‘We Didn’t Want to Hear About Calories’ Rethinking Food Security, Food Power and Food Sovereignty - Lessons from the Gaza Closure

The notion of food sovereignty was developed based on the notion that if the population of a country must depend for their next meal on global economy, on the goodwill of a superpower not to use food as a weapon, or the unpredictability of shipping, then that country is not secure in the sense of food security. It has thus been argued that food sovereignty goes beyond the concept of food security. But while the emphasis in the development of the concept of food sovereignty was on the idea that people, rather that corporate monopolies, make the decisions regarding food, our paper, through the case study of the Gaza closure by Israel illustrates the need to expand this notion, to guarantee that people will have the sovereignty to make the decisions regarding food. The Gaza case also illustrates that the right to produce its own food in its own territory, may not always be the only means to exercise food sovereignty: it may be more important to put the emphasis on the right to exercise sovereignty regarding both the growing and the importing of food. So to the extent that food sovereignty proposes not just guaranteed access to food, but democratic control over the food system and is about self-determination including nutrition self-determination, the term may help realize how the exercise of food power by Israel, negates this sovereignty from the residents of Gaza.

Since 2007, Israel has been imposing a closure over the Gaza Strip, which restricts the passage of goods into and out of the Strip and limits the movement of people in both directions to the “humanitarian minimum”. By maintaining a level of “just above minimum”, which was sustainable largely due to the massive involvement of international aid organizations, Israel managed to relax the international demand to lift or ease the restrictions. The Turkel Committee, appointed to investigate the events of the flotilla of May 2010 determined that since the closure was never intended to starve the civilian population and given Israel’s monitoring and protection mechanisms designed to prevent a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, the closure cannot be said to be unlawful and that the proportionality requirement is met. While doing so, the committee largely downplayed the data presented before it by human rights organizations attesting to extremely high levels of food insecurity in the Gaza Strip.

Our paper explores the blind spots in Israel’s stance, which alludes to the minimum standard. These, we will argue, ignore power relations, and overlook the larger context . We will propose instead that food power can be exercised not only through direct control over food supply and food availability, but also by effecting people’s ability to access adequate food. Arbitrary restrictions on entry of foodstuff undoubtedly played an important role in Israel’s demonstration of power. But also by successfully crippling Gaza Strip’s economy, Israel’s closure policy has impoverished the civilian population, considerably decreased food security in the Gaza Strip and respectfully increased dependency on international aid. Using this analysis, we will examine how food power mechanisms work and are sustained over time and explore the relations between “food security”, “food power” and “food sovereignty.”

Aeyal Gross

Professor, Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, and visiting Reader, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Tamar Feldman

 

Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue, 14 - 15 September, New Haven.