Israel's Gaza Problem

By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet. Posted July 4, 2006.

The daily horrors emerging from Iraq have caused a majority of people in the United States to oppose Bush's war there. Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis Israel has created in the occupied territories hovers below the radar for most Americans.

Israel has used the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of a third by Palestinians as an excuse to invade Gaza with overwhelming military force and demolish its infrastructure. What Israel and its benefactor -- the United States -- really want is to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government.

During the preceding weeks, Israel instigated events that resulted in the capture of the Israeli soldier. The Israeli military had killed more than 30 civilians, including three children and a pregnant woman.

In the week since the Israeli soldier was captured, Israel's U.S.-supplied artillery has pounded the northern Gaza Strip. Its aircraft struck bridges on the main roads. And its helicopters knocked out Gaza's main power plant, leaving half of Gaza's 1.5 million people and its two main hospitals without electricity and running water. The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross have warned of a humanitarian crisis.

Israeli troops and tanks rolled into the southern Gaza Strip, in the biggest raid since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005. Israel has kidnapped 64 Palestinian governmental ministers and politicians. It bombed the home of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made the astounding statement, "I am deeply sorry for the residents of Gaza, but the lives, security and well-being of the residents of [Jewish] Sderot is even more important to me." The Associated Press quoted Olmert as saying, "I want no one to sleep at night in Gaza. I want them to know what it feels like."

The crisis caused by the Israeli government has upset many Israeli citizens.

Hundreds of Israelis protested outside Olmert's home, denouncing the government as war criminals and demanding an end to the Gaza invasion. "We call for our government to stop targeting Palestinian civilians -- the targeting of civilians is a war crime -- and start negotiating with the elected Palestinian leaders, not to arrest them," said Yishai Menuhin, a spokesman for the peace group Yesh Gvul.

Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz commentator Gideon Levy also criticized the Israeli actions. He wrote, "A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization."

Israel's brutal retaliation against Palestinian civilians constitutes collective punishment. Attacks on a civilian population as a form of collective punishment violate article 50 of the Hague Regulations, which provides: "No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible."

The Fourth Geneva Convention also prohibits collective punishment. Article 33 says: "No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed." The Convention requires all states party to it to search for and ensure the prosecution of perpetrators of the war crime of "causing extensive destruction … not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly." Amnesty International called the deliberate attacks by Israeli forces against civilian property and infrastructure war crimes.

Collective punishment is likewise forbidden by Article 75 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. As four U.S. Supreme Court justices agreed in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld last week, Article 75 is "indisputably part of the customary international law."

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild and the U.S. representative to the American Association of Jurists.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »