Ref: 111/2008
Date: 02 December 2008
Time: 09:00 GMT
Gaza Border Crossings are closed for
27th consecutive day
PCHR Demands
International Community Intervenes to end Israeli Collective Punishment
of Civilian Population of Gaza
The Palestinian Centre for
Human Rights (PCHR) is gravely concerned about the continuing closure of
border crossings into the Gaza Strip, which have now been sealed by the
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) for 27 consecutive days. This current
and unprecedented closure of Gaza is inflicting severe collective
punishment on the entire civilian population, in total violation of
international humanitarian and human rights law. PCHR demands the
international community intervenes to end these latest acts of
collective punishment being imposed on Palestinian civilians by Israel.
The 1.6 million civilians
of the Gaza Strip are being denied all their rights to freedom of
movement, and are confined inside Gaza, where the humanitarian situation
is deteriorating amidst chronic fuel shortages, and shortages of goods,
including essential food items. The Gaza power plant has been forced to
shut down due to lack of fuel, and Gazans are now totally dependent on
electricity generated from Israel, and to a lesser extent, from Egypt.
There are also chronic severe shortages of domestic cooking gas.
Regarding essential food items, IOF have not permitted any consignments
of flour to enter the Gaza Strip for one week,
and current stocks are sufficient for just less than three days. Five of
the six flourmills in the Gaza Strip have been forced to close.
Meanwhile, patients who
require urgent medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip are facing
immense travel restrictions, with an average of just seventeen patients
a day currently permitted to leave Gaza in order to access emergency
medical treatment in Israel.
Civilians are enduring
power cuts for up to ten hours a day across the Gaza Strip, which is
severely affecting every aspect of life in Gaza. Local emergency health
services are teetering on the brink of collapse as they try to respond
to critical cases amidst constant and severe shortages of electricity,
medication and other vital, life-saving equipment. In addition, many
Gazan families are being denied access to drinking water, as there is
insufficient fuel for the electric water pumps that supply domestic
drinking water.
This latest closure of the
civilian and commercial crossings into the Gaza Strip by the Israeli
Occupation Forces (IOF) is part of the IOF continuing occupation of the
Gaza Strip, and its overall strategy to isolate the civilian population
of Gaza, and punish them collectively. Through its gathering of
documentation and data, and its continuing investigations into human
rights violations across the Occupation Palestinian Territory (OPT), the
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has exposed years of IOF human
rights violations in the Gaza Strip, including violations of the right
to freedom of movement, access to appropriate health care, and
violations of civilian’s economic and social rights, including their
right to work.
The Gazan economy has now
all but collapsed due to IOF refusing to allow the export of Gaza goods
through the five border crossings that it directly controls. 76% of the
Gazan population is currently at least partially dependent on
humanitarian aid, and the Centre reiterates that IOF strategies have
forced Gaza into chronic poverty, making it one of the most aid
dependent communities on earth. The current closure of the Gaza Strip is
manufacturing a serious humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and is part of the
overall range of human rights violations being perpetrated against the
civilian population of Gaza.
The Centre reiterates that
collective punishment of a civilian population is illegal under
humanitarian and international human rights law, and that the
international community is therefore legally, and morally, obliged to
intervene immediately, and demand that the IOF ends the current closure
of the Gaza Strip, and ceases its continuing occupation of the Gaza
Strip, as well as its collective punishment of the entire civilian
population.
PCHR condemns all attacks
on civilians, and urges armed groups within the Gaza Strip to cease
firing rockets and other projectiles towards Israel. However, the Centre
reiterates that Israel remains the Occupying Power in the Gaza Strip,
and that even when the current closure is lifted, the siege of the Gaza
Strip will continue as long as Israel remains the Occupying Power.
Israel’s current closure of
the Gaza Strip is putting a severe strain on the tahdiya, or
temporary cease-fire agreed between Gaza and Israel on 19 June 2008,
which is scheduled to be reviewed by both sides on 19 December.
