Israel To Allow Snozzcumbers Into Gaza

Kerem Shalom, Israel, November 9 – In a further bid to ease conditions for residents of the Gaza Strip, Israel has expanded the list of materials it will allow into the territory to include the snozzcumber, a vegetable with nutritive properties far in excess of that available from typical Gaza produce.

Beginning next week, this border crossing is expected to handle several dozen truckloads of the snozzcumber, amounting to what Israeli officials estimate as 200 tons of the large, striped vegetable. It will provide Gazans with most essential vitamins and minerals, and, crucially for Gaza, high water content. Crumbling infrastructure – in some cases further damaged by fighting between Israel and Hamas – mismanagement of resources, and spiraling demand have threatened the Gaza Strip’s supply of drinking water, and the snozzcumber’s watery flesh can help alleviate the shortage, at least temporarily.

Each snozzcumber is about three meters long, with some specimens reaching nearly four. The vegetable is hoisted by crane onto trucks, and cut into sections to be sold by weight or distributed by various international aid agencies. Low demand for the crop has historically relegated it to the margins of world agriculture, but it is known to flourish in hot, dry environments in the absence of other flora, and tends to grow well even without human cultivation.

Israel has now entered the Shmittah, or sabbatical, year, in which many farmers let the land lie fallow. While many exploit a loophole involving the temporary sale of land to a non-Jew to allow the farm to be worked as usual, those who adhere strictly to the practice of Shmittah began gathering snozzcumbers from the Negev Desert several weeks ago. The vegetable’s propensity to grow abundantly regardless of cultivation renders it beyond the scope of religious restrictions on certain types of harvesting, and the quantity of snozzcumbers available from this year’s harvest far exceeds typically anemic demand in the domestic Israeli market. The surplus has now been made available for Gazans, and the low outlay makes the snozzcumber an obvious choice for easing the plight of Gazans.

“There is no security risk in allowing snozzcumbers into the Gaza Strip, as far as Israel is concerned,” says agronomist B.F. Gee, noting that unlike metal piping and concrete, which could be used either for civilian construction or military uses to threaten Israel, snozzcumbers are completely unsuitable for any military purpose. “In fact it’s not even an economic risk of any significance, because it costs almost nothing to just ship these things to Kerem Shalom and have them hauled across.”

Palestinian officials were unavailable for comment, but an aide who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Hamas-Fatah government overseeing the Gaza Strip was likely to refuse all shipments unless they included frobscottle.