“Smoking Gun” Proves Israeli Siege of Gaza Isn’t About Security « SpeakEasy

I’ve tried to hammer home the point that the brutal siege of Gaza has nothing to do with Israel’s “right to defend herself.” On Monday, I wrote:

For supporters of the siege, the value of the defense argument is simple to grasp. Intercepting weapons is a military objective. In international law, an occupying power has broad leeway in the use of force to accomplish military objectives. The siege of Gaza is, and always was, meant to crush Gaza’s economy, impose severe suffering on the population and ultimately make it impossible for Hamas to govern. The Israeli government has not hidden this fact. As J Street put it, “Israeli officials have repeatedly characterized their blockade policy in the following terms: ‘No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.’” When the siege was first imposed, Dov Weisglass, an adviser to then Prime-Minister Ehud Olmert, explained, “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

The blockade’s objective is political, not military. It’s a collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza (approximately half of whom are under 18 years of age). It is a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. It’s a serious crime. And the world is calling for Israel to bring it to an end, not to stop intercepting weapons.

Last week, I explained why it’s a serious crime here. When we published those pieces, we got the usual flurry of outraged feedback — accusations of hopeless bias, running ridiculously skewed analyses and delegitimizing Israel out of sheer, irrational animosity.

But on Wednesday, McClatchy reported that it had obtained an Israeli government document that leaves no further doubt about the true goals of the Gaza blockade. It is, as I have said, collective punishment for electing Hamas, a gradual strangulation of the people of Gaza — young and old, innocent and guilty– under an intentional man-made humanitarian crisis.

McClatchy:

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.

Israel imposed severe restrictions on Gaza in June 2007, after Hamas won elections and took control of the coastal enclave after winning elections there the previous year, and the government has long said that the aim of the blockade is to stem the flow of weapons to militants in Gaza.
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However, in response to a lawsuit by Gisha, an Israeli human rights group, the Israeli government explained the blockade as an exercise of the right of economic warfare.

“A country has the right to decide that it chooses not to engage in economic relations or to give economic assistance to the other party to the conflict, or that it wishes to operate using ‘economic warfare,’” the government said.

McClatchy obtained the government’s written statement from Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, which sued the government for information about the blockade. The Israeli high court upheld the suit, and the government delivered its statement earlier this year.

Sari Bashi, the director of Gisha, said the documents prove that Israel isn’t imposing its blockade for its stated reasons, but rather as collective punishment for the Palestinian population of Gaza. Gisha focuses on Palestinian rights.

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The Israeli government took an additional step Wednesday and said the economic warfare is intended to achieve a political goal. A government spokesman, who couldn’t be named as a matter of policy, told McClatchy that authorities will continue to ease the blockade but “could not lift the embargo altogether as long as Hamas remains in control” of Gaza.

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Israel’s blockade of Gaza includes a complex and ever-changing list of goods that are allowed in. Items such as cement or metal are barred because they can be used for military purposes, Israeli officials say.

According to figures published by Gisha in coordination with the United Nations, Israel allows in 25 percent of the goods it had permitted into Gaza before the Hamas takeover. In the years prior to the closure, Israel allowed an average of 10,400 trucks to enter Gaza with goods each month. Israel now allows approximately 2,500 trucks a month.

The figures show that Israel also has limited the goods allowed to enter Gaza to 40 types of items, while before June 2007 approximately 4,000 types of goods were listed as entering Gaza.

As I wrote earlier this week,

The Israeli government is an occupying power that exercises “effective control” over Gaza. Some have argued that Gaza is an independent entity at war with Israel, and the Israeli Supreme Court agreed, ruling that Israel “had no commitment ‘to deal with the welfare of the residents of the Gaza Strip or to allow unlimited amounts of goods and merchandise’ to pass through, but only vital and humanitarian goods.”

But outside of Israel it’s not a serious claim. According to the United Nations, “Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem [are designated] as Occupied Palestinian Territory… that definition hasn’t changed.” The United States government, Israel’s closest ally, says unambiguously: “West Bank and Gaza Strip are Israeli-occupied with current status subject to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement… permanent status to be determined through further negotiation; Israel removed settlers and military personnel from the Gaza Strip in August 2005.”