Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: UN panel says Gaza blockade is collective punishment

UN panel says Gaza blockade is collective punishment 	
Staff & Agencies
 
On Line: 14 September 2011 16:58
 
CAIRO - Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip is a violation of 
international law and amounts to collective punishment of the people of 
Gaza, a panel of UN experts has said.
 
The panel of five independent UN human rights experts reporting to the 
United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) said on Tuesday in Geneva 
that the blockade had subjected Gazans to collective punishment in 
“flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian 
law,” Reuters reported.
 
The UNHRC-mandated panel disagreed with an earlier UN report released on 
September 2 that ruled Israel’s naval blockade of the Strip both legal 
and appropriate. The Palmer Report on the Israeli attack of May 2010 
that killed nine Turkish activists also ruled that Israeli Defense 
Forces had used “excessive” force but “did not violate the international 
law” and held both Israel and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla activists 
responsible for the violence.
 
However, the UNHRC panel said the four-year Israeli blockade deprived 
1.6 million Palestinians living in the coastal enclave of their 
fundamental human rights.
 
In a joint statement, the experts noted, “In pronouncing itself on the 
legality of the naval blockade, the Palmer Report does not recognize the 
naval blockade as an integral part of Israel's closure policy toward 
Gaza which has a disproportionate impact on the human rights of civilians.”
 
A previous fact-finding mission appointed by the UNHRC to probe the Gaza 
Freedom Flotilla massacre also concluded in a report in September that 
the Israeli blockade violates international law. The International 
Committee of the Red Cross has also said the blockade violates the 
Geneva Conventions.
 
According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupier is bound to 
“ensure the food and medical supplies of the population” as well as 
“agree to relief schemes on behalf of the… population” and maintain 
“public health and hygiene.”
 
Richard Falk, who is a UN special rapporteur on human rights in the 
occupied Palestinian territories and one of the five UNHCR experts, said 
the Palmer report's conclusions were “aimed at political reconciliation 
between Israel and Turkey. It is unfortunate that in the report politics 
should trump the law.”
 
Another expert, Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the 
right to food, said that about one-third of Gaza's arable land and 85 
percent of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due 
to Israeli blockade.
 
He added at least two-thirds of Gazan households lack secure access to 
food. “People are forced to make unacceptable trade-offs, often having 
to choose between food or medicine or water for their families,” 
Schutter stated.
 
The other three experts were the UN special rapporteurs on physical and 
mental health, extreme poverty and human rights, and access to water and 
sanitation.
 
The Israelis have confined 1.6 million people in a 360-square-kilometer 
coastal territory and besieged them from three sides. They also coerced 
former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to do the same on the fourth side 
of the Gaza Strip, and the new Egyptian rulers have only partially 
amended this policy.
 
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index.php/middle-east/2580-un-panel-says-gaza-blockade-is-collective-punishment
 
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