Following its criminal hijacking in international waters of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and murder of at least 9 passengers, Israel has tried to justify its cruel blockade of the Gaza Strip on the grounds of "security." To anyone familiar with Israeli policy and the situation in Gaza, this excuse is absurd.
The list of items banned from Gaza has famously included such things as cilantro, cinnamon, jam, paper, musical instruments, potato chips and other snack foods, toys, canned foods, among thousands of others. Israel's blockade has been widely recognized and condemned not as a necessary security measure but as illegal collective punishment. And the siege -- which severely restricts or bans basic necessities from foodstuffs to clothes to building supplies -- has caused real harm, economic and human devastation, including growing malnutrition among children, and persistent food insecurity for the vast majority of the population.
Collective punishment, put very simply, is punishing one person for something done by someone else. The Fourth Geneva Convention -- which as the UN Security Council, General Assembly and numerous governments have repeatedly affirmed, governs Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, states in Article 33:
No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
Yet this is precisely what Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman says Israel should -- and is doing -- by maintaning the blockade of Gaza. As Haaretz reported today,
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday that Israel should not lift its blockade on the Gaza Strip unless Hamas agreed to goodwill gestures such as allowing representatives of the Red Cross to visit captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Lieberman told Amir Oren and Gabriela Shalev, Israel's ambassadors to the United States and the United Nations, that there was no reason to change the status quo with that regard until Hamas acceded to that minimum request.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Palestinians holding an Israeli prisoner of war, captured while he was enforcing the illegal blockade on Gaza, Israel has no right to collectively punish and terrorize 1.5 million people in Gaza. This action is another war crime, for which, we must hope -- and work -- for Lieberman and his accomplices to be brought to justice. (Another form of collective punishment Israel has adopted is to deprive the families of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners it holds of the right to visit their loved ones).
Lieberman's words are prima facie evidence of the crime and its motivation. But more corroborating evidence has emerged. McClatchy Newspapers reported today:As Israel ordered a slight easing of its blockade of the Gaza Strip Wednesday, McClatchy obtained an Israeli government document that describes the blockade not as a security measure but as "economic warfare" against the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian territory.
There is so much more evidence of actual criminality and criminal intent by Israeli officials -- this is why they need the might of the United States to shield them from accountability for the crimes documented in the Goldstone Report, in countless human rights reports, and witnessed by the survivors of the flotilla massacre.
Despite Israel's best efforts to conceal its crimes aboard the Mavi Marmara evidence continues to break Israel's information blockade. Watch the exclusive footage filmmaker Iara Lee managed to smuggle past the Israeli hijackers and censors, and read Lubna Masarwa's eyewitness account.