High Winds In Gaza As Israel Activates Giant Fans On Border

Israel is the default party to blame for all misfortunes prior to corroborating such blame with evidence, if at all.

Gaza City, January 18 (AFP) – Dust and air pollution reached much higher levels than normal today after Israel turned on gigantic fans pointed across the border at this coastal territory, local sources are reporting.

Winds in excess of 50 kilometers per hour kicked up dust and sand from the nearby desert on Monday, a phenomenon that local residents are attributing to batteries of fans that Israel has placed all along the boundary with the Gaza Strip in order to wreak havoc with people’s lives and the territory’s ecosystem. While no photographs exist of these massive machines all along the relatively flat landscape, their existence is accepted without question. The resulting windstorm and air pollution poses health risks for the elderly and infirm, young children, pregnant women, and those with heart or respiratory disorders.

An official with the Hamas-run Ministry of Health said the Zionist pollution is expected to last into the night, before rainstorms wash away the hazardous dust. “This happens quite often,” said Ahmad Azahattir, Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of Bureaucracy Reduction at the ministry. “Israel turns on the huge fan array, we get wind, and rain comes along soon afterwards. Then they open their dams and flood us.”

Such flooding is an almost annual occurrence in Gaza, where poorly maintained or nonexistent drainage systems fail to channel the water directly or efficiently into the Mediterranean. Like the fans, the dams Israel uses have never been identified, but it is common knowledge in Gaza and among certain foreign journalists that Israel is the default party to blame for all misfortunes prior to corroborating such blame with evidence, if at all.

Residents complained that the authorities were failing to address the problem. “Our leaders boast of their ability to strike the Zionists deep in their own territory, and to make them live in fear,” said a grocer in Khan Yunis who requested not to be identified, for his own protection. “We are told than any day now, the whole Israeli regime will collapse and we will liberate Jerusalem. But Hamas can’t disable a bunch of fans just beyond the border fence? Something doesn’t add up.” He wondered whether Hamas secretly wants the fans to continue functioning, so that Gaza’s continuing suffering can be milked for propaganda and political value.

Israel denied the existence of such fans. “No, we’re too busy sending deadly electricity through power lines into Gaza to bother with that,” said Colonel Benny Facepalm. “Also, we ship in such toxic chemicals as cooking gas and diesel fuel by the tanker-full. Why would we bother with fans?”