Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi
THE Israeli government continued to enforce severe and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinians’ human rights; restrict the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip; and facilitate the transfer of Israeli citizens to settlements in the occupied West Bank, an illegal practice under international humanitarian law. Israel’s twelve-year closure of Gaza, exacerbated by Egyptian restrictions on its border with Gaza, limits access to educational, economic and other opportunities, medical care, clean water and electricity for the nearly 2 million Palestinians who live there. Eighty percent of Gaza’s population depends on humanitarian aid.
Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been under a crippling Israeli and Egyptian blockade that has gutted its economy and deprived its roughly 2 million inhabitants of many vital commodities including food, fuel and medicine. In the long-embargoed enclave, the humanitarian situation has grown worse by the day. Israel’s long-standing blockade also creates serious obstacles for Gazans to attain a variety of medical supplies.
The humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories has deteriorated further as hospitals struggle to cope with high casualties since protests on the Gaza-Israel border began last year. Gaza’s health system of 13 public hospitals and 14 clinics, run by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), has buckled under persistent blockade-linked shortage of medicine and surgical supplies. Under an Israeli blockade for more than 10 years, Gaza lacks infrastructure and key medical equipment. Many patients seek to travel elsewhere for treatment. According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Israeli authorities prevented 661 patients referred to Israeli or West Bank hospitals.
More than one million people in Gaza rely on humanitarian assistance to meet basic needs. The blockade that Israel imposed in 2007 has devastated the economy and brought unspeakable hardships for Palestinians. Now, as recent funding cuts from UNRWA, the United Nations Agency responsible for Palestine take hold—life for many is going from bad to worse. Hospitals are reducing some vital services to conserve rapidly decreasing fuel supplies. Schools, with more than 240,000 students, are on the verge of closing. Medication supplies, essential to survival, are dwindling. Most Gazans have no running water and available water is often polluted.
On top of this humanitarian crisis, The Great March of Return protests have been ongoing since March of 2018. Unarmed Palestinian protestors continue to be targeted by Israeli snipers. Reports are emerging of a collapsing health sector and growing hunger, along with continued injuries and a rising death toll of demonstrators. During the first nine months of 2019, an average of about 462 Palestinians exited the Erez crossing into Israel each day, an increase from previous years, but a fraction of the daily average of more than 24,000 in September 2000, according to the Israeli rights group Gisha. Outgoing goods in the same period, mostly destined for the West Bank and Israel, averaged 252 truck-loads per month, compared to the monthly average of 1,064 truck-loads prior to the June 2007 tightening of the closure.
Families in Gaza on average received 12 hours of electricity a day in the first 10 months of 2019 according to OCHA, nearly doubling the 2018 average, thanks largely to additional fuel purchased by Qatar through Israeli vendors. The continuing shortfall, though, compromises Gaza’s water supply and sewage treatment. As of mid-November, 46 percent of “essential” medicines were reported at zero stock at Gaza’s Central Drug Store, according to WHO
Arguably, longstanding customary international law permits states to enforce publicly announced blockades on the high seas. The Gaza blockade was known to all, and certainly to those who launched the ships for the very purpose of breaking it. The real question is whether the Israeli blockade is lawful. Blockades certainly are during times of war or armed conflict. The US-led coalition imposed a blockade on Iraq during the first Gulf War. The catch here is the meaning of “armed conflict.” Traditionally, armed conflict can take place only between sovereign states. If Gaza were clearly a sovereign state, then Israel would be at war with Gaza and the blockade would be lawful. If, however, Gaza were just a part of Israel, Israel would have the right to control its borders— but not by intercepting foreign ships outside its 12-mile territorial sea or contiguous zone. Gaza is not a sovereign state (although it has its own government, controlled by Hamas) and is not a part of Israel or of any other state.
While recognizing the country’s legitimate right to self-defence, the European Union urged Israel to exercise restraint: its action should not be disproportionate, indiscriminate or otherwise in contravention of international humanitarian law. It must cease all military operations that endangered the Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Territories. The European Union remained firmly convinced of the need for a political solution to the crisis, and it intended to contribute actively to efforts to get the Middle East peace process back on track.
Punishment is intrinsically a governmental activity, applying in the “vertical” relations between a government and individuals under its control. This type of a relationship exists in a belligerent occupation between the foreign military administration and the population in the occupied territory. Therefore, collective punishment is forbidden in occupied territory under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Yet seen from the Israeli jurist Melcer’s unjust arguments: The conduct of hostilities paradigm governs situations of actual warfare among the parties to the armed conflict, whereas the law enforcement paradigm governs use of force in other situations in which it is necessary to maintain security and public order. Under the law enforcement paradigm, necessary and proportional lethal force can be applied only as a last resort and only in the face of a real danger to human life or bodily integrity. But Mr Melcer‘s discernment fundamentally lacks the applicability of international human rights law in the humanitarian crisis of Gaza.
The European international law experts think there is clear violation of IHRL by the Israeli authorities in Gaza. Two articles recently penned down by international law professors Ben Saul and Michael Byers have argued that ever since two UN investigations over the civilian impact of the blockade, it is obvious that the Israeli blockade is illegal under international law.
—The writer, an independent ‘IR’ researcher-cum-international law analyst based in Pakistan, is member of European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on IR, Critical Peace & Conflict Studies, also a member of Washington Foreign Law Society and European Society of International Law.
