By Shae Khan
Israel continues to violate international law through collectively punishing Palestinians under an apartheid system, which includes the blockage of the Gaza Strip through concrete walls and fencing with a maze of checkpoints which are used in the daily humiliation of Palestinians.
Collective punishment is the Israeli practice of punishing entire Palestinian families, neighbourhoods, communities or cities for the actions of one or a few. Forms of punishment include the sealing or demolishing of homes, curfews, roadblocks, confiscating personal property, uprooting trees, destroying agricultural land and infrastructure (e.g. water systems) and closing commercial, education, and cultural sites.
Israel controls the checkpoints and it controls all imports into the Gaza Strip, it routinely restricts food, medicine and fuel which has a devastating effect on the Gaza Strip and has caused the crumbling of the health service and economy. This is even before the continuous bombings of the Gaza Strip.
The siege of Gaza which has been ongoing for 15 years, and occupation since 1967, has caused a humanitarian crisis. The humanitarian impact of the siege on Gaza has had unimaginable and devastating impacts, whether that’s mentally, economically or environmentally.
Four out of five children in the Gaza Strip suffer from depression, sadness and fear caused by fifteen years of the Israeli blockade on the territory, a report published by Save the Children has found. This doesn’t include the ongoing trauma Palestinian youth receive, whether it be the loss of their homes, friends or family members, or the closure of their school and imprisonment of loved ones.
The homes of Palestinians are routinely demolished as punishment against the families of Palestinian freedom fighters and resistance figures. This serves as an example of Israel’s unjust collective punishment system that can be considered illegal. But why should world leaders care if the UN at the most condemns Israel’s routinely practises?
Collective punishment refers to the effects of punishment imposed upon a group of innocent members of society, which causes nothing but further escalation and violence because of the resistance a few individuals carry out to self-defend their land and oppressed people.
It altogether reduces the standard of living to below basic as Palestinians are restricted from access to their own areas and are restricted from receiving basic rights like water and healthcare.
As a result of Israel’s siege of Gaza, which is the greatest example of collective punishment, Gaza’s economy has been destroyed. Though forbidden under International Law, another unjustifiable example is of entire family homes of Palestinians being part of Israel’s attempts to cripple Palestinian communities by demolishing them due to one member of the family being held as a prisoner.
Israel continues to kill unarmed Palestinians as well as continuing its policy of mass arrests, torture and so many more war crimes. The prisons, in which the medical rights of many are neglected and where family visits are restricted, are full of Palestinians from young age to old age pensioners and everything in-between. And, almost 20% of these, according to Palestinian Prisoners Society, are considered administrative detainees who are held unjustly without trial or charge.
Israeli courts continue to hand over Palestinian lands and properties to Jewish passport holders who have never lived in Israel before. Settlement blocks after settlement blocks have been continued to be built, illegally, across the West Bank rendering a Palestinian state useless. The Palestinian Authority continues to work wholeheartedly with Israel in its suppression against the Palestinian people.
Collective punishment can only define Israel’s ongoing attempts to drive Palestinians out of their lands known as ethnic cleansing, or now more apparent the stages of genocide being implemented on Palestinians.
Gaza is chronically short of electricity and is never able to provide 24-hour service, leaving the 2.1 million Palestinians living there with only four hours of electricity daily.
This all happens with the full knowledge and support from Western Nations who continue to diplomatically, economically and militarily support Israel. This moral outrage from nations who love to stand on their soapbox and talk about how much they respect human rights, the rule based order.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues to abate whilst world leaders fail to sanction let alone condemn Israel’s systematic oppression against Palestinians. Until these nations who claim to promote human rights hold Israel accountable, there will never be peace between the two parties.
Sources: Save The Children, Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
The Palestine Observer 