A family-run cheese factory in Gaza is among ‘terrorist targets’ bombed by the Israel military last week.
Scores of flies are scavenging bucketfuls of cheese and milk strewn amid disfigured iron beams in the dust and the pungent smell of sourness.
The afternoon sun is quickly turning the latest fresh produce of the Dalloul family’s cheese factory into a repulsive dairy disaster, but the scene of destruction obscures the details for the distraught onlookers.
It is the second time in a year that the Israeli air force has destroyed the factory in the Al Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City, but last nights’ raid came without warning.
During the Israeli offensive on Gaza in January 2009 (dubbed as ‘Operation Cast Lead’), the Dalloul cheese factory was bombed shortly after a telephone call warning the family and neighbours to leave the area.
“In the war the Israelis had a policy of calling in advance to warn us they were about to attack, so we had the chance to escape,” says Motasem Dalloul, factory owner and father of seven children who lives next to the destroyed factory. “But last night we were all asleep. The bomb shook the house, my children were in shock and my wife collapsed.”
On the night between Thursday 1 and Friday 2 April, Israeli aircrafts bombed the factory and 13 other targets across the Gaza Strip, injuring three children.
The Israeli government had said it would respond to recent violence at the buffer with Israel where two soldiers and three Palestinian militants were killed, and previous rocket fire that hit Ashkelon killing a Thai worker.
While the Israeli government claims that it targeted Hamas infrastructure, Motasem, who speaks fluent English and also works as a freelance journalist, said the factory only produced dairy products.
“Do you think I would be producing weapons next to my house?” he says. “We also have a blacksmiths’ workshop away from here that was never targeted. I believe our factory has been targeted, together with other factories, because they want to destroy our economy. Our work undermines the siege. Israel wants to stop some commodities and food from being produced in Gaza so that we become dependent on outside supplies. That’s why I believe we were targeted.”
Until the war when it was first targeted, the factory was producing up to 2 tonnes of dairy products daily. It took the Dalloul family six months to open a new factory producing merely 400kg of cheese and yoghurt a day whose distribution was limited to Gaza City.
The business was just recovering from the thousands of dollars in losses sustained in the war, forcing the family to seek loans and use its entire savings to rebuild.
“Our factory had been open since 1996,” Motasem said. “It took us six months and thousands of dollars of loans and savings to rebuild after it was destroyed last year, and we could only provide cheese for Gaza City. Now we are bankrupt.”
Motasem’s claim that Israel is purposely destroying Gaza’s economic infrastructure was clearly stated by the United Nations fact-finding mission’s inquiry headed by Judge Richard Goldstone in the wake of Cast Lead, calling it a war crime.
Among the cases investigated by the UN mission there was the destruction of the Al Bader flour mill – the only operating mill in Gaza – that was hit by air strikes on 9 January 2009.
“The Mission finds that its destruction had no military justification” the Goldstone report says about the mill that employed 85 people. “The nature of the strikes, in particular the precise targeting of crucial machinery, suggests that the intention was to disable the factory in terms of its productive capacity. ... The Mission also finds that the destruction of the mill was carried out for the purposes of denying sustenance to the civilian population, which is a violation of customary international law.”
A similar case of destruction by the Israeli military investigated in the Goldstone inquiry happened in Zeytoun, where Sameeh Sawafiri’s chicken farm was completely destroyed by Israeli tanks and bulldozers during the same operation Cast Lead. A total of 30,000 chickens were flattened alive in their cages as Sameeh’s family fled the area. After months rebuilding and assembling cages from recycled iron, Sameeh is now somehow back in business with one-third the amount of chickens that he had a year ago, and a lot of debts.
“International aid agencies used to buy eggs from my farm to distribute to poor families, but after the war I was turned into a beggar asking for help,” he says.
In both cases investigated by the UN mission as well as in the case of last week, Israel’s targets were well-established businesses set up for more than a decade and reduced to rubble in the 22-day assault. Similar examples abound: the Sarayo biscuits factory in Shijaiya was completely wiped out in Cast Lead, leaving 50 people without a job and its watchman dead. The Gaza juice factory was severely damaged, with workers having to affix labels and seal bottle caps by hand after the machinery was destroyed, as was the factory’s cold store.
“Unlawful and wanton destruction which is not justified by military necessity amounts to a war crime,” the Goldstone report states.
Economist Omar Shaban, who is also director of independent Palestinian think tank PalThink, says the net effect of such strikes is to keep Gaza’s economy unsustainable.
“We need to distinguish between the daily economic activity, which is nowadays much better, and Gaza’s production and industrial activity which is destroyed,” he says.
While new shops are opening, smuggling tunnels thriving, and with Israel allowing more goods to enter Gaza, there have been some job creation programmes and people are spending more money, the coastal enclave’s economy remains subjected to a crippling blockade that keeps 1.5 million people in a man-made humanitarian situation dependent on foreign aid.
Out of 3,900 factories, 3,500 have been closed over the last three years, causing 75,000 job losses in the private sector.
“We are witnessing activation of economic activity only at the service level, but the productive, industrial and even agriculture and fishing sectors are at a standstill,” Shaban says. “There is no sustainability and there are no exports. We can only speak of slight economic improvements alleviating daily hardships.”
Fruit that used to be grown in Gaza and fish that was once Palestinians’ staple food now being imported from Egypt through the tunnels stands as a testimony to the almost destroyed agriculture and fishing industries – both under continuous threat of direct Israeli destruction. For years now, fishermen have been allowed to travel only up to three nautical miles as Israeli gunboats await them on the horizon, while farmers on the buffer zone have had to abandon entire fields where they are greeted with Israeli gunfire and tanks.
World Food Programme figures for the month after Cast Lead show that the sea blockade has reduced fish catches by more than 72% compared to the same month in 2008. Out of around 10,000 fishermen in 2000, today less than 3,500 remain.
“The targeting of the cheese factory is just another example of unjust Israeli actions claiming they are targeting terrorist or Hamas infrastructure. It exposes Israel’s hidden agenda,” Shaban said.
At the decimated factory in Al Sabra, Motasem is occupied with clearing the rubble and restoring electricity to his house after the connection was also destroyed in the bombing. He is keen on starting again, although he doesn’t know yet how.
“We have to restart from scratch,” Motasem Dalloul says. “We have no other option. I can’t leave my brothers without a job, we need to work. It will take us a long time to restart, but that’s the only way we have.”
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