COUNTDOWN TO CATASTROPHE

Clock, hope running out on life in the Gaza Strip — a cauldron of despair and deprivation

BY ANN M. SIMMONS | Los Angeles Times

COUNTDOWN TO CATASTROPHE — Chicago Tribune, February 2018 — Chicago Tribune · February 2018

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Transcribed from the clipping

Deficit and desperation define life these days in the Gaza Strip. Residents make do with four hours of electricity a day. Most people don't have access to clean water because the supply system is contaminated with sewage. Breakfast for some schoolchildren is a cup of hot water flavored with a dash of salt.

"Despair isn't even the right word to describe what's going on here because things are getting worse and worse," said Omar Ghraieb, a journalist and digital media manager who lives in Gaza.

"We wake up to a world of struggles each day." For more than a decade, Palestinians living in Gaza have endured major escalations of violence and an air and sea blockade, imposed by Israel and Egypt, that has decimated the infrastructure, stifled economic growth and made living conditions so dismal that United Nations officials say a humanitarian disaster is unavoidable. [...] The Palestinian Authority has denied the severity of the situation, according to local media reports, blaming such news on a misinformation campaign by Hamas, the Islamic militant group that governs Gaza.

Israeli army Chief of Staff Gen. Gadi Eisenkot acknowledged the emergency, but Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently contradicted him, saying that although the economic situation was complicated and had to be tackled, there was "no humanitarian crisis."

How this transcription was made

Published at reduced precision. The slide label gave 2018-10-27; the page does not support a day, so the record carries only what can be shown. Adjudicated against the printed page: Folio rule across the top of the page, right-aligned above the heavy black rule: "Chicago Tribune | Section 1 | Sunday, February [day illegible], 2018 29". The paper name, the section, the word "Sunday", the month "February" and the year "2018" are legible; th PUB IS CERTAIN, DATE IS NOT. Apply the pub change only. Leave date_iso as staged and set date_source to folio-partial, or hold the record until the day is read. The day glyphs are about 5 px tall in this 534 px-wide derivative and will not resolve at any magnification — I tried four. Ingrid reported "February 18" at 10 Filed under the archive’s spelling; the page prints “St. Louis Post Dispatch”.

Context added by this archive

Los Angeles Times copy running in another paper. Main photo caption: "According to the World Bank, only 10 percent of Gaza's population has access to safe drinking water. The sewage system has broken, and wastewater pollutes the aquifer under Gaza." Credit: MOHAMMED ABED/GETTY-AFP.

Three further photo captions on the page: Palestinian children warming by a fire in Khan Younis refugee camp (SABER/EPA); Palestinians charging mobile phones from batteries in Gaza City (MOHAMMED ABED/GETTY-AFP); a Palestinian woman with a child after receiving UN food supplies (SAID KHATIB/GETTY-AFP). Also quoted: Matthias Schmale of UNRWA, Yousef Munayyer of the U.S.

Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and Noura Erakat of George Mason University. Contact line at the foot: ann.simmons@latimes.com. As in the Concord Monitor column (slide 4), Eisenkot is deployed as the credible witness whose warning Lieberman denies.

Cite this clipping

"COUNTDOWN TO CATASTROPHE," Chicago Tribune, February 2018, p. 29 (Section 1, per the folio). Covering Palestine archive, CP-2018-053. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2018-053