorie intake, Israel is said to have often used baffling secret guidelines to differentiate between humanitarian necessities and nonessential luxuries. The result was that military bureaucrats enforcing the blockade allowed frozen salmon and low-fat yogurt into the Hamas-ruled territory, but not cilantro or instant coffee.Hamas, meanwhile, defused the blockades effect by building a network of underground tunnels through which they smuggled in food, weapons and other contraband from Egypt at inflated prices.