A waste treatment pool in the Gaza Strip. (Ruth Fremson for The New York Times)
The lagoon tragedy seemed a sort of metaphor for Gaza – overcrowded, dependent, coping with makeshift answers to long-term problems. But the lagoon, which held 120,000 cubic meters, or 4.2 million cubic feet, is dwarfed by the huge lake of sewage it was built to reduce.
That lake, itself the overflow from a 30-year-old plant, now contains some 3 million cubic meters of water and human waste, covering about 40 hectares, or 100 acres, and it is again creeping close to the danger point. Its sand embankment was reinforced this summer and two more outlet ponds have been dug in the sand. But more waste enters daily than is discharged, the lake is only about two meters below the embankment, and the winter rains are coming.
And yet the project to fix the problem is stalled by politics and conflict. Israel has declared Gaza “hostile territory” and is sharply limiting goods allowed to be brought in to the territory. The restrictions cover many ordinary items not considered essential to human life.
But they also cover any materials – from metal pipes to welding machines to the wire used to refurbish electric motors – that Israel has decided could have a secondary use by the Hamas administration and the Palestinian gunmen who are firing rockets across the border into Israel.
Israel, with the obligation to protect its citizens, is trying to pressure Hamas both militarily and economically. It says it will now reduce supplies of diesel fuel, gasoline and even electrical power in response to the rocket barrages.
I seem to recall that I wrote about the last time that Palestinians were drowned in their own shit when the last dam broke . Opining at the time that it was poetic justice of a sort and it seems to me that they are reaping the folly of not learning from their own history ,yet again.
As a much younger man I saw several intractable conflicts in the world, the IRA were setting off bombs in my own native England and the PLO were hijacking planes and murdering Israeli athletes. The IRA are now largely a memory but The Palestinians are still dreaming of driving every Jew into the Mediterranean sea. This story is meant to suggest that the “wicked Jews” are collectively punishing those” poor Palestinians”. Frankly for the Hamas supporters in the Gaza the situation they face is one of their own making, Had they been willing to move on and cease firing rockets and mortars from the Gaza then they would not be facing the blockades that they do now. I will be sad if more Palestinians are killed if there is another dam collapse, but the people of Gaza will be reaping what they have sown.
Cheers Comrades
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Iain Hall's SANDPIT 
Indeed Iain, but i won’t be holding my breath for them to change their ways, not even the smell of waste can quell the hatred of Jews.
“Frankly for the Hamas supporters in the Gaza the situation they face is one of their own making, Had they been willing to move on and cease firing rockets and mortars from the Gaza then they would not be facing the blockades that they do now.”
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I doubt very much whether many average Palestinians are involved in firing rockets into Israel. Hamas were voted into office in a democratic election because the Palestinian people were sick of Fatah’s corruption and their failure to stand up to Israel and its US paymaster. Interestingly enough, when Hamas was elected, ‘the Middle East’s only democracy’ decided to ignore the result. What you see as poetic justice is exactly as you put it, collective punishment, and as such is on a par with Nazi behaviour on the Eastern Front. The only stench here is coming from your disgusting attitude to some of the world’s most hard done by people.
Frankly SM I am not surprised that you so lack any moral values that you are unconcerned about how the Palestinians have prosecuted their was against the Jews. But for me their methodology has been instrumental in my sincere belief that they have earned and deserve the suffering that they face now.
I am a rather old fashioned chap who thinks that even when you are fighting a war there are some deliberate acts that you just don’t do. Top of that list is the TARGETING of women children and civilians in acts of terror. The Palestinians have made this sort of thing the centrepiece of their strategy and as the election of Hamas demonstrated this is something that is widely supported by the Palestinian population, and in my book anyone who voted for Hamas is complicit in the aforementioned acts and deserve no mercy.
I have said it before but it is worth repeating, when you can’t negotiate with an enemy in a war you then have two choices surrender to their demands or comprehensively defeat them by military means. Hamas have sown the seeds of this suffering with their “drive the Jews into the sea” plank in their manifesto and I feel no sympathy as they reap the harvest of their own making.
Finally I understand that you leftists are very keen on “Godwin’s Law” which states that the first person to invoke the spectre of the Nazi’s in an argument automatically loose that argument. You have and now you loose.
8)
“But for me their methodology has been instrumental in my sincere belief that they have earned and deserve the suffering that they face now.”
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Iain, who was evicted en mass from their homes in 1947, the Palestinians or the Jews?
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“Top of that list is the TARGETING of women children and civilians in acts of terror. ”
Tell that to the IDF. Shrapnel from tank rounds and Hellfire missiles doesn’t discriminate between militants and women and children, particularly when fired into houses and apartment blocks.
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“…and in my book anyone who voted for Hamas is complicit in the aforementioned acts and deserve no mercy.”
Again, collective punishment Iain. By your logic any Israeli votes for well, any Israeli party really, deserves what’s coming to them…
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“Finally I understand that you leftists are very keen on “Godwin’s Law” which states that the first person to invoke the spectre of the Nazi’s in an argument automatically loose that argument. You have and now you loose.”
Ah, the old ‘Godwin’s Law’ bullshit. My answer to that is ‘Where’s there’s smoke, there’s usually fire’.
My understanding of the situation is that a large number of Palestinians fled not because they were forced to by the Israelis but because they believed the false propaganda from the surrounding Arab regimes that they would be slaughtered by the Jews.
SM do you understand the moral difference between deliberately killing civilians and accidentally killing them? Are you prepared to be honest and admit that you support the use of suicide bombing against civilian targets?
The difference is clearly that the Israeli government is not a terrorist organization Hamas is and as such those who support it are accomplices to crimes against humanity
WTF do you mean by that ?