November 20, 2008 Dear Prime Minister Olmert, We are writing to express our deep concern about Israel’s continuing blockade of the Gaza Strip, a measure that is depriving its population of food, fuel, and basic services, and constitutes a form of collective punishment.
The latest measures, a complete closure of all Gaza border crossings since November 5, are part of an ongoing policy by your government that has prevented the normal flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza since January 2006. It has contributed to a humanitarian crisis, deepened poverty and ruined the economy. We urge your government to abandon this policy.
Your government states that this latest blockade was in response to Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, in which two Israel civilians were injured (on November 14 and 16), and over a dozen others treated for shock. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly condemned deliberate and indiscriminate Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli communities as violations of the laws of war. We recently sent a letter to Hamas leaders calling on them to renounce such attacks, and arrest and prosecute those who carry out or encourage attacks on civilians.
However, violations of the laws of war by one party to a conflict do not justify violations by the other. As such, illegal attacks by Palestinian armed groups do not justify an illegal Israeli response. Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, an occupied territory under the Fourth Geneva Convention, constitutes collective punishment in violation of the laws of war. While your government has eased the restrictions for one day on November 17 the humanitarian situation in Gaza is now critical as the borders remain closed. Food distribution by the United Nations to 750,000 people—half of Gaza’s population—was forced to a halt last week, and remains severely disrupted.
Israel permitted 30 trucks to enter Gaza on November 17, delivering just eight trucks of food aid for the United Nations relief agency distribution centers, enough to feed 20,000 people. Those supplies are now almost gone, according to UN officials. The agency has to import at least 15 truckloads of food daily to meet the territory’s needs. Food stocks in three UN warehouses have also been emptied.
Gaza’s main power station needs over 21 million liters of industrial diesel before it can restart power production, according to the relief agency. Gaza is currently suffering widespread power shortages with power cuts of up to 16 hours a day. On average 650,000 people–over a third of the population—are without power at any one time amid rolling power cuts throughout the territory.
The fuel and power shortages have disrupted the pumping of water from 80 percent of Gaza water wells according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Twenty percent of the population has access to water for six hours five times a week. Forty percent have access to water four days a week, and the remaining 40 percent have water for just three days a week.
No wheat grain has entered Gaza for 16 days, prompting Gaza’s largest flour mill al-Philistiniya to close, according to OCHA. A lack of cooking gas has closed 28 out of 47 pita-bread bakeries in Gaza, and bread is being rationed. There are no bakeries in production in Rafah in the south of Gaza.
The latest closures have compounded the already severe effects of a longer term blockade your government implemented when Hamas took full control of Gaza in June 2007. Other restrictions have been in place since December 2005, when Hamas won legislative elections in the West Bank and Gaza. Over the last year, this policy has deepened poverty in Gaza and cut its industrial production by over 90 percent, according to the World Bank. The Palestinian Federation of Industries estimates that as a result of import restrictions and the inability to export, only 23 of the 3,900 industries in Gaza are operating, six of which produce wheat flour, one clothing, and the remainder food processing.
These restrictions are impacting a population that is already among the poorest in the world. Close to 70 percent of the population lives in deep poverty, according the UN relief agency, UNRWA. (The agency defines deep poverty as a family of six persons or more living on income of less than US$467 per month.) Egypt has been complicit in the blockade by keeping its borders with Gaza closed for much of the past year, in cooperation with your government.
Israel made a commitment in June to ease some of these restrictions – but the movement of goods into Gaza and people in and out the territory remains a fraction of what it was when borders were last opened for free trade. October’s imports represented only 21 percent of the December 2005 level (13,430 truckloads), that is prior to the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, and 26 percent of the May 2007 level, immediately before the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, according to OCHA. Exports from Gaza are not allowed by your government.
In September and October, Egypt and Israel allowed around 6000 pilgrims, hospital patients and some businessmen to pass through the Rafah and Erez border crossings. However, the Israeli and Egyptian governments have prevented over 800 students from leaving the territory to study abroad. Restrictions on freedom of movement for the large majority of the population remain in place, preventing their access to work, healthcare, and family outside of Gaza.
Even though Israel withdrew its permanent military forces and settlers in 2005, it remains an occupying power in Gaza under international law because it continues to exercise effective day-to-day control over key aspects of life in Gaza. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel is obliged to ensure the provision of food and medical supplies to the civilian population to the fullest extent possible.
We urge your government to immediately lift restrictions on the flow into Gaza of food, medicines, and other supplies essential for the well-being of the civilian population and to cease all measures that amount to collective punishment of the civilian population, including disruptions to the electricity supply and fuel cuts. We also urge your government to respect the right to freedom of movement, especially for those who need to travel for reasons of health or education.
We look forward to your response to this matter.
Yours sincerely,
SarahLeah Whitson Executive Director Middle East and North Africa Division Human Rights Watch
[8]
”As part of the blockade, Israel prohibited travel in and out of Gaza, the import of goods into Gaza – including restrictions on food items, toys and paper – and export to Israel, the West Bank or foreign countries.”
The Gaza Strip is the scene of a humanitarian disaster that has nothing to do with natural causes – it is entirely man-made, a direct result of official Israeli policy. Israel can choose to change this policy and considerably improve the lives of Gaza’s residents. It can also choose to continue this cruel, unjustifiable policy, which sentences the nearly two million people living in Gaza to a life of abject poverty and nearly inhuman conditions.
In early September 2015, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development published a report on the situation in Gaza after eight years of blockade and three rounds of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians. The report cautioned that without significant changes to Israel’s policy, Gaza has no chance of recovery and will become unlivable by 2020. Rather than change its policies in the time that has elapsed since the report, Israel has made them stricter, the situation has deteriorated and Gaza has long since become unliveable.
Israel’s responsibility
Israel contends that its role as occupying power in the Gaza Strip ended in September 2005, when it dismantled all settlements there, withdrew its military forces and declared the end of the military government. Further to this position, Israel contends that it no longer has any obligations or responsibilities toward Gaza residents, other than minimal humanitarian duties designed to prevent a serious crisis in the Gaza Strip.
This position is entirely baseless. In the early years following the implementation of Israel’s Disengagement Plan, there was some vagueness regarding Israel’s legal obligations toward Gaza. However, since then, the conception of degree of responsibility as commensurate with degree of control has taken root. Though Israel is clearly no longer responsible for keeping the peace inside Gaza, and is not generally obliged to see to the welfare of its residents under the laws of occupation, it is still the power that shapes the daily lives of Gaza residents, and as such, also bears responsibility towards them.
Although Israel declared an end to its military administration in Gaza, it continues to control critical aspects of life there. It controls all border crossings by land, apart from Rafah, as well as Gaza’s sea and air space. This control allows Israel to exclusively monitor the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, which it regulates according to Israeli interests. This holds true even when Gaza residents wish only to transit through Israel in order to reach the West Bank or other countries.
Rafah Crossing, which is subject to Egyptian control, has been closed for the past few years. Egyptian authorities open it only a few days every year. Yet even then, it may be used only by individuals who meet strict criteria – which are changed every so often. Regardless, using this crossing to travel to other countries involves a long and often dangerous journey; when the destination is no further than the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), or Jordan, this lengthy journey is particularly unreasonable.
The blockade and its ramifications
Isolating Gaza from the rest of the world, including separating it from the West Bank, is part of a longstanding Israeli policy. The implementation began in the 1990s, with the imposition of a closure on all the Occupied Territories and the introduction of the requirement for every Palestinian from these territories – with the exception of areas annexed to Israel – to request a personal permit to enter Israel, even if only for the purpose of travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip or abroad. Over the years, Israel has made it increasingly difficult to obtain these permits.
After the second intifada broke out, Israel tightened the restrictions on Palestinian travel, imposing serious restrictions on travel to and from the Gaza Strip, and cutting it off from the West Bank almost completely. Entry of Gaza residents into Israel for the purpose of family visits or reunification with a spouse was prohibited. Visits by Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem to relatives in Gaza were reduced to a minimum. In addition, Israel severely restricted the ability of the entire population of Gaza to travel abroad, with many prohibited from doing so altogether. Import and export were restricted and often halted. Israel also banned most Gaza residents from working inside Israel, taking away the source of income of tens of thousands. The restrictions Israel imposed on the movement of goods and workers caused a deep recession in Gaza, impaired its residents’ earning capacity and caused a sharp decline in living standards.
In the summer of 2007, after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, Israel used its control over the crossings to put Gaza under a blockade overnight, turning almost two million people into prisoners inside the Gaza Strip, effecting an economic collapse and propelling Gaza residents into almost full dependency on international aid.
As part of the blockade, Israel prohibited travel in and out of Gaza, the import of goods into Gaza – including restrictions on food items, toys and paper – and export to Israel, the West Bank or foreign countries. According to documents exposed in October 2010 following a Freedom of Information petition filed by the Gisha organization, it emerged that Israel had employed a “deliberate reductive policy”, based on calculations of the minimal caloric intake required for Gaza residents to survive.
In June 2010, following international pressure on Israel after the takeover of the Turkish flotilla to Gaza, Israel decided to lift some of these restrictions. Among other things, Israel agreed to expand the list of goods cleared for entry into Gaza and allowed the entry of building materials for public and housing projects. As part of this new policy, Israel replaced the narrow list of items allowed into Gaza with a list of strictly prohibited items, such as weapons, as well as a list of “dual-use” items that Israel believes could have both civilian and military uses, which require an individual permit. The second list includes hundreds of items, the lack of which prevents development of factories and restoration of civilian infrastructure. The restrictions on export remained in place even after June 2010, leaving Gaza isolated and with no real opportunity for economic development.
One aspect of the blockade is the reduction of the area where fishing is allowed in Gaza. The Oslo Accords stipulate a range of 20 nautical miles (about 37 km) off the Gaza shoreline, but Israel has never allowed fishing farther than 12 nautical miles out to sea. Over the years, Israel has gradually narrowed the fishing zone, sometimes to three nautical miles only, and currently between six and nine. The Israeli military also restricts fishing in areas bordering Israel and Egypt. Soldiers fire at fishermen alleging they have sailed beyond the restricted zone, arrest them and confiscate their equipment. In this way, Israel prevents Gaza fishermen from reaching the rich fishing grounds located further out to sea, impedes the ability of thousands of fishermen and people working in related sectors to provide for themselves and their families, and denies Gaza residents an essential source of food.
The blockade has driven Gaza’s economy into collapse. In the first quarter of 2022, unemployment reached 47%. In the under 29 age bracket, it was 75%. Some 80% of Gaza’s residents depend on humanitarian aid, and about 60% suffer from food insecurity. In the year 2000, before the blockade was imposed, Gaza’s unemployment rate was 18.9%.
Infrastructure and public services in Gaza are collapsing. Of the water pumped in the Gaza Strip, 96.2% is contaminated and unpotable. Electricity is supplied for just a few hours every day, partly because of a fuel shortage caused by high costs, and partly because of restrictions Israel imposes on the entry of spare parts to maintain existing systems – including repairing the power station it bombed in 2006.
The lack of consistent power supply has disastrous effects. Routine power cuts damage medical equipment. Hospitals are forced to rely on generators and scale back services, including delaying non-urgent surgeries and releasing patients early. The intermittent power supply also impedes the routine operation of water pumps and wells. This interferes with the supply of water for household use and public institutions, which has been greatly reduced. Residents have no choice but to cut back on the amount of water they drink and buy desalinated drinking water from private suppliers. It is estimated that 68% of the desalinated water is also contaminated, increasing the risk of disease spreading among the population. Sewage treatment facilities are not fully functional. Treatment cycles have been reduced, and sewage is pumped into the sea after being only partially treated.
The blackouts also keep Gaza residents from leading reasonable lives: they preclude normal use of washing machines, refrigerators, water heating tanks and more. These appliances are an inseparable part of life for billions of people all over the world, including people who live mere kilometers away. In Gaza, residents can only use them during the few hours in which power is available.
The level of health services offered in the Gaza Strip falls far short of meeting the needs of the population, and many essential treatments are not available there. Israel prevents doctors from traveling to medical conferences and seminars to keep abreast of innovations in their field. In addition, bringing new medical equipment into Gaza, or spare parts to repair existing equipment, requires Israeli consent, which is often given after many delays and sometimes, not given at all. Patients requiring treatment that is unavailable in Gaza have to ask Israel for permits to travel to hospitals in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel rarely grants the permits, and restricts them to cases it defines as “life threatening” – a far cry from meeting the patients’ needs.
Military operations
Since the disengagement in 2005, Israel has launched several rounds of fighting in the Gaza Strip, killing thousands of people, destroying thousands of structures and severely harming infrastructure that was already on the brink of collapse. These attacks exacerbated the already dire situation in Gaza. The continued blockade prevents reconstruction, and tens of thousands of persons are still homeless in Gaza.
Operation Cast Lead: On 27 December 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, which lasted until 18 January 2009. According to data collected by B’Tselem, Israel killed 1,391 Palestinians during the fighting, at least 759 of them civilians who had not taken part in the hostilities. Of these, 318 were under the age of 18. Israel also caused extensive damage to structures and to infrastructure, including electricity, water and sewage facilities that were on the brink of collapse even before the fighting and were now rendered completely dysfunctional. According to UN figures, Israel destroyed more than 3,500 homes, leaving tens of thousands of people without shelter or a home to return to. During the offensive, Palestinians fired rocket and mortar shells toward Israel, with the deliberate intention of harming civilians. Three Israeli civilians and one member of the Israeli security forces were killed as a result. In addition, nine Israeli soldiers were killed, four of them from friendly fire.
Operation Pillar of Defense: On 14 November 2012, Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense. The fighting lasted eight days, during which, according to B’Tselem figures, Israel killed 167 Palestinians, at least 87 of whom had not participated in the fighting. Of these, 32 were under the age of 18. Over the course of the fighting, four Israeli civilians and two members of the security forces were killed by rockets and shells that Palestinians fired from the Gaza Strip.
Operation Protective Edge: On 8 July 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge. The fighting lasted 50 days, until 26 August 2014, with Israel wreaking havoc on Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. According to B’Tselem figures, during the fighting, Israel killed 2,203 Palestinians, including 1,371 who did not take part in the fighting. About a quarter of all the casualties, 548, were under age 18 and 527 of them did not take part in the fighting. During the fighting, Palestinians killed five Israeli civilians, including one child, as well as one foreign national and 63 soldiers. Three other soldiers were killed by friendly fire, and another was killed in an accident.
Guardian of the Walls: On 10 May 2021, Israel launched Operation Guardian of the Walls. The fighting lasted 11 days, until 21 May 2021, with Israel destroying buildings and civilian infrastructure. According to B’Tselem’s figures, during the fighting, Israel killed 232 Palestinians, including 137 who did not take part in the fighting, 53 of whom were under age 18. During the fighting, six Israeli civilians and three foreign nationals were killed by rockets that Palestinians fired. One member of the security forces was killed by Palestinian fire.
“No go” zones
Israel treats an area inside the Gaza Strip, near the border fence, as its own territory, using it to create a “buffer zone” inside the already narrow Strip. After the second intifada broke out, the military declared a vast area near the Gaza-Israel border, much of it farmland, off-limits to Palestinians. It never officially announced this policy or clarified to the residents which areas exactly were off limits to them, which increases the danger they face.
To enforce this access ban, the military has introduced open-fire regulations that permit firing at Palestinians found inside the zone – even if they pose no threat to anyone’s life. The implementation of these regulations has resulted in the killing of at least 87 Palestinians who did not take part in fighting from the time the Disengagement Plan was implemented in September 2005 until the end of May 2022, excluding rounds of fighting. Of these casualties, 41 were killed when they were in these zones as part of their daily routine, including local residents and farmers. Fourteen more people were killed when they approached the fence, planning to cross it in search of work inside Israel.
Another measure employed by the military to enforce the prohibition on approaching the fence is spraying herbicides on crops near the fence – on the Gazan side. The spraying is done without advance notice, and without alerting residents that they must protect crops that lie several hundred meters away from the fence, which are also harmed by the spraying. Israel has also destroyed vast areas near the border during the rounds of fighting, including demolishing entire neighbourhoods.
In the past, Gaza residents grew fruit trees and kept hothouses in these areas. Some were used for grazing livestock raised for food. However, because of Israel’s policy, and after the military destroyed various crops in the area, many farmers had to switch to crops that require less maintenance and that the army cannot claim block its field of vision. Today, the area is mostly home to dryland farming crops, which require no irrigation, such as wheat, barley, beans and various kinds of vegetables.
The Great March of Return protests
On 30 March 2018 – Land Day – Palestinians in the Gaza Strip began to hold regular protests along the perimeter fence, demanding an end to the blockade Israel has imposed on the Strip since 2007 and fulfillment of the right of return. The protests, held mostly on Fridays with tens of thousands participating, including children, women and seniors, continued until the end of 2019.
Israel was quick to frame the protests as illegitimate even before they began. It made various attempts to prevent the demonstrations and declared in advance it would violently disperse the protesters. The military deployed dozens of snipers along the fence, and various officials clarified that the open-fire regulations would permit lethal fire against anyone attempting to approach the fence or damage it. When Gaza residents went ahead with the demonstrations regardless, Israel made good on its threats and its open-fire regulations permitted use of live fire against unarmed protestors. As a result, 223 Palestinians, 46 of them under the age of 18, were killed and some 8,000 injured. The vast majority of the persons killed or injured were unarmed and posed no threat to the well-armored soldiers standing on the other side of the fence.
Israel responded to international criticism of the casualty toll by saying it would investigate the incidents. Yet today, more than forty months after the first demonstration, it is clear that the military’s investigations in relation to the Gaza protests were never intended to ensure justice for the victims or to deter troops from similar action. These investigations – much like the investigations conducted by the military law enforcement system in other cases in which soldiers have harmed Palestinians – are part of Israel’s whitewashing mechanism, and their main purpose remains to silence external criticism, so that Israel can continue to implement its policy unchanged.
EINDE BERICHT
Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Noten 7 en 8/Blokkade Gaza
[ Link ]No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.Pillage is prohibited.Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
We are writing to express our deep concern about Israel’s continuing blockade of the Gaza Strip, a measure that is depriving its population of food, fuel, and basic services, and constitutes a form of collective punishment.”
”“The people of Gaza have endured the unendurable and suffered what is insufferable for six years. Israel’s collective punishment of the civilian population in Gaza must end today,” said the Special Rapporteur.”
GENEVA, 14 June 2013 – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, Richard Falk, called today on Israel to end its blockade over the Gaza Strip, six years after it was tightened following the Hamas takeover in June 2007. The human suffering of the land, sea and air blockade imposed on the 1.75 million Palestinians living in one of the most densely populated and impoverished areas of the world has been devastating.
“Six years of Israel’s calculated strangulation of the Gaza Strip has stunted the economy and has kept most Gazans in a state of perpetual poverty and aid dependency,” said the UN expert. “Whether it is fishermen unable to go beyond six nautical miles from the shore, farmers unable to access their land near the Israeli fence, businessmen suffering from severe restrictions on the export of goods, students denied access to education in the West Bank, or patients in need of urgent medical attention refused access to Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank, the destructive designs of blockade have been felt by every single household in Gaza. It is especially felt by Palestinian families separated by the blockade,” he added.
“The people of Gaza have endured the unendurable and suffered what is insufferable for six years. Israel’s collective punishment of the civilian population in Gaza must end today,” said the Special Rapporteur.
“Israel has the responsibility as the Occupying Power to protect the civilian population. But instead of allowing a healthy people and economy to flourish, Israeli authorities have sealed off the Gaza Strip. According to statistics released by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, last month’s exports out of Gaza consisted of 49 truckloads of empty boxes, three truckloads of spices, one truckload of cut flowers, and one truckload of furniture,” he said. In 2012, the total number of truckloads of exports leaving Gaza was 254, compared to 9,787 in 2005 before the tightening of the blockade.
“It does not take an economist to figure out that such a trickle of goods out of Gaza is not the basis of a viable economy,” noted the UN expert. “The easing of the blockade announced by Israel in June 2010 after its deadly assault on the flotilla of ships carrying aid to the besieged population resulted only in an increase in consumer goods entering Gaza, and has not improved living conditions for most Gazans. Since 2007, the productive capacity of Gaza has dwindled with 80 percent of factories in Gaza now closed or operating at half capacity or less due to the loss of export markets and prohibitively high operating costs as a result of the blockade. 34 percent of Gaza’s workforce is unemployed including up to half the youth population, 44 percent of Gazans are food insecure, 80 percent of Gazans are aid recipients,” he said.
“To make matters worse, 90 percent of the water from the Gaza aquifer is unsafe for human consumption without treatment, and severe fuel and electricity shortage results in outages of up to 12 hours a day. Only a small proportion of Gazans who can afford to obtain supplies through the tunnel economy are buffered from the full blow of the blockade, but tunnels alone cannot meet the daily needs of the population in Gaza.”
“Last year, the United Nations forecast that under existing conditions, Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020. Less optimistic forecasts presented to me were that the Gaza Strip may no longer be viable only three years from now,” said the Special Rapporteur. “It’s clear that the Israeli authorities set out six years ago to devitalize the Gazan population and economy,” he said, referring to a study undertaken by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in early 2008 detailing the minimum number of calories Palestinians in Gaza need to consume on a daily basis to avoid malnutrition. The myriad of restrictions imposed by Israel do not permit civilians in Gaza to develop to their full potential, and enjoy and exercise fully their human rights.
ENDS
In 2008, the UN Human Rights Council designated Richard Falk (United States of America) as the fifth Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights on Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the UN Commission on Human Rights.
””“Six years of Israel’s calculated strangulation of the Gaza Strip has stunted the economy and has kept most Gazans in a state of perpetual poverty and aid dependency,” said the UN expert”
”“Whether it is fishermen unable to go beyond six nautical miles from the shore, farmers unable to access their land near the Israeli fence, businessmen suffering from severe restrictions on the export of goods, students denied access to education in the West Bank, or patients in need of urgent medical attention refused access to Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank, the destructive designs of blockade have been felt by every single household in Gaza”
”Gaza wordt al 14 jaar geblokkeerd door Israël, waardoor inwoners Gaza niet kunnen verlaten. De economie is mede door de blokkade verwoest en mensen hebben nauwelijks toegang tot de meest onmisbare diensten, zoals gezondheidszorg en onderwijs.”
Ik blijf maar denken aan iedereen die een geliefde heeft verloren, alle mensen die hun huis zijn kwijtgeraakt, en met niets opnieuw moeten beginnen.’ Laila Barhoum is beleidsmedewerker van Oxfam in Gaza. Nog voor het staakt-het-vuren inging deelde zij haar aangrijpende verslag over het recente geweld.
‘Als je in Gaza de zwarte rook in de lucht ziet, weet je dat je een van de gelukkigen bent. Want deze keer was jij het niet. Daarna komt het schuldgevoel. Want terwijl jij op dit moment veilig bent, weet je dat iemand anders lijdt. Iemand anders heeft iets of iemand verloren.
‘We vrezen de duisternis van de nacht, wanneer je niet meer kunt zeggen waar of hoe dichtbij de zwarte rook is. Je kunt het alleen horen, voelen en, als je geluk hebt, overleven. Dus komen we samen, steunen elkaar en zeggen tegen onszelf dat we de nacht zullen overleven. En we wachten op de veroordeling van de internationale gemeenschap – een veroordeling die nooit komt.’
‘De aanvallen op Gaza begonnen snel en op grote schaal. Vrijwel onmiddellijk werden de geluiden van het gewone leven – vrouwen die boodschappen doen om hun Ramadan-maaltijden te bereiden, mannen die met vrienden en buren kletsen, kinderen die op straat spelen – vervangen door een angstaanjagende stilte. Een stilte die alleen wordt verbroken door het geluid van drones, gevechtsvliegtuigen en luchtaanvallen.’
‘Het normale leven verdween en is vervangen door angst, afwachting en afschuw die zich van het ene huis naar het andere verspreidt. Ik had me niet kunnen voorstellen dat het coronavirus in een oogwenk de minste van onze zorgen zou worden. Dat ik, in plaats van me zorgen te maken over het overleven van een pandemie of niet te veel chocolade eten tijdens het Suikerfeest, me zorgen moet maken over mijn leven en dat van mijn gezin.
‘Ik word achtervolgd door beelden van vrouwen die door de straten rennen en hun kinderen vasthouden. Ik blijf maar denken aan iedereen die een geliefde heeft verloren, alle mensen die huis zijn kwijtgeraakt en met niets opnieuw moeten beginnen. Toen de namen van de doden begonnen binnen te druppelen, deden we het enige wat we konden doen: thuisblijven en wachten. Wanneer vrienden buiten Gaza me zeggen, blijf veilig, kan ik alleen maar denken: hoe? Ik heb geen antiraketsysteem zoals Israël om me te beschermen, geen schuilkelder om in te schuilen, geen plaats waar ik kan vluchten.’
Dit is de situatie in de regio
Burgers in Gaza worstelen enorm met de gevolgen van de bombardementen van de afgelopen weken. Hoewel het staakt-het-vuren stand lijkt te houden, zijn de gevolgen van het geweld immens voor de 2 miljoen inwoners van Gaza. Er is onvoldoende schoon drinkwater en een groot gebrek aan huisvesting. Samen met lokale partners werkt Oxfam hard om mensen direct te voorzien van water en de verwoeste watersystemen te herstellen.
Duizenden raketten zijn de afgelopen weken vanuit Gaza afgevuurd op Israël en Israël voerde dagelijks zware bombardementen uit op Gaza. Vooral burgers zijn het slachtoffer. Er zijn 240 mensen gedood en meer dan 1.000 huizen en bedrijfsruimtes verwoest. Bijna 100.000 mensen zijn door de bombardementen ontheemd geraakt en proberen naar huis terug te keren.
Achtergrond
Gaza wordt al 14 jaar geblokkeerd door Israël, waardoor inwoners Gaza niet kunnen verlaten. De economie is mede door de blokkade verwoest en mensen hebben nauwelijks toegang tot de meest onmisbare diensten, zoals gezondheidszorg en onderwijs. Huizen, wegen en noodzakelijke diensten zijn het doelwit geworden van willekeurige bombardementen, waardoor de al zwakke gezondheidszorg en watersystemen op instorten staan.
De recente oplaaiing van het conflict is mede het gevolg van wekenlang buitensporig geweld door de Israëlische politie en kolonisten tegen Palestijnen bij de Al Aqsa moskee en tegen medisch personeel en demonstranten in bezet Oost-Jeruzalem.
Oxfam veroordeelt álle schendingen van het internationaal humanitair recht. Burgers mogen nooit een doelwit zijn. Tegelijkertijd mogen we niet vergeten hoe deze situatie is begonnen: Palestijnen maakten gebruik van hun recht om samen te komen, te bidden, te protesteren en in hun eigen huis te wonen, maar werden geconfronteerd met buitensporig politiegeweld. Palestijnen hebben al decennialang te maken met schendingen van hun rechten door de Israëlische regering. De internationale gemeenschap moet alle partijen verantwoordelijk houden om de plichten onder het internationaal recht na te komen.
Voor Palestijnen in Gaza is dit niets nieuws. We hebben 14 jaar blokkade doorstaan en 3 opeenvolgende oorlogen in de afgelopen 10 jaar. De geschiedenis herhaalt zich niet; onze geschiedenis is ons heden. We zijn uitgeput. Dag in dag uit zien we de bommen vallen op huizen waar onze vrienden en familie wonen en op gebouwen waar onze collega’s werken, ons afvragend of wij de volgende zijn.
‘En we wachten tevergeefs op de erkenning van ons mens-zijn door de internationale gemeenschap, in woorden en daden. Omdat we geen van beide krijgen, hebben we het gevoel dat onze rechten er niet toe doen, dat onze levens er niet toe doen en dat we er als mensen niet toe doen.’
‘Wanneer uiteindelijk een staakt-het-vuren wordt afgekondigd, zullen we ons opnieuw uit het puin graven en beginnen met de wederopbouw. Om vervolgens te wachten op een nieuwe cyclus van bombardementen die vernietigen wat we hebben opgebouwd. We hadden gehoopt dat deze cyclus eindelijk zou worden doorbroken toen Biden vorig jaar werd gekozen als president van de Verenigde Staten. Zoals veel mensen hier en over de hele wereld, vierde ik feest omdat mensenrechten in binnen-en buitenland centraal stonden in zijn campagne. Onze hoop is al eerder de bodem ingeslagen door Amerikaanse leiders, maar we hoopten dat de verkiezing van Biden op zijn minst een kleine stap in de goede richting zou betekenen.’
‘Maar zijn reactie deze week op de escalerende vijandelijkheden in Gaza en in de bezette Palestijnse gebieden en Israël kwam niet in de buurt van zijn eerdere mooie woorden. Het was niet meer dan een eenzijdige veroordeling van de raketaanvallen. We werden in de steek gelaten en voelen ons opnieuw vergeten.
‘Wanneer ik met Amerikaanse functionarissen spreek, dring ik er bij hen op aan te beseffen dat de miljarden aan onvoorwaardelijke militaire hulp aan Israël die zij elk jaar goedkeuren – hulp die het Israëlische leger tegen mijn volk gebruikt – betekent dat de Verenigde Staten geen neutrale toeschouwer of een onpartijdige vredesbemiddelaar zijn, maar het conflict aanwakkeren. Ik zeg hen dat het allang tijd is dat ze de diepere oorzaken van het geweld en de schendingen van de mensenrechten, en de medeplichtigheid van de VS daaraan, kritisch te onderzoeken. Als we niet de veranderingen en acties zien die nodig zijn, zal deze escalatie niet het einde van de cyclus zijn.
‘Ik weet niet waar de volgende aanval zal plaatsvinden, maar we weten dat hij ons kan treffen.’
Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Noten 10 en 11/Blokkade Gaza
(Gaza) – Israel’s sweeping restrictions on leaving Gaza deprive its more than two million residents of opportunities to better their lives, Human Rights Watch said today on the fifteenth anniversary of the 2007 closure. The closure has devastated the economy in Gaza, contributed to fragmentation of the Palestinian people, and forms part of Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians.
Israel’s closure policy blocks most Gaza residents from going to the West Bank, preventing professionals, artists, athletes, students, and others from pursuing opportunities within Palestine and from traveling abroad via Israel, restricting their rights to work and an education. Restrictive Egyptian policies at its Rafah crossing with Gaza, including unnecessary delays and mistreatment of travelers, have exacerbated the closure’s harm to human rights.
“Israel, with Egypt’s help, has turned Gaza into an open-air prison,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “As many people around the world are once again traveling two years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gaza’s more than two million Palestinians remain under what amounts to a 15-year-old lockdown.”
Israel should end its generalized ban on travel for Gaza residents and permit free movement of people to and from Gaza, subject to, at most, individual screening and physical searches for security purposes.
Between February 2021 and March 2022, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 Palestinians who sought to travel out of Gaza via either the Israeli-run Erez crossing or the Egyptian-administered Rafah crossing. Human Rights Watch wrote to Israeli and Egyptian authorities to solicit their perspectives on its findings, and separately to seek information about an Egyptian travel company that operates at the Rafah crossing but had received no responses at this writing.
Since 2007, Israeli authorities have, with narrow exceptions, banned Palestinians from leaving through Erez, the passenger crossing from Gaza into Israel, through which they can reach the West Bank and travel abroad via Jordan. Israel also prevents Palestinian authorities from operating an airport or seaport in Gaza. Israeli authorities also sharply restrict the entry and exit of goods.
They often justify the closure, which came after Hamas seized political control over Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in June 2007, on security grounds. Israeli authorities have said they want to minimize travel between Gaza and the West Bank to prevent the export of “a human terrorist network” from Gaza to the West Bank, which has a porous border with Israel and where hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers live.
This policy has reduced travel to a fraction of what it was two decades ago, Human Rights Watch said. Israeli authorities have instituted a formal “policy of separation” between Gaza and the West Bank, despite international consensus that these two parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory form a “single territorial unit.” Israel accepted that principle in the 1995 Oslo Accords, signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israeli authorities restrict all travel between Gaza and the West Bank, even when the travel takes place via the circuitous route through Egypt and Jordan rather than through Israeli territory.
Due to these policies, Palestinian professionals, students, artists, and athletes living in Gaza have missed vital opportunities for advancement not available in Gaza. Human Rights Watch interviewed seven people who said that Israeli authorities did not respond to their requests for travel through Erez, and three others who said Israel rejected their permits, apparently for not fitting within Israeli’s narrow criteria.
Walaa Sada, 31, a filmmaker, said that she applied for permits to take part in film training in the West Bank in 2014 and 2018, after spending years convincing her family to allow her to travel alone, but Israeli authorities never responded to her applications. The hands-on nature of the training, requiring filming live scenes and working in studios, made remote participation impracticable and Sada ended up missing the sessions.
The “world narrowed” when she received these rejections, Sada said, making her feel “stuck in a small box.… For us in Gaza, the hands of the clock stopped. People all over the world can easily and quickly book flight and travel, while we … die waiting for our turn.”
The Egyptian authorities have exacerbated the closure’s impact by restricting movement out of Gaza and at times fully sealing its Rafah border crossing, Gaza’s only outlet aside from Erez to the outside world. Since May 2018, Egyptian authorities have been keeping Rafah open more regularly, making it, amid the sweeping Israeli restrictions, the primary outlet to the outside world for Gaza residents.
Palestinians, however, still face onerous obstacles traveling through Egypt, including having to wait weeks for permission to travel, unless they are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to travel companies with significant ties to Egyptian authorities to expedite their travel, denials of entry, and abuse by Egyptian authorities.
Sada said also received an opportunity to participate in a workshop on screenwriting in Tunisia in 2019, but that she could not afford the US$2000 it would cost her to pay for the service that would ensure that she could travel on time. Her turn to travel came up six weeks later, after the workshop had already been held.
As an occupying power that maintains significant control over many aspects of life in Gaza, Israel has obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure the welfare of the population there. Palestinians also have the right under international human rights law to freedom of movement, in particular within the occupied territory, a right that Israel can restrict under international law only in response to specific security threats.
Israel’s policy, though, presumptively denies free movement to people in Gaza, with narrow exceptions, irrespective of any individualized assessment of the security risk a person may pose. These restrictions on the right to freedom of movement do not meet the requirement of being strictly necessary and proportionate to achieve a lawful objective. Israel has had years and many opportunities to develop more narrowly tailored responses to security threats that minimize restrictions on rights.
Egypt’s legal obligations toward Gaza residents are more limited, as it is not an occupying power. However, as a state party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, it should ensure respect for the convention “in all circumstances,” including protections for civilians living under military occupation who are unable to travel due to unlawful restrictions imposed by the occupying power. The Egyptian authorities should also consider the impact of their border closure on the rights of Palestinians living in Gaza who are unable to travel in and out of Gaza through another route, including the right to leave a country.
Egyptian authorities should lift unreasonable obstacles that restrict Palestinians’ rights and allow transit via its territory, subject to security considerations, and ensure that their decisions are transparent and not arbitrary and take into consideration the human rights of those affected.
“The Gaza closure blocks talented, professional people, with much to give their society, from pursuing opportunities that people elsewhere take for granted,” Shakir said. “Barring Palestinians in Gaza from moving freely within their homeland stunts lives and underscores the cruel reality of apartheid and persecution for millions of Palestinians.”
Israel’s Obligations to Gaza under International Law
Israeli authorities claim “broad powers and discretion to decide who may enter its territory” and that “a foreigner has no legal right to enter the State’s sovereign territory, including for the purposes of transit into the [West Bank] or aboard.” While international human rights law gives wide latitude to governments with regard to entry of foreigners, Israel has heightened obligations toward Gaza residents. Because of the continuing controls Israel exercises over the lives and welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, Israel remains an occupying power under international humanitarian law, despite withdrawing its military forces and settlements from the territory in 2005. Both the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardians of international humanitarian law, have reached this determination. As the occupying power, Israel remains bound to provide residents of Gaza the rights and protections afforded to them by the law of occupation. Israeli authorities continue to control Gaza’s territorial waters and airspace, and the movement of people and goods, except at Gaza’s border with Egypt. Israel also controls the Palestinian population registry and the infrastructure upon which Gaza relies.
Israel has an obligation to respect the human rights of Palestinians living in Gaza, including their right to freedom of movement throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory and abroad, which affects both the right to leave a country and the right to enter their own country. Israel is also obligated to respect Palestinians’ rights for which freedom of movement is a precondition, for example the rights to education, work, and health. The UNHuman Rights Committee has said that while states can restrict freedom of movement for security reasons or to protect public health, public order, and the rights of others, any such restrictions must be proportional and “the restrictions must not impair the essence of the right; the relation between the right and restriction, between norm and exception, must not be reversed.”
While the law of occupation permits occupying powers to impose security restrictions on civilians, it also requires them to restore public life for the occupied population. That obligation increases in a prolonged occupation, in which the occupier has more time and opportunity to develop more narrowly tailored responses to security threats that minimize restrictions on rights. In addition, the needs of the occupied population increase over time. Suspending virtually all freedom of movement for a short period interrupts temporarily normal public life, but long-term, indefinite suspension in Gaza has had a much more debilitating impact, fragmentating populations, fraying familial and social ties, compoundingdiscrimination against women, and blocking people from pursuing opportunities to improve their lives.
The impact is particularly damaging given the denial of freedom of movement to people who are confined to a sliver of the occupied territory, unable to interact in person with the majority of the occupied population that lives in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and its rich assortment of educational, cultural, religious, and commercial institutions.
After 55 years of occupation and 15 years of closure in Gaza with no end in sight, Israel should fully respect the human rights of Palestinians, using as a benchmark the rights it grants Israeli citizens. Israel should abandon an approach that bars movement absent exceptional individual humanitarian circumstances it defines, in favor of an approach that permits free movement absent exceptional individual security circumstances.
Israel’s Closure
Most Palestinians who grew up in Gaza under this closure have never left the 40-by-11 kilometer (25-by-7 mile) Gaza Strip. For the last 25 years, Israel has increasingly restricted the movement of Gaza residents. Since June 2007, when Hamas seized control over Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA), Gaza has been mostly closed.
Israeli authorities justify this closure on security grounds, in light of “Hamas’ rise to power in the Gaza Strip,” as they lay out in a December 2019 court filing. Authorities highlight in particular the risk that Hamas and armed Palestinian groups will recruit or coerce Gaza residents who have permits to travel via Erez “for the commission of terrorist acts and the transfer of operatives, knowledge, intelligence, funds or equipment for terrorist activists.” Their policy, though, amounts to a blanket denial with rare exceptions, rather than a generalized respect for the right of Palestinians to freedom of movement, to be denied only on the basis of individualized security reasons.
The Israeli army has since 2007 limited travel through the Erez crossing except in what it deems “exceptional humanitarian circumstances,” mainly encompassing those needing vital medical treatment outside Gaza and their companions, although the authorities also make exceptions for hundreds of businesspeople and laborers and some others. Israel has restricted movement even for those seeking to travel under these narrowexceptions, affecting their rights to health and life, among others, as Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented. Most Gaza residents do not fit within these exemptions to travel through Erez, even if it is to reach the West Bank.
Between January 2015 and December 2019, before the onset of Covid-19 restrictions, an average of about 373 Palestinians left Gaza via Erez each day, less than 1.5 percent of the daily average of 26,000 in September 2000, before the closure, according to the Israeli rights group Gisha. Israeli authorities tightened the closure further during the Covid-19 pandemic – between March 2020 and December 2021, an average of about 143 Palestinians left Gaza via Erez each day, according to Gisha.
Israeli authorities announced in March 2022 that they would authorize 20,000 permits for Palestinians in Gaza to work in Israel in construction and agriculture, though Gisha reports that the actual number of valid permits in this category stood at 9,424, as of May 22.
Israeli authorities have also for more than two decades sharply restricted the use by Palestinians of Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters. They blocked the reopening of the airport that Israeli forces made inoperable in January 2002, and prevented the Palestinian authorities from building a seaport, leaving Palestinians dependent on leaving Gaza by land to travel abroad. The few Palestinians permitted to cross at Erez are generally barred from traveling abroad via Israel’s international airport and must instead travel abroad via Jordan. Palestinians wishing to leave Gaza via Erez, either to the West Bank or abroad, submit requests through the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee in Gaza, which forwards applications to Israeli authorities who decide on whether to grant a permit.
Separation Between Gaza and the West Bank
As part of the closure, Israeli authorities have sought to “differentiate” between their policy approaches to Gaza and the West Bank, such as imposing more sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods from Gaza to the West Bank, and promote separation between these two parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The army’s “Procedure for Settlement in the Gaza Strip by Residents of Judea and Samaria,” published in 2018, states that “in 2006, a decision was made to introduce a policy of separation between the Judea and Samaria Area [the West Bank] and the Gaza Strip in light of Hamas’ rise to power in the Gaza Strip. The policy currently in effect is explicitly aimed at reducing travel between the areas.”
In each of the 11 cases Human Rights Watch reviewed of people seeking to reach the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for professional and educational opportunities not available in Gaza, Israeli authorities did not respond to requests for permits or denied them, either for security reasons or because they did not conform to the closure policy. Human Rights Watch also reviewed permit applications on the website of the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, or screenshots of it, including the status of the permit applications, when they were sent on to the Israeli authorities and the response received, if any.
Raed Issa, a 42-year-old artist, said that the Israeli authorities did not respond to his application for a permit in early December 2015, to attend an exhibit of his art at a Ramallah art gallery between December 27 and January 16, 2016.
The “Beyond the Dream” exhibit sought to highlight the situation in Gaza after the 2014 war. Issa said that the Palestinian Civil Affairs committee continued to identify the status of his application as “sent and waiting for response” and he ended up having to attend the opening of the exhibit virtually. Issa felt that not being physically present hampered his ability to engage with audiences, and to network and promote his work, which he believes limited his reach and hurt sales of his artwork. He described feeling pained “that I am doing my own art exhibit in my homeland and not able to attend it, not able to move freely.”
Ashraf Sahweel, 47, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gaza Center for Art and Culture, said that Gaza-based artists routinely do not hear back after applying for Israeli permits, forcing them to miss opportunities to attend exhibitions and other cultural events. A painter himself, he applied for seven permits between 2013 and 2022, but Israeli authorities either did not respond or denied each application, he said. Sahweel said that he has “given up hope on the possibility to travel via Erez.”
Palestinian athletes in Gaza face similar restrictions when seeking to compete with their counterparts in the West Bank, even though the Israeli army guidelines specifically identify “entry of sportspeople” as among the permissible exemptions to the closure. The guidelines, updated in February 2022, set out that “all Gaza Strip residents who are members of the national and local sports teams may enter Israel in transit to the Judea and Samaria area [West Bank] or abroad for official activities of the teams.”
Hilal al-Ghawash, 25, told Human Rights Watch that his football team, Khadamat Rafah, had a match in July 2019 with a rival West Bank team, the Balata Youth Center, in the finals of Palestine Club, with the winner entitled to represent Palestine in the Asian Cup. The Palestinian Football Federation applied for permits for the entire 22-person team and 13-person staff, but Israeli authorities, without explanation, granted permits to only 4 people, only one of whom was a player. The game was postponed as a result.
After Gisha appealed the decision in the Jerusalem District Court, Israeli authorities granted 11 people permits, including six players, saying the other 24 were denied on security grounds that were not specified. Al-Ghawash was among the players who did not receive a permit. The Jerusalem district court upheld the denials. With Khadamat Rafah prevented from reaching the West Bank, the Palestine Football Federation canceled the Palestine Cup finals match.
Al-Ghawash said that West Bank matches hold particular importance for Gaza football players, since they offer the opportunity to showcase their talents for West Bank clubs, which are widely considered superior to those in Gaza and pay better. Despite the cancellation, al-Ghawash said, the Balata Youth Center later that year offered him a contract to play for them. The Palestinian Football Federation again applied for a permit on al-Ghawash’s behalf, but he said he did not receive a response and was unable to join the team.
In 2021, al-Ghawash signed a contract with a different West Bank team, the Hilal al-Quds club. The Palestinian Football Federation again applied, but this time, the Israeli army denied the permit on unspecified security grounds. Al-Ghawash said he does not belong to any armed group or political movement and has no idea on what basis Israeli authorities denied him a permit.
Missing these opportunities has forced al-Ghawash to forgo not only higher pay, but also the chance to play for more competitive West Bank teams, which could have brought him closer to his goal of joining the Palestinian national team. “There’s a future in the West Bank, but, here in Gaza, there’s only a death sentence,” he said. “The closure devastates players’ future. Gaza is full of talented people, but it’s so difficult to leave.”
Palestinian students and professionals are frequently unable to obtain permits to study or train in the West Bank. In 2016, Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem agreed to have 10 physics students from Al-Azhar University in Gaza come to the hospital for a six-month training program. Israeli authorities denied five students permits without providing a rationale, two of the students said.
The five other students initially received permits valid for only 14 days, and then encountered difficulties receiving subsequent permits. None were able to complete the full program, the two students said. One, Mahmoud Dabour, 28, said that when he applied for a second permit, he received no response. Two months later, he applied again and managed to get a permit valid for one week. He received one other permit, valid for 10 days, but then, when he returned and applied for the fifth time, Israeli authorities rejected his permit request without providing a reason. As a result, he could not finish the training program, and, without the certification participants receive upon completion, he said, he cannot apply for jobs or attend conferences or workshops abroad in the field.
Dabour said that the training cannot be offered in Gaza, since the necessary radiation material required expires too quickly for it to be functional after passing through the time-consuming Israeli inspections of materials entering the Gaza Strip. There are no functioning devices of the kind that students need for the training in Gaza, Dabour said.
One of the students whose permit was denied said, “I feel I studied for five years for nothing, that my life has stopped.” The student asked that his name be withheld for his security.
Two employees of Zimam, a Ramallah-based organization focused on youth empowerment and conflict resolution, said that the Israeli authorities repeatedly denied them permits to attend organizational training and strategy meetings. Atta al-Masri, the 31-year-old Gaza regional director, said he has applied four times for permits, but never received one. Israeli authorities did not respond the first three times and, the last time in 2021, denied him a permit on the grounds that it was “not in conformity” with the permissible exemptions to the closure. He has worked for Zimam since 2009, but only met his colleagues in person for the first time in Egypt in March 2022.
Ahed Abdullah, 29, Zimam’s youth programs coordinator in Gaza, said she applied twice for permits in 2021, but Israeli authorities denied both applications on grounds of “nonconformity:”
This is supposed to be my right. My simplest right. Why did they reject me? My colleagues who are outside Palestine managed to make it, while I am inside Palestine, I wasn’t able to go to the other part of Palestine … it’s only 2-3 hours from Gaza to Ramallah, why should I get the training online? Why am I deprived of being with my colleagues and doing activities with them instead of doing them in dull breakout rooms on Zoom?
Human Rights Watch has previously documented that the closure has prevented specialists in the use of assistive devices for people with disabilities from opportunities for hands-on training on the latest methods of evaluation, device maintenance, and rehabilitation. Human Rights Watch also documented restrictions on the movement of human rights workers. Gisha, the Israeli human rights group, has reported that Israel has blocked health workers in Gaza from attending training in the West Bank on how to operate new equipment and hampered the work of civil society organizations operating in Gaza.
Israeli authorities have also made it effectively impossible for Palestinians from Gaza to relocate to the West Bank. Because of Israeli restrictions, thousands of Gaza residents who arrived on temporary permits and now live in the West Bank are unable to gain legal residency. Although Israel claims that these restrictions are related to maintaining security, evidence Human Rights Watch collected suggests the main motivation is to control Palestinian demography across the West Bank, whose land Israel seeks to retain, in contrast to the Gaza Strip.
Egypt
With most Gaza residents unable to travel via Erez, the Egyptian-administered Rafah crossing has become Gaza’s primary outlet to the outside world, particularly in recent years. Egyptian authorities kept Rafah mostly closed for nearly five years following the July 2013 military coup in Egypt that toppled President Mohamed Morsy, whom the military accused of receiving support from Hamas. Egypt, though, eased restrictions in May 2018, amid the Great March of Return, the recurring Palestinian protests at the time near the fences separating Gaza and Israel.
Despite keeping Rafah open more regularly since May 2018, movement via Rafah is a fraction of what it was before the 2013 coup in Egypt. Whereas an average of 40,000 crossed monthly in both directions before the coup, the monthly average was 12,172 in 2019 and 15,077 in 2021, according to Gisha.
Human Rights Watch spoke with 16 Gaza residents who sought to travel via Rafah. Almost all said they opted for this route because of the near impossibility of receiving an Israeli permit to travel via Erez.
Gaza residents hoping to leave via Rafah are required to register in advance via a process the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has deemed “confusing” and “obscure.” Gaza residents can either register via the formal registration process administered by Gaza’s Interior Ministry or informally via what is known as tanseeq,or travel coordination with Egyptian authorities, paying travel companies or mediators for a place on a separate list coordinated by Egyptian authorities. Having two distinct lists of permitted travelers coordinated by different authorities has fueled “allegations of the payment of bribes in Gaza and in Egypt to ensure travel and a faster response,” according to OCHA.
The formal process often takes two to three months, except for those traveling for medical reasons, whose requests are processed faster, said Gaza residents who sought to leave Gaza via Rafah. Egyptian authorities have at times rejected those seeking to cross Rafah into Egypt on the grounds that they did not meet specific criteria for travel. The criteria lack transparency, but Gisha reported that they include having a referral for a medical appointment in Egypt or valid documents to enter a third country.
To avoid the wait and risk of denial, many choose instead the tanseeqroute. Several interviewees said that they paid large sums of money to Palestinian brokers or Gaza-based travel companies that work directly with Egyptian authorities to expedite people’s movement via Rafah. On social media, some of these companies advertise that they can assure travel within days to those who provide payment and a copy of their passport. The cost of tanseeq has fluctuated from several hundred US dollars to several thousand dollars over the last decade, based in part on how frequently Rafah is open.
In recent years, travel companies have offered an additional “VIP” tanseeq, which expedites travel without delays in transit between Rafah and Cairo, offers flexibility on travel date, and ensures better treatment by authorities. The cost was $700, as of January 2022.
The Cairo-based company offering the VIP tanseeq services, Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, has strong links with Egypt’s security establishment and is staffed largely by former Egyptian military officers, a human rights activist and a journalist who have investigated these issues told Human Rights Watch. This allows the company to reduce processing times and delays at checkpoints during the journey between Rafah and Cairo. The activist and journalist both asked that their names be withheld for security reasons.
The company is linked to prominent Egyptian businessman Ibrahim El-Argani, who has close ties with Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. Ergany heads the Union of Sinai Tribes, which works hand-in-hand with the Egyptian military and intelligence agencies against militants operating in North Sinai. Ergany, one of Egypt’s few businessmen able to export products to Gaza from Egypt, owns the Sinai Sons company, which has an exclusive contract to handle all contracts related to Gaza reconstruction efforts. Human Rights Watch wrote to El-Argani to solicit his perspectives on these issues, but had received no response at this writing.
A 34-year-old computer engineer and entrepreneur said that he sought to travel in 2019 to Saudi Arabia to meet an investor to discuss a potential project to sell car parts online. He chose not to apply to travel via Erez, as he had applied for permits eight times between 2016 and 2018 and had either been rejected or not heard back.
He initially registered via the formal Ministry of Interior process and received approval to travel after three months. However, on the day assigned for his exit via Rafah, an Egyptian officer there said he found his reason for travel not sufficiently “convincing” and denied him passage. A few months later, he tried to travel again for the same purpose, this time opting for tanseeq and paying $400, and, this time, he successfully reached Saudi Arabia within a week of seeking to travel.
He said that he would like to go on vacation with his wife, but worries that Egyptian authorities will not consider vacation a sufficiently compelling reason for travel and that his only option will be to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do tanseeq.
A 73-year-old man sought to travel via Rafah in February 2021, with his 46-year-old daughter, to get knee replacement surgery in al-Sheikh Zayed hospital in Cairo. He said Gaza lacks the capacity to provide such an operation. The man and his daughter are relatives of a Human Rights Watch staff member. They applied via the Interior Ministry process and received approval in a little over a week.
After they waited for several hours in the Egyptian hall in Rafah on the day of travel, though, Egyptian authorities included the daughter’s name among the 70 names of people who were not allowed to cross that day, the daughter said. The father showed the border officials a doctor’s note indicating that he needed someone to travel with him given his medical situation, but the officer told him, “You either travel alone or go back with her to Gaza.” She said she returned to Gaza, alongside 70 other people, and her father later traveled on his own.
Five people who did manage to travel via Rafah said that they experienced poor conditions and poor treatment, including intrusive searches, by the Egyptian authorities, with several saying that they felt Egyptian authorities treated them like “criminals.” Several people said that Egyptian officers confiscated items from them during the journey, including an expensive camera and a mobile phone, without apparent reason.
Upon leaving Rafah, Palestinians are transported by bus to Cairo’s airport. The trip takes about seven hours, but several people said that the journey took up to three days between long periods of waiting on the bus, at checkpoints and amid other delays, often in extreme weather. Many of those who traveled via Rafah said that, during this journey, Egyptian authorities prevented passengers from using their phones.
The parents of a 7-year-old boy with autism and a rare brain disease said they sought to travel for medical treatment for him in August 2021, but Egyptian authorities only allowed the boy and his mother to enter. The mother said their journey back to Gaza took four days, mostly as a result of Rafah being closed. During this time, she said, they spent hours waiting at checkpoints, in extreme heat, with her son crying nonstop. She said she felt “humiliated” and treated like “an animal,” observing that she “would rather die than travel again through Rafah.”
A 33-year-old filmmaker, who traveled via Rafah to Morocco in late 2019 to attend a film screening, said the return from Cairo to Rafah took three days, much of it spent at checkpoints amid the cold winter in the Sinai desert.
A 34-year-old man said that he planned to travel in August 2019 via Rafah to the United Arab Emirates for a job interview as an Arabic teacher. He said, on his travel date, Egyptian authorities turned him back, saying they had met their quota of travelers. He crossed the next day, but said that, as it was a Thursday and with Rafah closed on Friday, Egyptian authorities made travelers spend two nights sleeping at Rafah, without providing food or access to a clean bathroom.
The journey to Cairo airport then took two days, during which he described going through checkpoints where officers made passengers “put their hands behind their backs while they searched their suitcases.” As a result of these delays totaling four days since his assigned travel date, he missed his job interview and found out that someone else was hired. He is currently unemployed in Gaza.
Given the uncertainty of crossing at Rafah, Gaza residents said that they often wait to book their flight out of Cairo until they arrive. Booking so late often means, beyond other obstacles, having to wait until they can find a reasonably priced and suitable flight, planning extra days for travel and spending extra money on changeable or last-minute tickets. Similar dynamics prevail with regard to travel abroad via Erez to Amman.
Human Rights Watch interviewed four men under the age of 40 with visas to third countries, whom Egyptian authorities allowed entry only for the purpose of transit. The authorities transported these men to Cairo airport and made them wait in what is referred to as the “deportation room” until their flight time. The men likened the room to a “prison cell,” with limited facilities and unsanitary conditions. All described a system in which bribes are required to be able to leave the room to book a plane ticket, get food, drinks, or a cigarette, and avoid abuse. One of the men described an officer taking him outside the room, asking him, “Won’t you give anything to Egypt?” and said that others in the room told him that he then proceeded to do the same with them
”Because of the continuing controls Israel exercises over the lives and welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, Israel remains an occupying power under international humanitarian law, despite withdrawing its military forces and settlements from the territory in 2005”
”Gaza wordt al 14 jaar geblokkeerd door Israël, waardoor inwoners Gaza niet kunnen verlaten. De economie is mede door de blokkade verwoest en mensen hebben nauwelijks toegang tot de meest onmisbare diensten, zoals gezondheidszorg en onderwijs”
Mensenrechtenorganisaties slaan alarm over de situatie van ernstig zieke Palestijnen. Ze krijgen door de Israëlische blokkades geen levensreddende behandelingen buiten Gaza. In juni overleden twee baby’s, omdat ze niet op tijd medische zorg kregen.
Slechts drie dagen was Omar Ahmad Yagi verwijderd van een cruciale hartoperatie. De acht maanden oude Palestijnse baby had op 21 juni een afspraak staan in een Israëlisch ziekenhuis. Daar was hij al twee keer eerder met toestemming vanuit Gaza naar afgereisd, samen met zijn oma of moeder, voor behandeling van zijn hartaandoening.
De artsen zeiden dat hij dringend geopereerd moest worden. Twee keer – in april en juni – miste Omar de afspraak omdat zijn ouders geen toestemming van de Israëlische autoriteiten konden krijgen.
Kort voor de derde afspraak verslechterde zijn situatie. Zijn vader reed hem nog naar een ziekenhuis in Gaza, maar onderweg kreeg hij verstikkingsverschijnselen. Op 18 juni overleed Omar.
Checkpoint
Vier dagen na zijn dood overleed in Gaza ook baby Anwar Muhammad Harb. Hij was slechts negen dagen oud. Anwar had eveneens een hartaandoening. Hij had een verwijzing van het Palestijnse ministerie van Gezondheid voor een behandeling in een ziekenhuis in Oost-Jeruzalem. Maar de ambulance die hem naar de Israëlische checkpoint zou vervoeren, kreeg geen toestemming.
Palestijnse mensenrechtenorganisaties en Save the Children slaan alarm over de situatie van duizenden ernstig zieke kinderen en volwassenen. In Gaza is een groot tekort aan medicijnen, middelen en apparatuur. Velen hebben een behandeling buiten Gaza nodig, maar stuiten op tegenwerking van de Israëlische autoriteiten.
Doodsvonnis
,,De weigering van toegang tot de gezondheidszorg buiten Gaza betekent een doodsvonnis voor kinderen’’, zegt Jeremy Stoner, directeur Midden-Oosten bij Save the Children.
De mogelijkheid om buiten Gaza medische zorg te krijgen, was al beperkt. Die is verder ingeperkt nadat de Palestijnse Autoriteit de samenwerking met Israël op het gebied van veiligheid stopzette, omdat Israël de afspraken schendt en delen van de Westelijke Jordaanoever wil annexeren.
Sindsdien blijven zieke Palestijnen verstoken van acute medische zorg buiten Gaza. Sommigen hebben al toestemming of werden al elders behandeld, maar kunnen dat nu niet voortzetten.
Onmenselijk
Volgens de mensenrechtenorganisaties is van ruim 8300 kankerpatiënten in Gaza de situatie verslechterd en hebben honderden andere patiënten acute zorg nodig. Er zijn tientallen verzoeken van patiënten die geen tijd te verliezen hebben. De organisaties doen een dringend beroep op de Verenigde Naties om een eind te maken aan deze ‘wrede en onmenselijke omstandigheden’.
Voor de coronacrisis begon en de veiligheidscoördinatie werd stopgezet, dienden maandelijks tweeduizend Palestijnen een verzoek in voor een medische behandeling buiten Gaza. In april waren dat er nog slechts 159. Ondanks die daling weigerde Israël een derde van de aanvragen. In mei kregen 28 zieke kinderen geen toestemming Gaza te verlaten voor een behandeling.
In Gaza wonen ruim vijftig kinderen met kanker. Vijftien van hen zijn ernstig ziek. Maar door de beperkingen die Israël oplegt, kunnen ze geen behandeling met chemo of bestraling krijgen. Hun levens hangen daardoor aan een zijden draad.
Reisbeperkingen
Save the Children heeft de Israëlische regering herhaaldelijk opgeroepen de reisbeperkingen voor ernstig zieke kinderen en hun verzorgers op te heffen. ,,Hoe is het te rechtvaardigen dat kinderen levensreddende zorg wordt ontzegd?’’ zegt regiodirecteur Stoner van Save the Children.
,,Deze wanhopig zieke kinderen moeten Gaza verlaten om te overleven. Er is gewoon geen andere optie. Het is wreed dat kinderen sterven of extreme pijn lijden terwijl ze iets verderop, net buiten de checkpoints, behandeld zouden kunnen worden.’’
Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Noten 13, 14 en 15/Blokkade Gaza
MISDADEN VAN DE ISRAELISCHE BEZETTINGVERWOESTING VAN GAZA
BEZETTINGSTERREUR foto Oda Hulsen Hebron 2 mei 2017/Verwijst naar foto van een Palestijnse jongen, die tegen de muur wordt gezet doorIsraelische soldaten, die hem toeriepen ”Where is your knife!”/Later vrijgelaten
NB Het is dus NIET de foto van een Palestijnse jongen, die bij de kraag wordt gegrepen
Een Ongerijmde Passage uit de klassieker ”Alice in Wonderland?” [1]
Niet minder ongerijmd is het, dat ondanks het feit, dat ik u er herhaaldelijk op gewezen heb [en hopelijk ik niet alleen] [2], u desondanks doorgaat met
de verkoop van producten uit een land, dat niet alleen een Bezettingsstaat is, maar bovendien door gerenommeerde mensenrechtenorganisaties
als Amnesty International en Human Rights Watch is aangewezen
als Apartheidsstaat! [3]
VERKOOP VAN MANGO’S UIT ISRAEL
En ook nu was het weer raak!
In de week van 2 october t/m 8 october [Week 39/40]
bezocht ik de Vomar en wilde ik graag profiteren van uw
aanbieding van Mango’s [2 stuks voor 1,99, afgeprijsd van 2.89] [4],
om tot de conclusie te komen, dat deze Mango’s uit Israel kwamen!
Weer een minpunt voor u en reden tot het schrijven van deze Brief!
Want kennelijk moeten u opnieuw de oren gewassen worden en
dat doe ik dan bij dezen:
BEZETTINGSSTAAT EN APARTHEIDSSTAAT:
We gaan maar weer eens los!’
U zult weten, hoort dat althans te weten, dat de Staat Israel reeds 55 jaar de Palestijnse gebieden de Westelijke Jordaanoever, Gaza [5] en Oost-Jeruzalem bezet houdt.
En alsof dat al niet erg genoeg is, heeft die bezetting [zoals alle vreemde bezettingen, overal ter wereld] veroorzaakt onderdrukking, vernederingen,[oorlogs] misdaden.
Ik kan en wil die hier niet allemaal opsommen [trouwens, die lijst is onuitputtelijk], maar ernstige voorbeelden zijn Israelische luchtaanvallen op Gaza uit 2021 [niet zo lang geleden dus], waarbij
in de periode tussen 10 en 21 mei 260 mensen zijn omgekomen,
onder wie tenminste 129 burgers [waaronder 66 kinderen] [5]
Mensenrechtenorganisatie Human Rights Watch wees in het
byzonder op een specifieke Israelische luchtaanval op vier dichtbevolkte
gebouwentorens, waarin zich huizen, zaken en persagentschappen
bevonden.
Weliswaar leidde het niet tot dodelijke slachtoffers, maar drie Torens
werden met de grond gelijkgemaakt, velen werden dakloos en
verloren hun baan [6], in een gebied, wat door de wurgende
Blokkade van Gaza al economisch kapot gemaakt is [7]
NEDERZETTINGEN, IN STRIJD MET HET INTERNATIONAAL RECHT!
Dan heb ik het nog niet eens gehad over de in bezet Palestijns gebied
gestichte nederzettingen, waarvan de uitbreiding maar doorgaat en doorgaat [8].
Welnu, die nederzettingen zijn, zoals ik u al in een eerdere brief heb
meegedeeld [9], [dus kom me niet aan met het smoesje, dat
u daarvan niet op de hoogte was], illegaal volgens het Internationaal Recht
[10] EN regelrechte landdiefstal, omdat zij dus worden gebouwd op gestolen Palestijns land!
EN to add insult to injury, is er ook regelmatig sprake van geweld
van die kolonisten [bewoners van de nederzettingen] tegen de bezette
Palestijnse bevolking, vaak nog ondersteund door de Israelische Staat
Zie noot 11, rapportage van de Israelische mensenrechtenorganisatie
B’tselem!
DE BITTERE VRUCHTEN VAN DE STAAT ISRAEL
Ik zou zo nog uren kunnen doorgaan, ik doe het niet, want ik denk
zo wel voldoende duidelijk gemaakt te hebben, dat iedere steun aan
de economie van de Israelische bezettingsstaat [en die verleent u, door
Israelische mango’s of whatever products uit Israel te importeren],
een ondersteuning is van de barbaarse Israelische Apartheidsstaat!
MAAR HET IS NOG ERGER!
U steunt hiermee ook een Land, dat tot stand is gekomen dankzij een neo-koloniaal
project! [12]
Kort gezegd:
Via diefstal van anderman’s land, de Arabische Palestijnen [13]
Wist u dat niet?
Dan weet u het nu!
Maar los van hoe Israel is gevormd, het feit, dat zij een bezettingsstaat is
en reeds 55 jaar lang de bezette Palestijnen onderdrukt, vernedert, uithongert [Blokkade Gaza], hun [bezet] land steelt, militair
bestookt, discrimineert en foltert [14], is meer dan genoeg reden
voor u, deze besmette producten NIET te importeren.
PUNT, UIT!
EPILOOG
Ik heb u in het verleden reeds eerder aangeschreven over uw verkoop
van Israelische producten!
Zie noot 15
En ik blijf u bestoken, zolang het nodig is.
En het is nodig, zolang u in uw filial[en] Israelische producten
Een Ongerijmde Passage uit de klassieker ”Alice in Wonderland?” [1]
Niet minder ongerijmd is het, dat ondanks het feit, dat ik u er herhaaldelijk op gewezen heb [en hopelijk ik niet alleen] [2], u desondanks doorgaat met
de verkoop van producten uit een land, dat niet alleen een Bezettingsstaat is, maar bovendien door gerenommeerde mensenrechtenorganisaties
als Amnesty International en Human Rights Watch is aangewezen
als Apartheidsstaat! [3]
VERKOOP VAN MANGO’S UIT ISRAEL
En ook nu was het weer raak!
In de week van 2 october t/m 8 october [Week 39/40]
bezocht ik de Vomar en wilde ik graag profiteren van uw
aanbieding van Mango’s [2 stuks voor 1,99, afgeprijsd van 2.89] [4],
om tot de conclusie te komen, dat deze Mango’s uit Israel kwamen!
Weer een minpunt voor u en reden tot het schrijven van deze Brief!
Want kennelijk moeten u opnieuw de oren gewassen worden en
dat doe ik dan bij dezen:
BEZETTINGSSTAAT EN APARTHEIDSSTAAT:
We gaan maar weer eens los!’
U zult weten, hoort dat althans te weten, dat de Staat Israel reeds 55 jaar de Palestijnse gebieden de Westelijke Jordaanoever, Gaza [5] en Oost-Jeruzalem bezet houdt.
En alsof dat al niet erg genoeg is, heeft die bezetting [zoals alle vreemde bezettingen, overal ter wereld] veroorzaakt onderdrukking, vernederingen,[oorlogs] misdaden.
Ik kan en wil die hier niet allemaal opsommen [trouwens, die lijst is onuitputtelijk], maar ernstige voorbeelden zijn Israelische luchtaanvallen op Gaza uit 2021 [niet zo lang geleden dus], waarbij
in de periode tussen 10 en 21 mei 260 mensen zijn omgekomen,
onder wie tenminste 129 burgers [waaronder 66 kinderen] [5]
Mensenrechtenorganisatie Human Rights Watch wees in het
byzonder op een specifieke Israelische luchtaanval op vier dichtbevolkte
gebouwentorens, waarin zich huizen, zaken en persagentschappen
bevonden.
Weliswaar leidde het niet tot dodelijke slachtoffers, maar drie Torens
werden met de grond gelijkgemaakt, velen werden dakloos en
verloren hun baan [6], in een gebied, wat door de wurgende
Blokkade van Gaza al economisch kapot gemaakt is [7]
NEDERZETTINGEN, IN STRIJD MET HET INTERNATIONAAL RECHT!
Dan heb ik het nog niet eens gehad over de in bezet Palestijns gebied
gestichte nederzettingen, waarvan de uitbreiding maar doorgaat en doorgaat [8].
Welnu, die nederzettingen zijn, zoals ik u al in een eerdere brief heb
meegedeeld [9], [dus kom me niet aan met het smoesje, dat
u daarvan niet op de hoogte was], illegaal volgens het Internationaal Recht
[10] EN regelrechte landdiefstal, omdat zij dus worden gebouwd op gestolen Palestijns land!
EN to add insult to injury, is er ook regelmatig sprake van geweld
van die kolonisten [bewoners van de nederzettingen] tegen de bezette
Palestijnse bevolking, vaak nog ondersteund door de Israelische Staat
Zie noot 11, rapportage van de Israelische mensenrechtenorganisatie
B’tselem!
DE BITTERE VRUCHTEN VAN DE STAAT ISRAEL
Ik zou zo nog uren kunnen doorgaan, ik doe het niet, want ik denk
zo wel voldoende duidelijk gemaakt te hebben, dat iedere steun aan
de economie van de Israelische bezettingsstaat [en die verleent u, door
Israelische mango’s of whatever products uit Israel te importeren],
een ondersteuning is van de barbaarse Israelische Apartheidsstaat!
MAAR HET IS NOG ERGER!
U steunt hiermee ook een Land, dat tot stand is gekomen dankzij een neo-koloniaal
project! [12]
Kort gezegd:
Via diefstal van anderman’s land, de Arabische Palestijnen [13]
Wist u dat niet?
Dan weet u het nu!
Maar los van hoe Israel is gevormd, het feit, dat zij een bezettingsstaat is
en reeds 54 jaar lang de bezette Palestijnen onderdrukt, vernedert, uithongert [Blokkade Gaza], hun [bezet] land steelt, militair
bestookt, discrimineert en foltert [14], is meer dan genoeg reden
voor u, deze besmette producten NIET te importeren.
PUNT, UIT!
EPILOOG
Ik heb u in het verleden reeds eerder aangeschreven over uw verkoop
van Israelische producten!
Zie noot 15
En ik blijf u bestoken, zolang het nodig is.
En het is nodig, zolang u in uw filial[en] Israelische producten
verkoopt!
STOP ER DUS MEE!
NU!
Vriendelijke groeten
Astrid Essed
Amsterdam
NOTEN
Voor uw gemak hieronder de noten in links ondergebracht
Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Amnesty International said today in a damning new report. The investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.
The comprehensive report, Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity, sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law. This system is maintained by violations which Amnesty International found to constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.
Amnesty International is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT and calls on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.
“There is no possible justification for a system built around the institutionalized and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people. Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history. Governments who continue to supply Israel with arms and shield it from accountability at the UN are supporting a system of apartheid, undermining the international legal order, and exacerbating the suffering of the Palestinian people. The international community must face up to the reality of Israel’s apartheid, and pursue the many avenues to justice which remain shamefully unexplored.”
Amnesty International’s findings build on a growing body of work by Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, who have increasingly applied the apartheid framework to the situation in Israel and/or the OPT.
Identifying apartheid
A system of apartheid is an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination by one racial group over another. It is a serious human rights violation which is prohibited in public international law. Amnesty International’s extensive research and legal analysis, carried out in consultation with external experts, demonstrates that Israel enforces such a system against Palestinians through laws, policies and practices which ensure their prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment.
In international criminal law, specific unlawful acts which are committed within a system of oppression and domination, with the intention of maintaining it, constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid. These acts are set out in the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute, and include unlawful killing, torture, forcible transfer, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms.
Amnesty International documented acts proscribed in the Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute in all the areas Israel controls, although they occur more frequently and violently in the OPT than in Israel. Israeli authorities enact multiple measures to deliberately deny Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, including draconian movement restrictions in the OPT, chronic discriminatory underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel, and the denial of refugees’ right to return. The report also documents forcible transfer, administrative detention, torture, and unlawful killings, in both Israel and the OPT.
Amnesty International found that these acts form part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population, and are committed with the intent to maintain the system of oppression and domination. They therefore constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid.
The unlawful killing of Palestinian protesters is perhaps the clearest illustration of how Israeli authorities use proscribed acts to maintain the status quo. In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza began to hold weekly protests along the border with Israel, calling for the right of return for refugees and an end to the blockade. Before protests even began, senior Israeli officials warned that Palestinians approaching the wall would be shot. By the end of 2019, Israeli forces had killed 214 civilians, including 46 children.
In light of the systematic unlawful killings of Palestinians documented in its report, Amnesty International is also calling for the UN Security Council to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel. This should cover all weapons and munitions as well as law enforcement equipment, given the thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been unlawfully killed by Israeli forces. The Security Council should also impose targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israeli officials most implicated in the crime of apartheid.
Palestinians treated as a demographic threat
Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued a policy of establishing and then maintaining a Jewish demographic majority, and maximizing control over land and resources to benefit Jewish Israelis. In 1967, Israel extended this policy to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, all territories controlled by Israel continue to be administered with the purpose of benefiting Jewish Israelis to the detriment of Palestinians, while Palestinian refugees continue to be excluded.
Amnesty International recognizes that Jews, like Palestinians, claim a right to self-determination, and does not challenge Israel’s desire to be a home for Jews. Similarly, it does not consider that Israel labelling itself a “Jewish state” in itself indicates an intention to oppress and dominate.
However, Amnesty International’s report shows that successive Israeli governments have considered Palestinians a demographic threat, and imposed measures to control and decrease their presence and access to land in Israel and the OPT. These demographic aims are well illustrated by official plans to “Judaize” areas of Israel and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which continue to put thousands of Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer.
Oppression without borders
The 1947-49 and 1967 wars, Israel’s ongoing military rule of the OPT, and the creation of separate legal and administrative regimes within the territory, have separated Palestinian communities and segregated them from Jewish Israelis. Palestinians have been fragmented geographically and politically, and experience different levels of discrimination depending on their status and where they live.
Palestinian citizens in Israel currently enjoy greater rights and freedoms than their counterparts in the OPT, while the experience of Palestinians in Gaza is very different to that of those living in the West Bank. Nonetheless, Amnesty International’s research shows that all Palestinians are subject to the same overarching system. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians across all areas is pursuant to the same objective: to privilege Jewish Israelis in distribution of land and resources, and to minimize the Palestinian presence and access to land.
Amnesty International demonstrates that Israeli authorities treat Palestinians as an inferior racial group who are defined by their non-Jewish, Arab status. This racial discrimination is cemented in laws which affect Palestinians across Israel and the OPT.
For example, Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied a nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. In the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel has controlled the population registry since 1967, Palestinians have no citizenship and most are considered stateless, requiring ID cards from the Israeli military to live and work in the territories.
Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who were displaced in the 1947-49 and 1967 conflicts, continue to be denied the right to return to their former places of residence. Israel’s exclusion of refugees is a flagrant violation of international law which has left millions in a perpetual limbo of forced displacement.
Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem are granted permanent residence instead of citizenship – though this status is permanent in name only. Since 1967, more than 14,000 Palestinians have had their residency revoked at the discretion of the Ministry of the Interior, resulting in their forcible transfer outside the city.
Lesser citizens
Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise about 19% of the population, face many forms of institutionalized discrimination. In 2018, discrimination against Palestinians was crystallized in a constitutional law which, for the first time, enshrined Israel exclusively as the “nation state of the Jewish people”. The law also promotes the building of Jewish settlements and downgrades Arabic’s status as an official language.
The report documents how Palestinians are effectively blocked from leasing on 80% of Israel’s state land, as a result of racist land seizures and a web of discriminatory laws on land allocation, planning and zoning.
The situation in the Negev/Naqab region of southern Israel is a prime example of how Israel’s planning and building policies intentionally exclude Palestinians. Since 1948 Israeli authorities have adopted various policies to “Judaize” the Negev/Naqab, including designating large areas as nature reserves or military firing zones, and setting targets for increasing the Jewish population. This has had devastating consequences for the tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins who live in the region.
Thirty-five Bedouin villages, home to about 68,000 people, are currently “unrecognized” by Israel, which means they are cut off from the national electricity and water supply and targeted for repeated demolitions. As the villages have no official status, their residents also face restrictions on political participation and are excluded from the healthcare and education systems. These conditions have coerced many into leaving their homes and villages, in what amounts to forcible transfer.
Decades of deliberately unequal treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel have left them consistently economically disadvantaged in comparison to Jewish Israelis. This is exacerbated by blatantly discriminatory allocation of state resources: a recent example is the government’s Covid-19 recovery package, of which just 1.7% was given to Palestinian local authorities.
Dispossession
The dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from their homes is a crucial pillar of Israel’s apartheid system. Since its establishment the Israeli state has enforced massive and cruel land seizures against Palestinians, and continues to implement myriad laws and policies to force Palestinians into small enclaves. Since 1948, Israel has demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinian homes and other properties across all areas under its jurisdiction and effective control.
As in the Negev/Naqab, Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Area C of the OPT live under full Israeli control. The authorities deny building permits to Palestinians in these areas, forcing them to build illegal structures which are demolished again and again.
In the OPT, the continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements exacerbates the situation. The construction of these settlements in the OPT has been a government policy since 1967. Settlements today cover 10% of the land in the West Bank, and some 38% of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem was expropriated between 1967 and 2017.
Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem are frequently targeted by settler organizations which, with the full backing of the Israeli government, work to displace Palestinian families and hand their homes to settlers. One such neighbourhood, Sheikh Jarrah, has been the site of frequent protests since May 2021 as families battle to keep their homes under the threat of a settler lawsuit.
Draconian movement restrictions
Since the mid-1990s Israeli authorities have imposed increasingly stringent movement restrictions on Palestinians in the OPT. A web of military checkpoints, roadblocks, fences and other structures controls the movement of Palestinians within the OPT, and restricts their travel into Israel or abroad.
A 700km fence, which Israel is still extending, has isolated Palestinian communities inside “military zones”, and they must obtain multiple special permits any time they enter or leave their homes. In Gaza, more than 2 million Palestinians live under an Israeli blockade which has created a humanitarian crisis. It is near-impossible for Gazans to travel abroad or into the rest of the OPT, and they are effectively segregated from the rest of the world.
“The permit system in the OPT is emblematic of Israel’s brazen discrimination against Palestinians. While Palestinians are locked in a blockade, stuck for hours at checkpoints, or waiting for yet another permit to come through, Israeli citizens and settlers can move around as they please.”
Amnesty International examined each of the security justifications which Israel cites as the basis for its treatment of Palestinians. The report shows that, while some of Israel’s policies may have been designed to fulfil legitimate security objectives, they have been implemented in a grossly disproportionate and discriminatory way which fails to comply with international law. Other policies have absolutely no reasonable basis in security, and are clearly shaped by the intent to oppress and dominate.
The way forward
Amnesty International provides numerous specific recommendations for how the Israeli authorities can dismantle the apartheid system and the discrimination, segregation and oppression which sustain it.
The organization is calling for an end to the brutal practice of home demolitions and forced evictions as a first step. Israel must grant equal rights to all Palestinians in Israel and the OPT, in line with principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. It must recognize the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes where they or their families once lived, and provide victims of human rights violations and crimes against humanity with full reparations.
The scale and seriousness of the violations documented in Amnesty International’s report call for a drastic change in the international community’s approach to the human rights crisis in Israel and the OPT.
All states may exercise universal jurisdiction over persons reasonably suspected of committing the crime of apartheid under international law, and states that are party to the Apartheid Convention have an obligation to do so.
“Israel must dismantle the apartheid system and start treating Palestinians as human beings with equal rights and dignity. Until it does, peace and security will remain a distant prospect for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
In April, Human Rights Watch released a 213-page report, “A Threshold Crossed,” finding that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. We reached this determination based on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians coupled with grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem
In the months since, a growing chorus of voices, from former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa and current Knesset members to the ex-UN Secretary General and the French foreign minister, have referenced apartheid in relation to Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinians, in particular in the occupied territory. Yet many in Germany, including those critical of Israeli human rights abuses, remain hesitant to apply the label to Israeli conduct.
Given history, one can certainly understand Germany’s concern for the welfare of the Jewish people, but that should not carry over to an endorsement of abusive and discriminatory Israeli government conduct, especially in the occupied territory. As recognition grows that these crimes are being committed, the failure to recognize that reality requires burying your head deeper and deeper into the sand.
The problem begins with the Israeli government having exercised primary control for more than a half-century over the land between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, encompassing Israel and the occupied territory, where two main groups of people of roughly equal size live. Throughout this area, Israeli authorities methodologically privilege one of the groups, Jewish Israelis, who are governed under the same body of laws with the same rights and privileges wherever they live. At the same time, authorities allocate different baskets of inferior rights to the other, Palestinians, systematically discriminating against them wherever they live and most severely in the occupied territory.
Our sense that our research was not capturing this underlying reality led us to write this report. Reporting on “separate, not equal” schools for Palestinians inside Israel, Palestinians being forced out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem, the serious rights abuses stemming from the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank, and the crushing closure of the Gaza Strip, we felt that our work captured important dynamics, including entrenched discrimination, in particular areas, but did not capture the full scope of Israel’s discriminatory rule over Palestinians.
We set out in the report to evaluate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. As we do in the nearly 100 countries across the world we work in, we began by documenting the facts—drawing on years of our own research, case studies that compared Palestinian areas with predominantly or exclusively Jewish ones, and a review of government planning documents, statements by officials, and a range of other materials.
Across Israel and the occupied territory, Human Rights Watch found that Israeli authorities have pursued an intent to privilege Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians. They have done so by undertaking policies aimed at mitigating what they openly describe as the “demographic threat” Palestinians pose and maximizing the land available for Jewish communities, while concentrating most Palestinian in dense enclaves. The policy takes different forms and is pursued in a particularly severe form in the occupied territory. It includes efforts to, as leading Israelis officials have put it, “Judaize” the Negev and Galilee regions of Israel and to maintain “a solid Jewish majority,” as described in government planning documents, in the Jerusalem municipality, which includes the eastern part of Jerusalem, which Israel unilaterally annexed and occupies. It also encompasses efforts to “settle [Jews in] the land between the [Palestinian] minority population centers and their surroundings” in the West Bank, as set out in plans that have guided the government’s settlement, and to pursue “separation” between the West Bank and Gaza. The policy across the board serves the same fundamental goal: maximum land, minimum Palestinians.
Furthermore, we found that Israeli authorities have carried out the grave abuses needed for the crimes of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians living in the occupied territory. It has done so through, among other policies, sweeping restrictions on movement in the form of the 14-year generalized closure of Gaza and the discriminatory permit system in the West Bank; the confiscation of more than a third of the land in the West Bank; and denial of residency rights to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their relatives. Israel has imposed draconian military rule over millions of Palestinians, suspending their basic civil rights, while Jewish Israelis living in the same territory are governed under the permissive Israeli civil law; and imposed harsh conditions in parts of the West Bank that led to forcing thousands of Palestinians out of their homes.
We then evaluated these facts against the relevant areas of international law—in this case, the established law on discrimination—which includes a universal prohibition against apartheid. While the term was coined in relation to specific practices in South Africa, international treaties define apartheid as a universal legal term referring to a particularly severe form of discriminatory oppression.
International criminal law, including the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court, define apartheid as a crime against humanity consisting of three primary elements: (1) an intent by one racial group to dominate another; (2) systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group; and (3) particularly grave abuses known as inhumane acts.
Racial group is understood today also to encompass treatment on the basis of descent and national or ethnic origin. International criminal law also identifies a related crime against humanity of persecution. Under the Rome Statute and customary international law, persecution consists of severe deprivation of fundamental rights of a racial, ethnic, or other group with discriminatory intent.
The ratification by the State of Palestine of these two treaties in recent years has strengthened the legal application of these two crimes in its territory. A ruling by a chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this year confirmed that it has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity – including apartheid and persecution – committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2014.
Applying the facts to the laws, Human Rights Watch concluded that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. We found that the elements of the crimes come together in the occupied territory as part of a single Israeli government policy. That policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territory. It is coupled in the occupied territory with systematic oppression and inhumane acts against Palestinians living there.
Sometimes the most important thing someone who cares deeply about you can do is to share hard truths and push you to confront them. The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and leaders of Israel’s closest ally, the US, including former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State John Kerry, warned of the prospect of apartheid if things did not change.
Today, apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario. A 54-year-occupation is not temporary. The threshold has been crossed. Apartheid, and parallel persecution, is the reality for millions of Palestinians. Recognizing and correctly diagnosing a problem is the first step to solving it and ending apartheid is vital to the future of both Palestinians and Israelis and the cause of peace. It is by extension Germany’s special relationship with Israel and history that should prompt them to recognize the reality of apartheid and persecution and bring to bear the sorts of tools needed to end these crimes against humanity.
The Israeli military’s airstrikes that destroyed four high-rise buildings in Gaza City during the May 2021 fighting apparently violated the laws of war and may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. The attacks also damaged neighboring structures, made several dozen families homeless, and shuttered scores of businesses that provided livelihoods to many people.
Between May 11 and 15, Israeli forces attacked the Hanadi, al-Jawhara, al-Shorouk, and al-Jalaa towers in the densely populated al-Rimal neighborhood. In each case, the Israeli military warned tenants of impending attacks, allowing for their evacuation. Three buildings were immediately leveled while the fourth, al-Jawhara, sustained extensive damage and is slated to be demolished. Israeli authorities contend that Palestinian armed groups were using the towers for military purposes, but have provided no evidence to support those allegations.
“The apparently unlawful Israeli strikes on four high-rise towers in Gaza City caused serious, lasting harm for countless Palestinians who lived, worked, shopped, or benefitted from businesses based there,” said Richard Weir, crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Israeli military should publicly produce the evidence that it says it relied on to carry out these attacks.”
The Israeli military stated that during the hostilities with Palestinian armed groups in Gaza from May 10 to 21, its forces attacked about 1,500 targets with air- and ground-launched munitions. The United Nations reported that Israeli attacks killed 260 people in Gaza, at least 129 of them civilians, including 66 children. Local authorities in Gaza said that 2,400 housing units were made uninhabitable, while over 50,000 units were damaged, and over 2,000 industrial, trade, and service facilities were destroyed or partially damaged.
Palestinian armed groups launched over 4,360 rockets indiscriminately toward Israel, resulting in the deaths of 12 civilians in Israel, including 2 children, and a soldier, according to Israeli authorities. Human Rights Watch separately reported on Israeli airstrikes that killed scores of Palestinian civilians and Palestinian armed group rocket attacks in violation of the laws of war.
Between May and August, Human Rights Watch interviewed by phone 18 Palestinians who were witnesses and victims of the attacks on the towers, including residents, business owners, and employees, as well as those in affected neighboring structures. Human Rights Watch also reviewed video footage and photographs taken after the attacks, and statements by Israeli and Palestinian officials and Palestinian armed groups.
The towers contained scores of businesses, offices of news agencies, and many homes. Jawad Mahdi, 68, an owner of al-Jalaa tower who lived there with dozens of family members, said, “All these years of hard work, it was a place of living, safety, children and grandchildren, all our history and life, destroyed in front of your eyes … It’s like someone ripping your heart out and throwing it.”
The long-term effects of the attacks extend beyond the immediate destruction of the buildings, Human Rights Watch said. Many jobs were lost with the closure of their companies and many families were displaced.
Mohammed Qadada, 31, the head of a digital marketing company located in Hanadi tower, said that the 30 employees affected include people who “have families of their own, who were just entering into marriage, who support their older parents, who have sick members of the family who need financial support.” He said they “won’t find work again because the equipment that they had allowed them to do rendering, designing, producing, [has] all been destroyed. So how can they do the work?”
Israel has asserted that the high-rise buildings housed offices of Palestinian armed groups, including the headquarters of certain units, military intelligence, and in one tower, offices for “the most valuable Hamas technological equipment” for use against Israel. Any information to support these claims has not been made public.
Human Rights Watch found no evidence that members of Palestinian groups involved in military operations had a current or long-term presence in any of the towers at the time they were attacked. Even if there were such a presence, the attacks appeared to cause foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilian property.
Under international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, warring parties may target only military objectives. In doing so, they must take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians, and unless circumstances do not permit, provide effective advance warnings of attacks. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects are prohibited, including reprisals against civilians. The laws of war also prohibit indiscriminate attacks, which include attacks that do not target a specific military objective or do not distinguish between civilians and military targets. Attacks in which the expected harm to civilians and civilian property is disproportionate to the anticipated military gain are also prohibited.
Personnel or equipment being used in military operations are subject to attack, but whether that justifies destroying an entire large building where they might be present depends on the attack not inflicting disproportionate harm on civilians or civilian property. The proportionality of the attack is even more questionable because Israeli forces have previously demonstrated the capacity to strike specific floors or parts of structures. However, these attacks completely flattened three of the buildings, evidently by attacking their structural integrity. Regarding al-Jalaa tower, the Israeli military said that because armed groups had occupied multiple floors, the entire tower needed to be destroyed.
The deployment of Palestinian armed groups in the towers, if true, would go against requirements to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians under their control and to avoid placing military objectives in densely populated areas. Israel has repeatedly accused Palestinian armed groups of deploying among civilians and – without providing evidence, using them as “human shields” – the war crime of intentionally co-locating military forces with civilians to deter targeting those forces.
Individuals who order or commit serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent – that is, deliberately or recklessly – are responsible for war crimes. A country responsible for laws-of-war violations is obligated to make full reparation for the loss or injury caused, including compensation for individuals harmed.
The 14-year Israeli closure of Gaza, along with Egyptian border restrictions, has devastated the economy in Gaza. Restrictions on the entry of goods broadly deemed to be “dual-use,” for example, have sharply reduced the population’s access to construction material and certain medical equipment. Unless lifted or substantially eased, the sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods will hamper reconstruction efforts.
On May 27, the UN Human Rights Council established a Commission of Inquiry to address violations and abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, including by advancing accountability for those responsible and justice for victims. The commission should examine unlawful attacks committed by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups during the May fighting. It should also analyze the larger context, including the Israeli government’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinians.
“Throughout the May hostilities, unlawful Israeli strikes not only killed many civilians, but also destroyed high-rise towers, wiping out scores of businesses and homes, upending the lives of thousands of Palestinians,” Weir said. “Donor funding alone will not rebuild Gaza. The crushing closure of the Gaza Strip needs to end, along with the impunity that fuels ongoing serious abuses.”
May Hostilities
The May 2021 fighting followed efforts by Jewish settler groups to evict and confiscate the property of longtime Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem. Palestinians held demonstrations around East Jerusalem, and Israeli security forces fired teargas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets, injuring hundreds of Palestinians.
On May 10, Palestinian armed groups in Gaza started to launch rockets toward Israeli population centers. The Israeli military attacked the densely populated Gaza Strip with missiles, rockets, and artillery. Many of the attacks by the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups used explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas. A ceasefire went into effect on May 21.
The May hostilities, like those in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2019, among others, took place amid Israel’s sweeping closure of the Gaza Strip, which began in 2007. They also took place in a context of discriminatory efforts to remove Palestinians from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem, policies and practices among the Israeli government’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, as Human Rights Watch has documented.
Human Rights Watch on May 30 requested permits for senior researchers to enter Gaza to conduct research on the fighting, but Israeli authorities on July 26 rejected the request. Israeli authorities have since 2008 refused access to Human Rights Watch international staff to enter Gaza, except for a single visit in 2016.
On July 13, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesperson responded to a June 4 Human Rights Watch letter asking detailed questions about the attacks, saying that the Israeli military “strikes military targets exclusively, following an assessment that the potential collateral damage resulting from the attack is not excessive in relation to the expected military advantage.” The military added that it was making inquiries and investigating “various incidents” in order “to assess whether the obligatory rules had been breached and to draw conclusions.”
Attacks on High-Rise Buildings
The strikes on the four towers that Human Rights Watch investigated were just a small fraction of the Israeli military’s attacks in Gaza during the May fighting.
In each instance, the Israeli military warned residents of the impending attack by calling a building manager, security guard, or tenant, waited for individuals to evacuate, then launched smaller munitions that were either non-explosive or had small explosive yields – which the Israeli military calls “a knock on the roof” – and then carried out airstrikes. Three of the four buildings were immediately leveled. Although no deaths or injuries of fighters or civilians were reported, the attacks destroyed civilian property worth millions of US dollars.
Human Rights Watch research into the attacks on the four towers found no evidence that members of Palestinian groups involved in military operations were in the buildings or had a long-term presence. One businessman said that Hamas had offices in Hanadi tower, but he could not identify who the tenants were or what they did, or that they had any links to Hamas’s armed wing. Under the laws of war, civilian officials not involved in military operations are not subject to attack. Media offices are civilian objects unless they are taking a direct part in the hostilities by communicating military information.
The destruction of businesses and residences in the towers may have long-term implications for the enjoyment of basic rights of those affected, including access to an adequate standard of living, such as water, food, and housing, and loss of livelihoods. The displacement of families can impair their physical security, access to health care, and family life. The destruction of a dozen offices of media outlets undermines the collection and dissemination of information in Gaza.
The size of the blast following the munitions impact and subsequent detonation, as captured in videos either distributed by the Israeli military or circulated online and reviewed by Human Rights Watch, appear consistent with the use of munitions with large high-explosive warheads. These explosive weapons produced wide-area effects, resulting in the complete destruction or serious damage to each of the towers and damage to surrounding areas, including to homes, businesses, and infrastructure.
The Hanadi Tower
At about 6 p.m. on May 11, the Israeli military called the security guard at Hanadi tower to notify him that the 13-story tower would be attacked and that occupants should evacuate, said Maher Awad Kamal Safadi, 36, a local resident and business owner. Israeli forces then struck the building and area around it with multiple small munitions, according to Safadi and a video posted online prior to the attack. Then, at around 7:30 p.m., at least one munition hit the side of the building at its base. Seconds later, at least one more munition struck the opposite side at its base and the building quickly collapsed, causing damage to surrounding businesses and homes.
The attack caused no casualties, but its owner, Ahmed Abu Jaber, said that the building and contents destroyed were worth millions of dollars. Damage to a nearby hotel caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in loss.
Following the attack, the Israeli military released multiplestatements, images, and a video of the strike. The statements acknowledged the attack and said that Hamas used the building for “military research and development” and that it housed “Hamas military intelligence offices.” One statement posted on the Israeli military’s website said the building housed “multiple military units used by Hamas” and included a “headquarters” for research and development, military intelligence, and “more,” but did not further clarify.
The mediareported that the building housed offices of the political leadership of Hamas. A journalist familiar with the tower, who did not wish to be identified, said: “There are political meeting offices for Hamas parliament members and spokespersons in the tower.” While one business owner in the tower said there were Hamas offices in the tower, he was unaware of their purpose.
Hamas, the de facto authority in Gaza, is a group that includes both a political party and an armed wing. Mere membership or affiliation with Hamas is not a sufficient basis for determining someone to be a lawful military target. The laws of war allow the targeting of military commanders in the course of armed conflict, provided that such attacks otherwise comply with the laws that protect civilians. Political leaders not taking part in military operations, as well as civilians, would not be legitimate targets of attack.
Three of the tower’s business owners described the effects of the attack. Nihad Abdellatif Taha, 45, a computer engineer, said damages to his programming and digital marketing company, Portals, headquartered in the tower, were about US$30,000:
I had 36 employees and we were renting two apartments – 360 square meters with furniture, offices, meeting rooms, surveillance cameras – all of this is gone, in addition to very important documents, all the company’s papers are gone, including stamps and the employees’ contracts – all gone.
Mohammed Qadada, 31, founder and chief executive officer of Planet for Digital Solutions, said that when it moved into the tower in 2017, he invested about $40,000 in renovations, furniture, and new equipment, including workstations, laptops, and printers. All of it was destroyed: “It was May 22 when I went to the tower for the first time [since its destruction]. Everything was gone, I saw rubble, I saw remnants of an office, I saw people’s stuff strewn around, I saw people’s memories, I saw everything fallen.”
As of late May, the company’s 30 employees had all been unemployed since the attack.
Maher Awad Kamal Safadi, 36, who owned Friends Gym on the ground floor of Hanadi tower, said that months earlier he had invested over $10,000 in new exercise equipment. “I had a sauna, jacuzzi, Moroccan bath, a fitness room and a weight room, bathrooms, and a full restaurant with fridges and a gas stove” – all of which were destroyed. He said the attack cost the gym’s six employees their jobs and that he would need $150,000 to replace the equipment.
The buildings immediately adjacent to Hanadi tower, particularly to the north, suffered serious damage. Satellite imagery recorded on May 14 shows damage to the southern and western facades of the Handouqa apartment building and the Gaza International Hotel, both a few meters north of Hanadi tower. Imagespublished on May 12 show serious damage to the facades of the two buildings.
Imad Handouqa, 54, the owner of the Handouqa apartment, which had 10 floors and 25 residential apartments, said it was no longer habitable. He said that part of Hanadi tower fell on the building, damaging its foundations and causing some apartment ceilings to come down on the rooms. He said the total value of the structure was about $1.3 million.
The owner of the Gaza International Hotel, Abu Ahmed Jaber, in a video posted on the hotel’s Facebook page, said the damage to the hotel amounts to nearly half a million dollars.
The attack also damaged critical electrical delivery lines for Gaza City and the area immediately around the tower, Gaza’s electricity company said.
al-Jawhara Tower
On the evening of May 11, the Israeli military called residents living next to the tower to inform the tenants of the 11-story Jawhara tower that the primarily commercial building would be targeted and to evacuate. At approximately 10 p.m., Israeli aircraft launched small munitions, striking the roof and the ground near the tower. At around 2 a.m. on May 12, larger air-dropped munitions struck the building, severely damaging it.
Mohammad Atta Hassan Jaarour, 71, a founder and co-owner who lived on the building’s seventh floor, said the damage, including to the foundational pillars, left the building structurally unsound. “The whole building is destroyed,” he said. “It’s still standing, but it’s a skeleton, all the ground floors and the two underground floors all exploded.”
Residents and tenants said the strike caused extensive damage to their apartments, businesses, equipment, and the surrounding neighborhood. One said that the strikes were so intense that “most of the surrounding buildings – the fronts of the buildings and the glass – were destroyed.”
Following the attack, the Israeli military issued a statement saying that the building housed a “headquarters belonging to the Hamas terror organization’s intelligence unit, Hamas Judea and Samaria [West Bank] Headquarters, Public Relations department and the Gaza Brigade.” The Israeli military also released a video of the attack showing at least two munitions striking the building within seconds of one another.
Six days later, the Israeli military released a statement and images, saying it attacked another building that it also said was the Hamas headquarters for the West Bank.
Ahmed Zaeem, a co-owner of al-Jawhara who lived in the building with his parents, wife, and four children and had been there for 17 years, said the tower contained 64 units on eight floors, two underground floors, and a floor dedicated to a shopping mall. “The 64 units include residences, law offices, media outlets, engineering firms, development agencies, [and information technology] companies,” Zaeem said. “There’s also a dentist. There were no less than 20 stores on the bottom three commercial floors.” Six of the 64 units were residential.
Zaeem said the overall economic loss was $5-7 million to rebuild the building, which did not include the losses in the commercial units and the residential apartments. He said he personally lost about $1.5 million in property he owned in the tower. Jaarour estimated that he lost $1.2 million. “If we had the money, I think we could rebuild it in four to five years,” Jaarour said, citing the Israeli closure and restrictions on the entry of building materials.
Both co-owners described the loss of businesses in which they had invested. Jaarour cited Magic Pizza, which he said had new appliances and furniture and employed about a dozen people: “We were so happy and had been waiting a long time to get it running. In one moment, all of these things turned into an illusion.”
Zaeem and his family ran several offices and stores in the tower, including the Elaine Center women’s clothing shop. He said his wife had invested $20,000 in equipment for a new photography studio, Studio Wateen Photographer, which had been set to open soon.
The building also contained SMT Solutions, an information technology company that provides internet to areas throughout Gaza. A post on the company’s Facebook page on May 13 said that the fiber optic networks, data center, and the company’s headquarters were destroyed in the attack and would take six months to repair.
The tower also housed the Young Journalists Radio Club, Gaza’s only radio broadcast for children. Ghassan Radwan, 51, owner of the radio club, said it had eight people working at the radio station and more than 20 children who ran the programming and did the broadcasting. Everything in their office was destroyed and to rebuild the network would cost about $70,000, but that would require overcoming the restrictions on the entry of communications equipment due to the Israeli closure and Egyptian restrictions.
The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, listed the offices of 11 media outlets in the building: London-based Qatari broadcaster Al-Araby TV; news website and newspaper Felestin;Iraqi broadcaster Al-Etejah TV; Al-Kofiya TV; Jordanian broadcaster Al-Mamlaka; Sabq24 News Agency; news website Al-Bawaba 24; the production company Watania News Agency; the local photo agency APA Images; Al-Nujaba TV; and the Syrian state-owned broadcaster Syria TV. However, Human Rights Watch was not able to independently verify whether Al-Nujaba TV, Syria TV, and APA Images were located in the tower.
The tower also contained the offices of the media rights group Forum of Palestinian Journalists, and the Palestinian Forum for Democratic Dialogue and Development.
When Zaeem visited his home in the tower after the attack, he found it destroyed: “The furniture was ripped, the curtains, things turned over – everything was broken. The bathroom doors were all broken, the tiles came off the floors, the roof on the apartments are weak and would leak if there’s any water.” In early June, Zaeem said he and his family were living with a friend while looking for somewhere new to live.
al-Shorouk Tower
On the afternoon of May 12, the Israeli military phoned the 14-story Shorouk tower’s security guard, who then informed the tenants that the building would be attacked and that they needed to evacuate. Approximately 30 minutes after the phone warning, Israeli aircraft launched lower-yield explosive munitions against the structure. A few minutes later, Israeli aircraft struck the tower with multiple, large air-dropped munitions, critically damaging the structure, causing two parts of the building to collapse but leaving the center – and tallest part of the building – standing. About 10 minutes later, Israeli aircraft attacked the remaining part of structure, using two large, air-dropped munitions, causing the final element to collapse onto nearby shops and homes.
No one was killed or injured as a result, but the owners of the tower and businesses in the building, as well as adjacent buildings, described destruction and damage to scores of businesses and at least a half-dozen homes.
Following the attack, the Israeli military released a graphic of the building and a statement that said “[t]he building housed Hamas military intelligence offices, as well as infrastructure used by the terror organizations to communicate tactical-military information.”
Ahmed Masoud al-Mughanni, 60, chairman of the building’s board of directors, said that the building had 50 offices and a coffee shop – “doctors, lawyers, journalists’ offices” – and empty residential apartments. He estimated that the cost of rebuilding the tower would be between $2 and $3.5 million and take several years.
The attack destroyed the offices of several media outlets in the building: Al-Aqsa TV and Al-Aqsa Radio; the Palestine Media Production Company; Al-Quds Today; and a Palestinian Authority-affiliated newspaper, Al-Hayat al-Jadida.
The Palestine Media Production Company rented five apartments on floors 5, 9, and 13. Ismail Abdelghani Ismail Jabr, 27, whose father owns the company, said the company had been operating in the building since 1994 and employed 17 people at the time of the attack. Jabr and Mohammad al-Buhaisi, 30, a producer, said the company produces television and video reports, films, and stories for numerous foreign news outlets. Just prior to the attack, they managed to remove equipment from one of their two studios, but the remainder of their equipment was destroyed, along with eight years of archived material.
Witnesses to the attack said that when the tower came down, it damaged numerous shops and homes in the area, including the al-Sousi shopping complex, a nearby restaurant, and the Hassania building.
Ahmed Ayman Mohammad Omar al-Sousi, 27, who lived in the building next to al-Shorouk tower with his extended family of 42 in six separate apartments, said they owned and operated 10 ground-floor stores that sold accessories, clothing, and embroidery. He said that when the central part of al-Shorouk tower collapsed, it fell on their businesses and residences: “The amount of damage in the area from the tower falling is horrific. Flames lit up in the area – our building was on fire. The 10 stores and five storage rooms were all burned.”
Because it was Eid season, the stores and storage rooms were full of merchandise, all of which was destroyed, he said.
Al-Sousi said the fires caused by the explosions burned for three days and did the most damage. He estimated that the destruction of the store he owned with his father caused losses of about $120,000. All seven people employed at the shop, including several family members, lost their jobs. As of early June, he said the employees from the nine other stores were also out of work.
Along with the businesses, four of the six apartments where the al-Sousi family lived were also destroyed or seriously damaged either by the collapsing tower or the resulting fire. “The tower is now on our house – how are we going to lift it,” al-Sousi said. Al-Sousi’s extended family members all had to find new homes.
al-Jalaa Tower
On the afternoon of May 15, a man who identified himself as “Danny” from the Israeli military spoke in Arabic on the phone to the nephew of Jawad Mahdi, 68, the owner of the 14-story Jalaa tower. His voice was captured on a cell phone threatening a reprisal attack: “Because they [Palestinian armed groups] shot at Israel and they shot at Tel Aviv, we are now going to hit and strike the entire tower.” The phone was handed over to Madhi. “Danny” told Mahdi to inform the tenants that the building would be targeted and to evacuate all the floors.
Human Rights Watch sent questions to the Israeli military inquiring as to the authenticity of the recording and whether the statements made reflected Israeli military policy, but, as of the date of publication, have not received a response.
At about 3 p.m., Israeli aircraft fired small munitions at the building. Within minutes, Israeli aircraft attacked the tower using at least two air-dropped munitions near the base of the building on two sides and it immediately collapsed.
No one was killed or injured because everyone had evacuated, but residents and tenants say that in addition to the destruction of the building, they lost everything in their homes and businesses, including equipment and records. The building housed bureaus of Al Jazeera English and the Associated Press.
Following the attack, the Israeli military posted an image and video, and issued several statements that sought to justify it. Israeli military officials and politicians, including then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also issued statements or addressed the media on the subject. These statements changed over time, describing the threats posed by the alleged militant presence as increasingly serious.
On the day of the attack, the Israeli military stated that the building “contained military assets belonging to the intelligence offices of the Hamas terror organization.” Later that day, it said it “housed the Hamas Research and Development unit, which is responsible, among other things, for terror activity carried out against the State of Israel.” The same statement added that this unit included “subject matter experts (SMEs) which constitute a unique asset to the Hamas terrorist organization. These SMEs operate the most valuable Hamas technological equipment against Israel.” The then-military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, toldReuters later that day that the offices occupied by Palestinian armed groups were located on multiple floors.
On May 16, the Israeli military’s official Twitter account stated in a post that the tower was an “important base of operations for Hamas’ military intel” and that, along with gathering intelligence, it “manufactured weapons and positioned equipment to hamper IDF operations.” In a second post, minutes later, it said that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad removed equipment following the military’s warning to tenants and residents, though it did not specify which equipment.
On May 17, then-Prime Minister Netanyahu said on the US-television network CBS that the building had “an intelligence office for the Palestinian terrorist organization housed in that building that plots and organizes attacks against Israeli citizens.” An unnamed senior Israeli military official later told the New York Times in an article published on May 21 that the building contained electronic jamming equipment. Israel has provided no evidence to support any of these allegations.
Tenants, residents, and the owner of the building have rejected Israeli claims that armed groups had a presence in the building.
The Associated Press’s president and CEO, Gary Pruitt, said: “We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building. This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.”
Mahdi, who is also a resident, said that the building was worth about $5 million and that he estimated another $2 million in furniture and appliances were destroyed.
A list that Mahdi produced for receiving compensation from authorities in Gaza for damage to the tower shows over 50 individual businesses and offices on five floors and the two rooftops. Residences filled the other five floors, many of them inhabited by Mahdi’s relatives. He said that 30 families were living in the building at the time of the attack, a total of about 130 people. Mahdi said he and his extended family owned 10 units.
Fares al-Ghoul, 30, who works for al-Mayadeen Media Group, which had offices in al-Jalaa tower, said that he was in his office on the third floor with five colleagues when the superintendent told them to evacuate:
I didn’t know what to do. Imagine the situation, the superintendent comes to you crying, saying “Quick! Quick! Get out! They’re going to bomb the building.” So, the five others and I took the equipment we could and left behind equipment worth $200,000, because we just didn’t have enough time.
The equipment destroyed included a satellite transmitter, which he said costs around $120,000, and is extremely difficult to replace because of the Israeli closure of Gaza. Wael Dahdouh, 51, an Al Jazeera correspondent and the Gaza office head, said that he estimated their losses at about $1 million.
Ramy Haddad, 46, the head of the Central Blood Lab, part of the Palestine Future Foundation for Childhood, offers tests and regular follow-ups for patients of thalassemia, a rare blood disorder. The lab had several pieces of special equipment to run these tests, all of which were destroyed. Haddad estimated the losses at $70,000 and said it would be difficult to replace some of the specialized medical equipment due to Israel’s entry restrictions.
Several engineering and consulting firms also occupied offices in the building. Khaled Omar Abu Sultan, 58, director of Ro’yatak, an engineering consulting and management business housed in the tower since 2020, said the firm designed hospitals, schools, roads, and other infrastructure. At the time of the attack, he and his employees were at home and did not have time to retrieve anything from the office. He estimates the losses in office equipment at about $15,000: “The main loss is a large archive of projects – our plans, files, references and documents. We had printers and equipment for photographing maps.” Sultan said they had to stop work on all current projects until they can buy new equipment.
Khaled Majed Abu Rahma, 30, works with his father at Al-Burj for Engineering Consultations and Design, which has been in al-Jalaa tower for 15 years. He said the firm makes engineering plans and employs 10 engineers, including those with specialties in civil, architecture, mechanical, and electrical engineering. The firm helped to plan homes, villas, and multi-story buildings in Gaza. “We lost everything – the whole office, the furniture, the files,” he said. “We didn’t take anything.”
Rahma estimated that the apartment, which they owned, cost $72,000 and the equipment and furniture lost was a little over $19,000. All 10 engineers lost their jobs as a result of the attack.
The attack also damaged civilian structures around the building. Mahdi said: “The surrounding buildings and homes suffered a great deal of damage, some were destroyed … The Al-Mushtaha building near us suffered the most damage.” He said that the front of the adjacent building owned by the Anan family also suffered damage.
Al-Ghoul said that the buildings next to the tower, including the Watan tower and Anan building, and across the street were also damaged.
Dahdouh said that the whole block was evacuated, but when residents of other buildings tried to return, they found their homes damaged and could not go back right away.
The destruction of al-Jalaa tower left the 30 families who lived in it homeless and seeking shelter elsewhere. Mahdi said that “Our family got separated – each one of us went to a separate house. We found two homes to rent – we’re waiting for another five homes so we can all be together.”
Long-term, “Reverberating” Effects, and Gaza’s Closure
In addition to the damage and destruction to the towers and their offices and residences, the attacks can be expected to have various “reverberating” effects – harm to civilians and civilian objects caused by the attack that are not direct or immediate. These include displacement and a reduced standard of living and impaired access to shelter, health care, and basic services such as electricity, all of which affect the enjoyment of basic human rights.
In Gaza, these effects are exacerbated by the generalized closure that Israel has imposed on Gaza since 2007 – policies that Egypt, which borders Gaza to the south, does little to alleviate by maintaining its restrictions. The Israeli closure, along with Egyptian border restrictions, has devastated Gaza’s economy. Eighty percent of Gaza’s people rely on humanitarian aid and more than half live below the poverty line. In 2020, the unemployment rate was above 40 percent.
Israeli authorities justify the Gaza closure on security grounds. But the ban on the movement of more than two million people, with narrow exceptions, based on generalized threats, and the sweeping restrictions on the entry and exit of goods, violates Israel’s obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law to ensure that the needs of the population are met.
Israeli authorities, for example, severely restrict the entry of so-called “dual-use” items that could be used for military purposes, such as the construction of tunnels or fortifications. However, the “dual-use” list includes both overly broad categories and items that are vital to meet the needs of Gaza’s population, including “communications equipment,” “steel elements and construction products,” “drilling equipment,” and certain medical equipment .
These restrictionshave sharply reduced the population’s access to construction material and other goods vital to the rebuilding of Gaza and its infrastructure. The Israeli military argues that armed groups in Gaza use cement to build tunnels and estimate that constructing a kilometer of tunnel requires a few hundred tons of cement. But people in Gaza need over a million tons of cement annually to build and maintain homes, schools, health clinics, the water system, and other vital infrastructure.
The recent destruction and damage to tens of thousands of residential and commercial buildings and infrastructure caused by Israeli strikes increases the need for building materials to repair and rebuild these structures. The Israeli authorities should not restrict an overwhelmingly civilian good, badly needed for rebuilding, because armed groups may use a small fraction of it to build tunnels or for other military purposes.
The general inaccessibility of building materials means that any reconstruction efforts will require substantial time to complete. In interviews with investors and owners at three of the four towers, all said that because of Israel’s closure it would take years just to rebuild the structures. Several owners of businesses that rely on specialized equipment the entry of which is severely restricted, such as broadcasting equipment, expressed concern that rebuilding would be complicated and slow.
On August 13, the Israeli army announced that, in light of the stable security situation at the moment, it would expand the list of goods allowed to enter Gaza, including to allow in “goods and equipment for humanitarian projects.” Palestinian authorities said on August 17 that, according to information they received from Israeli authorities, “construction materials for the private sector and related to humanitarian projects only” would be among the items permitted to enter Gaza. Israeli authorities reportedly allowed some items in on August 19, but it remains unclear to what extent this marks a change in policy and how long these measures will remain in place.
The Israeli government should allow the entry into Gaza of concrete and other materials needed for the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure, subject to, at most, narrowly tailored restrictions based on particularized security assessments.
Unless the closure is lifted or substantially eased, the long-term and reverberating effects of the destruction of the towers and other civilian infrastructure will be exacerbated.
Lack of Accountability
Israeli and Palestinian authorities have a long track record of failing to credibly investigate alleged war crimes by their forces in Gaza. On May 12, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicated that it was monitoring the situation in Gaza. The prosecutor’s office should include in its Palestine investigation apparently unlawful Israeli attacks in Gaza, as well as Palestinian rocket attacks that struck population centers in Israel.
Judicial authorities in other countries should also investigate and prosecute under national laws those credibly implicated in serious crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and in Israel under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Warring parties should refrain from using explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas because of the foreseeable indiscriminate harm to civilians. Countries should support a strong political declaration that addresses the harm that explosive weapons cause to civilians and commit to avoid using those with wide-area effects in populated areas.
OCHA
GAZA STRIP: ESCALATION OF HOSTILITIES 10-21 MAY 2021
” The attacks also damaged neighboring structures, made several dozen families homeless, and shuttered scores of businesses that provided livelihoods to many people.”
…
….
” Three of the four buildings were immediately leveled. Although no deaths or injuries of fighters or civilians were reported, the attacks destroyed civilian property worth millions of US dollars.”
”The 14-year Israeli closure of Gaza, along with Egyptian border restrictions, has devastated the economy in Gaza. Restrictions on the entry of goods broadly deemed to be “dual-use,” for example, have sharply reduced the population’s access to construction material and certain medical equipment. Unless lifted or substantially eased, the sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods will hamper reconstruction efforts.”
(Gaza) – Israel’s sweeping restrictions on leaving Gaza deprive its more than two million residents of opportunities to better their lives, Human Rights Watch said today on the fifteenth anniversary of the 2007 closure. The closure has devastated the economy in Gaza, contributed to fragmentation of the Palestinian people, and forms part of Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians.
Israel’s closure policy blocks most Gaza residents from going to the West Bank, preventing professionals, artists, athletes, students, and others from pursuing opportunities within Palestine and from traveling abroad via Israel, restricting their rights to work and an education. Restrictive Egyptian policies at its Rafah crossing with Gaza, including unnecessary delays and mistreatment of travelers, have exacerbated the closure’s harm to human rights.
“Israel, with Egypt’s help, has turned Gaza into an open-air prison,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “As many people around the world are once again traveling two years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gaza’s more than two million Palestinians remain under what amounts to a 15-year-old lockdown.”
Israel should end its generalized ban on travel for Gaza residents and permit free movement of people to and from Gaza, subject to, at most, individual screening and physical searches for security purposes.
Between February 2021 and March 2022, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 Palestinians who sought to travel out of Gaza via either the Israeli-run Erez crossing or the Egyptian-administered Rafah crossing. Human Rights Watch wrote to Israeli and Egyptian authorities to solicit their perspectives on its findings, and separately to seek information about an Egyptian travel company that operates at the Rafah crossing but had received no responses at this writing.
Since 2007, Israeli authorities have, with narrow exceptions, banned Palestinians from leaving through Erez, the passenger crossing from Gaza into Israel, through which they can reach the West Bank and travel abroad via Jordan. Israel also prevents Palestinian authorities from operating an airport or seaport in Gaza. Israeli authorities also sharply restrict the entry and exit of goods.
They often justify the closure, which came after Hamas seized political control over Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in June 2007, on security grounds. Israeli authorities have said they want to minimize travel between Gaza and the West Bank to prevent the export of “a human terrorist network” from Gaza to the West Bank, which has a porous border with Israel and where hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers live.
This policy has reduced travel to a fraction of what it was two decades ago, Human Rights Watch said. Israeli authorities have instituted a formal “policy of separation” between Gaza and the West Bank, despite international consensus that these two parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory form a “single territorial unit.” Israel accepted that principle in the 1995 Oslo Accords, signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israeli authorities restrict all travel between Gaza and the West Bank, even when the travel takes place via the circuitous route through Egypt and Jordan rather than through Israeli territory.
Due to these policies, Palestinian professionals, students, artists, and athletes living in Gaza have missed vital opportunities for advancement not available in Gaza. Human Rights Watch interviewed seven people who said that Israeli authorities did not respond to their requests for travel through Erez, and three others who said Israel rejected their permits, apparently for not fitting within Israeli’s narrow criteria.
Walaa Sada, 31, a filmmaker, said that she applied for permits to take part in film training in the West Bank in 2014 and 2018, after spending years convincing her family to allow her to travel alone, but Israeli authorities never responded to her applications. The hands-on nature of the training, requiring filming live scenes and working in studios, made remote participation impracticable and Sada ended up missing the sessions.
The “world narrowed” when she received these rejections, Sada said, making her feel “stuck in a small box.… For us in Gaza, the hands of the clock stopped. People all over the world can easily and quickly book flight and travel, while we … die waiting for our turn.”
The Egyptian authorities have exacerbated the closure’s impact by restricting movement out of Gaza and at times fully sealing its Rafah border crossing, Gaza’s only outlet aside from Erez to the outside world. Since May 2018, Egyptian authorities have been keeping Rafah open more regularly, making it, amid the sweeping Israeli restrictions, the primary outlet to the outside world for Gaza residents.
Palestinians, however, still face onerous obstacles traveling through Egypt, including having to wait weeks for permission to travel, unless they are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to travel companies with significant ties to Egyptian authorities to expedite their travel, denials of entry, and abuse by Egyptian authorities.
Sada said also received an opportunity to participate in a workshop on screenwriting in Tunisia in 2019, but that she could not afford the US$2000 it would cost her to pay for the service that would ensure that she could travel on time. Her turn to travel came up six weeks later, after the workshop had already been held.
As an occupying power that maintains significant control over many aspects of life in Gaza, Israel has obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure the welfare of the population there. Palestinians also have the right under international human rights law to freedom of movement, in particular within the occupied territory, a right that Israel can restrict under international law only in response to specific security threats.
Israel’s policy, though, presumptively denies free movement to people in Gaza, with narrow exceptions, irrespective of any individualized assessment of the security risk a person may pose. These restrictions on the right to freedom of movement do not meet the requirement of being strictly necessary and proportionate to achieve a lawful objective. Israel has had years and many opportunities to develop more narrowly tailored responses to security threats that minimize restrictions on rights.
Egypt’s legal obligations toward Gaza residents are more limited, as it is not an occupying power. However, as a state party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, it should ensure respect for the convention “in all circumstances,” including protections for civilians living under military occupation who are unable to travel due to unlawful restrictions imposed by the occupying power. The Egyptian authorities should also consider the impact of their border closure on the rights of Palestinians living in Gaza who are unable to travel in and out of Gaza through another route, including the right to leave a country.
Egyptian authorities should lift unreasonable obstacles that restrict Palestinians’ rights and allow transit via its territory, subject to security considerations, and ensure that their decisions are transparent and not arbitrary and take into consideration the human rights of those affected.
“The Gaza closure blocks talented, professional people, with much to give their society, from pursuing opportunities that people elsewhere take for granted,” Shakir said. “Barring Palestinians in Gaza from moving freely within their homeland stunts lives and underscores the cruel reality of apartheid and persecution for millions of Palestinians.”
Israel’s Obligations to Gaza under International Law
Israeli authorities claim “broad powers and discretion to decide who may enter its territory” and that “a foreigner has no legal right to enter the State’s sovereign territory, including for the purposes of transit into the [West Bank] or aboard.” While international human rights law gives wide latitude to governments with regard to entry of foreigners, Israel has heightened obligations toward Gaza residents. Because of the continuing controls Israel exercises over the lives and welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants, Israel remains an occupying power under international humanitarian law, despite withdrawing its military forces and settlements from the territory in 2005. Both the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardians of international humanitarian law, have reached this determination. As the occupying power, Israel remains bound to provide residents of Gaza the rights and protections afforded to them by the law of occupation. Israeli authorities continue to control Gaza’s territorial waters and airspace, and the movement of people and goods, except at Gaza’s border with Egypt. Israel also controls the Palestinian population registry and the infrastructure upon which Gaza relies.
Israel has an obligation to respect the human rights of Palestinians living in Gaza, including their right to freedom of movement throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory and abroad, which affects both the right to leave a country and the right to enter their own country. Israel is also obligated to respect Palestinians’ rights for which freedom of movement is a precondition, for example the rights to education, work, and health. The UNHuman Rights Committee has said that while states can restrict freedom of movement for security reasons or to protect public health, public order, and the rights of others, any such restrictions must be proportional and “the restrictions must not impair the essence of the right; the relation between the right and restriction, between norm and exception, must not be reversed.”
While the law of occupation permits occupying powers to impose security restrictions on civilians, it also requires them to restore public life for the occupied population. That obligation increases in a prolonged occupation, in which the occupier has more time and opportunity to develop more narrowly tailored responses to security threats that minimize restrictions on rights. In addition, the needs of the occupied population increase over time. Suspending virtually all freedom of movement for a short period interrupts temporarily normal public life, but long-term, indefinite suspension in Gaza has had a much more debilitating impact, fragmentating populations, fraying familial and social ties, compoundingdiscrimination against women, and blocking people from pursuing opportunities to improve their lives.
The impact is particularly damaging given the denial of freedom of movement to people who are confined to a sliver of the occupied territory, unable to interact in person with the majority of the occupied population that lives in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and its rich assortment of educational, cultural, religious, and commercial institutions.
After 55 years of occupation and 15 years of closure in Gaza with no end in sight, Israel should fully respect the human rights of Palestinians, using as a benchmark the rights it grants Israeli citizens. Israel should abandon an approach that bars movement absent exceptional individual humanitarian circumstances it defines, in favor of an approach that permits free movement absent exceptional individual security circumstances.
Israel’s Closure
Most Palestinians who grew up in Gaza under this closure have never left the 40-by-11 kilometer (25-by-7 mile) Gaza Strip. For the last 25 years, Israel has increasingly restricted the movement of Gaza residents. Since June 2007, when Hamas seized control over Gaza from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA), Gaza has been mostly closed.
Israeli authorities justify this closure on security grounds, in light of “Hamas’ rise to power in the Gaza Strip,” as they lay out in a December 2019 court filing. Authorities highlight in particular the risk that Hamas and armed Palestinian groups will recruit or coerce Gaza residents who have permits to travel via Erez “for the commission of terrorist acts and the transfer of operatives, knowledge, intelligence, funds or equipment for terrorist activists.” Their policy, though, amounts to a blanket denial with rare exceptions, rather than a generalized respect for the right of Palestinians to freedom of movement, to be denied only on the basis of individualized security reasons.
The Israeli army has since 2007 limited travel through the Erez crossing except in what it deems “exceptional humanitarian circumstances,” mainly encompassing those needing vital medical treatment outside Gaza and their companions, although the authorities also make exceptions for hundreds of businesspeople and laborers and some others. Israel has restricted movement even for those seeking to travel under these narrowexceptions, affecting their rights to health and life, among others, as Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented. Most Gaza residents do not fit within these exemptions to travel through Erez, even if it is to reach the West Bank.
Between January 2015 and December 2019, before the onset of Covid-19 restrictions, an average of about 373 Palestinians left Gaza via Erez each day, less than 1.5 percent of the daily average of 26,000 in September 2000, before the closure, according to the Israeli rights group Gisha. Israeli authorities tightened the closure further during the Covid-19 pandemic – between March 2020 and December 2021, an average of about 143 Palestinians left Gaza via Erez each day, according to Gisha.
Israeli authorities announced in March 2022 that they would authorize 20,000 permits for Palestinians in Gaza to work in Israel in construction and agriculture, though Gisha reports that the actual number of valid permits in this category stood at 9,424, as of May 22.
Israeli authorities have also for more than two decades sharply restricted the use by Palestinians of Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters. They blocked the reopening of the airport that Israeli forces made inoperable in January 2002, and prevented the Palestinian authorities from building a seaport, leaving Palestinians dependent on leaving Gaza by land to travel abroad. The few Palestinians permitted to cross at Erez are generally barred from traveling abroad via Israel’s international airport and must instead travel abroad via Jordan. Palestinians wishing to leave Gaza via Erez, either to the West Bank or abroad, submit requests through the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee in Gaza, which forwards applications to Israeli authorities who decide on whether to grant a permit.
Separation Between Gaza and the West Bank
As part of the closure, Israeli authorities have sought to “differentiate” between their policy approaches to Gaza and the West Bank, such as imposing more sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods from Gaza to the West Bank, and promote separation between these two parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The army’s “Procedure for Settlement in the Gaza Strip by Residents of Judea and Samaria,” published in 2018, states that “in 2006, a decision was made to introduce a policy of separation between the Judea and Samaria Area [the West Bank] and the Gaza Strip in light of Hamas’ rise to power in the Gaza Strip. The policy currently in effect is explicitly aimed at reducing travel between the areas.”
In each of the 11 cases Human Rights Watch reviewed of people seeking to reach the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, for professional and educational opportunities not available in Gaza, Israeli authorities did not respond to requests for permits or denied them, either for security reasons or because they did not conform to the closure policy. Human Rights Watch also reviewed permit applications on the website of the Palestinian Civil Affairs Committee, or screenshots of it, including the status of the permit applications, when they were sent on to the Israeli authorities and the response received, if any.
Raed Issa, a 42-year-old artist, said that the Israeli authorities did not respond to his application for a permit in early December 2015, to attend an exhibit of his art at a Ramallah art gallery between December 27 and January 16, 2016.
The “Beyond the Dream” exhibit sought to highlight the situation in Gaza after the 2014 war. Issa said that the Palestinian Civil Affairs committee continued to identify the status of his application as “sent and waiting for response” and he ended up having to attend the opening of the exhibit virtually. Issa felt that not being physically present hampered his ability to engage with audiences, and to network and promote his work, which he believes limited his reach and hurt sales of his artwork. He described feeling pained “that I am doing my own art exhibit in my homeland and not able to attend it, not able to move freely.”
Ashraf Sahweel, 47, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gaza Center for Art and Culture, said that Gaza-based artists routinely do not hear back after applying for Israeli permits, forcing them to miss opportunities to attend exhibitions and other cultural events. A painter himself, he applied for seven permits between 2013 and 2022, but Israeli authorities either did not respond or denied each application, he said. Sahweel said that he has “given up hope on the possibility to travel via Erez.”
Palestinian athletes in Gaza face similar restrictions when seeking to compete with their counterparts in the West Bank, even though the Israeli army guidelines specifically identify “entry of sportspeople” as among the permissible exemptions to the closure. The guidelines, updated in February 2022, set out that “all Gaza Strip residents who are members of the national and local sports teams may enter Israel in transit to the Judea and Samaria area [West Bank] or abroad for official activities of the teams.”
Hilal al-Ghawash, 25, told Human Rights Watch that his football team, Khadamat Rafah, had a match in July 2019 with a rival West Bank team, the Balata Youth Center, in the finals of Palestine Club, with the winner entitled to represent Palestine in the Asian Cup. The Palestinian Football Federation applied for permits for the entire 22-person team and 13-person staff, but Israeli authorities, without explanation, granted permits to only 4 people, only one of whom was a player. The game was postponed as a result.
After Gisha appealed the decision in the Jerusalem District Court, Israeli authorities granted 11 people permits, including six players, saying the other 24 were denied on security grounds that were not specified. Al-Ghawash was among the players who did not receive a permit. The Jerusalem district court upheld the denials. With Khadamat Rafah prevented from reaching the West Bank, the Palestine Football Federation canceled the Palestine Cup finals match.
Al-Ghawash said that West Bank matches hold particular importance for Gaza football players, since they offer the opportunity to showcase their talents for West Bank clubs, which are widely considered superior to those in Gaza and pay better. Despite the cancellation, al-Ghawash said, the Balata Youth Center later that year offered him a contract to play for them. The Palestinian Football Federation again applied for a permit on al-Ghawash’s behalf, but he said he did not receive a response and was unable to join the team.
In 2021, al-Ghawash signed a contract with a different West Bank team, the Hilal al-Quds club. The Palestinian Football Federation again applied, but this time, the Israeli army denied the permit on unspecified security grounds. Al-Ghawash said he does not belong to any armed group or political movement and has no idea on what basis Israeli authorities denied him a permit.
Missing these opportunities has forced al-Ghawash to forgo not only higher pay, but also the chance to play for more competitive West Bank teams, which could have brought him closer to his goal of joining the Palestinian national team. “There’s a future in the West Bank, but, here in Gaza, there’s only a death sentence,” he said. “The closure devastates players’ future. Gaza is full of talented people, but it’s so difficult to leave.”
Palestinian students and professionals are frequently unable to obtain permits to study or train in the West Bank. In 2016, Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem agreed to have 10 physics students from Al-Azhar University in Gaza come to the hospital for a six-month training program. Israeli authorities denied five students permits without providing a rationale, two of the students said.
The five other students initially received permits valid for only 14 days, and then encountered difficulties receiving subsequent permits. None were able to complete the full program, the two students said. One, Mahmoud Dabour, 28, said that when he applied for a second permit, he received no response. Two months later, he applied again and managed to get a permit valid for one week. He received one other permit, valid for 10 days, but then, when he returned and applied for the fifth time, Israeli authorities rejected his permit request without providing a reason. As a result, he could not finish the training program, and, without the certification participants receive upon completion, he said, he cannot apply for jobs or attend conferences or workshops abroad in the field.
Dabour said that the training cannot be offered in Gaza, since the necessary radiation material required expires too quickly for it to be functional after passing through the time-consuming Israeli inspections of materials entering the Gaza Strip. There are no functioning devices of the kind that students need for the training in Gaza, Dabour said.
One of the students whose permit was denied said, “I feel I studied for five years for nothing, that my life has stopped.” The student asked that his name be withheld for his security.
Two employees of Zimam, a Ramallah-based organization focused on youth empowerment and conflict resolution, said that the Israeli authorities repeatedly denied them permits to attend organizational training and strategy meetings. Atta al-Masri, the 31-year-old Gaza regional director, said he has applied four times for permits, but never received one. Israeli authorities did not respond the first three times and, the last time in 2021, denied him a permit on the grounds that it was “not in conformity” with the permissible exemptions to the closure. He has worked for Zimam since 2009, but only met his colleagues in person for the first time in Egypt in March 2022.
Ahed Abdullah, 29, Zimam’s youth programs coordinator in Gaza, said she applied twice for permits in 2021, but Israeli authorities denied both applications on grounds of “nonconformity:”
This is supposed to be my right. My simplest right. Why did they reject me? My colleagues who are outside Palestine managed to make it, while I am inside Palestine, I wasn’t able to go to the other part of Palestine … it’s only 2-3 hours from Gaza to Ramallah, why should I get the training online? Why am I deprived of being with my colleagues and doing activities with them instead of doing them in dull breakout rooms on Zoom?
Human Rights Watch has previously documented that the closure has prevented specialists in the use of assistive devices for people with disabilities from opportunities for hands-on training on the latest methods of evaluation, device maintenance, and rehabilitation. Human Rights Watch also documented restrictions on the movement of human rights workers. Gisha, the Israeli human rights group, has reported that Israel has blocked health workers in Gaza from attending training in the West Bank on how to operate new equipment and hampered the work of civil society organizations operating in Gaza.
Israeli authorities have also made it effectively impossible for Palestinians from Gaza to relocate to the West Bank. Because of Israeli restrictions, thousands of Gaza residents who arrived on temporary permits and now live in the West Bank are unable to gain legal residency. Although Israel claims that these restrictions are related to maintaining security, evidence Human Rights Watch collected suggests the main motivation is to control Palestinian demography across the West Bank, whose land Israel seeks to retain, in contrast to the Gaza Strip.
Egypt
With most Gaza residents unable to travel via Erez, the Egyptian-administered Rafah crossing has become Gaza’s primary outlet to the outside world, particularly in recent years. Egyptian authorities kept Rafah mostly closed for nearly five years following the July 2013 military coup in Egypt that toppled President Mohamed Morsy, whom the military accused of receiving support from Hamas. Egypt, though, eased restrictions in May 2018, amid the Great March of Return, the recurring Palestinian protests at the time near the fences separating Gaza and Israel.
Despite keeping Rafah open more regularly since May 2018, movement via Rafah is a fraction of what it was before the 2013 coup in Egypt. Whereas an average of 40,000 crossed monthly in both directions before the coup, the monthly average was 12,172 in 2019 and 15,077 in 2021, according to Gisha.
Human Rights Watch spoke with 16 Gaza residents who sought to travel via Rafah. Almost all said they opted for this route because of the near impossibility of receiving an Israeli permit to travel via Erez.
Gaza residents hoping to leave via Rafah are required to register in advance via a process the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has deemed “confusing” and “obscure.” Gaza residents can either register via the formal registration process administered by Gaza’s Interior Ministry or informally via what is known as tanseeq,or travel coordination with Egyptian authorities, paying travel companies or mediators for a place on a separate list coordinated by Egyptian authorities. Having two distinct lists of permitted travelers coordinated by different authorities has fueled “allegations of the payment of bribes in Gaza and in Egypt to ensure travel and a faster response,” according to OCHA.
The formal process often takes two to three months, except for those traveling for medical reasons, whose requests are processed faster, said Gaza residents who sought to leave Gaza via Rafah. Egyptian authorities have at times rejected those seeking to cross Rafah into Egypt on the grounds that they did not meet specific criteria for travel. The criteria lack transparency, but Gisha reported that they include having a referral for a medical appointment in Egypt or valid documents to enter a third country.
To avoid the wait and risk of denial, many choose instead the tanseeqroute. Several interviewees said that they paid large sums of money to Palestinian brokers or Gaza-based travel companies that work directly with Egyptian authorities to expedite people’s movement via Rafah. On social media, some of these companies advertise that they can assure travel within days to those who provide payment and a copy of their passport. The cost of tanseeq has fluctuated from several hundred US dollars to several thousand dollars over the last decade, based in part on how frequently Rafah is open.
In recent years, travel companies have offered an additional “VIP” tanseeq, which expedites travel without delays in transit between Rafah and Cairo, offers flexibility on travel date, and ensures better treatment by authorities. The cost was $700, as of January 2022.
The Cairo-based company offering the VIP tanseeq services, Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, has strong links with Egypt’s security establishment and is staffed largely by former Egyptian military officers, a human rights activist and a journalist who have investigated these issues told Human Rights Watch. This allows the company to reduce processing times and delays at checkpoints during the journey between Rafah and Cairo. The activist and journalist both asked that their names be withheld for security reasons.
The company is linked to prominent Egyptian businessman Ibrahim El-Argani, who has close ties with Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. Ergany heads the Union of Sinai Tribes, which works hand-in-hand with the Egyptian military and intelligence agencies against militants operating in North Sinai. Ergany, one of Egypt’s few businessmen able to export products to Gaza from Egypt, owns the Sinai Sons company, which has an exclusive contract to handle all contracts related to Gaza reconstruction efforts. Human Rights Watch wrote to El-Argani to solicit his perspectives on these issues, but had received no response at this writing.
A 34-year-old computer engineer and entrepreneur said that he sought to travel in 2019 to Saudi Arabia to meet an investor to discuss a potential project to sell car parts online. He chose not to apply to travel via Erez, as he had applied for permits eight times between 2016 and 2018 and had either been rejected or not heard back.
He initially registered via the formal Ministry of Interior process and received approval to travel after three months. However, on the day assigned for his exit via Rafah, an Egyptian officer there said he found his reason for travel not sufficiently “convincing” and denied him passage. A few months later, he tried to travel again for the same purpose, this time opting for tanseeq and paying $400, and, this time, he successfully reached Saudi Arabia within a week of seeking to travel.
He said that he would like to go on vacation with his wife, but worries that Egyptian authorities will not consider vacation a sufficiently compelling reason for travel and that his only option will be to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do tanseeq.
A 73-year-old man sought to travel via Rafah in February 2021, with his 46-year-old daughter, to get knee replacement surgery in al-Sheikh Zayed hospital in Cairo. He said Gaza lacks the capacity to provide such an operation. The man and his daughter are relatives of a Human Rights Watch staff member. They applied via the Interior Ministry process and received approval in a little over a week.
After they waited for several hours in the Egyptian hall in Rafah on the day of travel, though, Egyptian authorities included the daughter’s name among the 70 names of people who were not allowed to cross that day, the daughter said. The father showed the border officials a doctor’s note indicating that he needed someone to travel with him given his medical situation, but the officer told him, “You either travel alone or go back with her to Gaza.” She said she returned to Gaza, alongside 70 other people, and her father later traveled on his own.
Five people who did manage to travel via Rafah said that they experienced poor conditions and poor treatment, including intrusive searches, by the Egyptian authorities, with several saying that they felt Egyptian authorities treated them like “criminals.” Several people said that Egyptian officers confiscated items from them during the journey, including an expensive camera and a mobile phone, without apparent reason.
Upon leaving Rafah, Palestinians are transported by bus to Cairo’s airport. The trip takes about seven hours, but several people said that the journey took up to three days between long periods of waiting on the bus, at checkpoints and amid other delays, often in extreme weather. Many of those who traveled via Rafah said that, during this journey, Egyptian authorities prevented passengers from using their phones.
The parents of a 7-year-old boy with autism and a rare brain disease said they sought to travel for medical treatment for him in August 2021, but Egyptian authorities only allowed the boy and his mother to enter. The mother said their journey back to Gaza took four days, mostly as a result of Rafah being closed. During this time, she said, they spent hours waiting at checkpoints, in extreme heat, with her son crying nonstop. She said she felt “humiliated” and treated like “an animal,” observing that she “would rather die than travel again through Rafah.”
A 33-year-old filmmaker, who traveled via Rafah to Morocco in late 2019 to attend a film screening, said the return from Cairo to Rafah took three days, much of it spent at checkpoints amid the cold winter in the Sinai desert.
A 34-year-old man said that he planned to travel in August 2019 via Rafah to the United Arab Emirates for a job interview as an Arabic teacher. He said, on his travel date, Egyptian authorities turned him back, saying they had met their quota of travelers. He crossed the next day, but said that, as it was a Thursday and with Rafah closed on Friday, Egyptian authorities made travelers spend two nights sleeping at Rafah, without providing food or access to a clean bathroom.
The journey to Cairo airport then took two days, during which he described going through checkpoints where officers made passengers “put their hands behind their backs while they searched their suitcases.” As a result of these delays totaling four days since his assigned travel date, he missed his job interview and found out that someone else was hired. He is currently unemployed in Gaza.
Given the uncertainty of crossing at Rafah, Gaza residents said that they often wait to book their flight out of Cairo until they arrive. Booking so late often means, beyond other obstacles, having to wait until they can find a reasonably priced and suitable flight, planning extra days for travel and spending extra money on changeable or last-minute tickets. Similar dynamics prevail with regard to travel abroad via Erez to Amman.
Human Rights Watch interviewed four men under the age of 40 with visas to third countries, whom Egyptian authorities allowed entry only for the purpose of transit. The authorities transported these men to Cairo airport and made them wait in what is referred to as the “deportation room” until their flight time. The men likened the room to a “prison cell,” with limited facilities and unsanitary conditions. All described a system in which bribes are required to be able to leave the room to book a plane ticket, get food, drinks, or a cigarette, and avoid abuse. One of the men described an officer taking him outside the room, asking him, “Won’t you give anything to Egypt?” and said that others in the room told him that he then proceeded to do the same with them.
JERUZALEM – Israël wil bijna 4500 nieuwe woningen bouwen voor kolonisten op de Westelijke Jordaanoever. De regering heeft de plannen donderdag goedgekeurd volgens Peace Now, een groep die tegen de Israëlische nederzettingen is. Wanneer de bouw van de huizen zal beginnen is nog niet bekend.
De minister van Binnenlandse Zaken Ayelet Shaked reageerde door het “een feestelijke dag voor de nederzettingen op Judea en Samaria” te noemen, de Bijbelse benamingen voor het gebied op de Westelijke Jordaanoever.
Internationale kritiek
Vorige week kondigde Shaked al aan met plannen voor nieuwe woningen te komen. Dat kwam haar op veel internationale kritiek te staan, onder anderen van de Amerikaanse president Joe Biden.
De Palestijnse autoriteiten roepen de internationale gemeenschap op “stappen tegen Israël te ondernemen om de nederzettingen en agressie tegen het Palestijnse volk te stoppen”. De meeste landen beschouwen de Israëlische nederzettingen op de Westelijke Jordaanoever als illegaal. In de nederzettingen wonen naar schatting 470.000 Israëliërs.
De overgrote meerderheid van de woningen komt diep in bezet Palestijns gebied. Het besluit volgt op de aanbesteding van 1.355 woningen voor kolonisten eerder deze week.
Israël gaat nog eens 2.860 woningen bouwen in bezet Palestijns gebied. Woensdag kregen dertig afzonderlijke uitbreidingsplannen groen licht van de autoriteiten. Dat schrijft Peace Now, de Israëlische waakhond die het illegale nederzettingenproject op de voet volgt. Met deze stap schaadt Israël opnieuw de Palestijnse rechten, de eigen belangen en de kans op vrede, concludeert de organisatie terecht.
De facto annexatie
Negentig procent van de woningen zal worden gebouwd in Israëlische kolonies (‘nederzettingen’) diep op de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever. Peace Now spreekt van ‘een enorme expansie van geïsoleerde nederzettingen’. Zo krijgt de nederzetting Kedumim 377 nieuwe woningen, Har Bracha 286, Eli 628 en Revava 399. Daarnaast hebben vier plannen, samen goed voor 113 woningen, betrekking op Givat Ze’ev, een van de nederzettingen die Jeruzalem en Ramallah van elkaar scheiden.
Opvallend is verder dat woensdag twee zogenoemde ‘buitenposten’ met terugwerkende kracht werden ‘geregulariseerd’ – Israëlische newspeak voor het tot officiële nederzetting bevorderen van een door kolonisten gestichte gemeenschap die ook onder Israëlisch recht illegaal is. Het gaat om de buitenposten Mitzpe Danny, die voortaan als de nederzetting Michmash East door het leven gaat, en het vlakbij het met ontruiming bedreigde bedoeïenendorp Khan al-Ahmar gebouwde Haroeh Haivri, dat voor een daar gevestigd opleidingsinstituut 24 woningen mag bijbouwen, waaronder 14 voor de huisvesting van zeventig studenten.
De uitbreidingen volgen het bekende patroon van de Israëlische kolonisering, zoals door ons eerder beschreven. Vanuit aanvankelijk geïsoleerde nederzettingen op strategische locaties maakt Israël zich stapsgewijs meester van steeds meer Palestijns land, ten koste van de rechtmatige bewoners. Om deze de facto annexatie nog schrijnender te maken zijn veel van de inwoners van de nederzettingen Amerikanen, Nederlanders en andere buitenlanders, niet zelden christenen die tot het jodendom zijn overgegaan om zich met een Israëlisch paspoort in bezet gebied te kunnen vestigen.
Aanbesteding 1.355 woningen
Afgelopen zondag besteedde Israël al de bouw van 1.355 woningen aan, zoals wij eerder meldden. Aannemers die geïnteresseerd zijn om de woningen te bouwen kunnen inschrijven op dertien goedgekeurde plannen. Ook in dit geval zal ruim negentig procent van de woningen verrijzen in nederzettingen diep in Palestijns gebied.
Daarnaast werd de bouw van 83 woningen in Givat Hamatos aanbesteed, de nederzetting in het zuiden van bezet Oost-Jeruzalem waar Europese diplomaten eind vorig jaar door kolonisten werden verjaagd. De diplomaten protesteerden tegen de door Israël aangekondigde uitbreiding van Givat Hamatos met circa 2.600 woningen, een uitbreiding die volgens de EU een definitieve nagel aan de doodskist van de tweestatenoplossing zou vormen. De protesten hadden geen resultaat, evenmin als de harde kritiek van de VN, afgelopen zomer, op goedgekeurde plannen voor de uitbreiding van andere nederzettingen in Oost-Jeruzalem en op de Westoever.
Wie mocht hebben gehoopt dat de in juni aangetreden regering van Naftali Bennett, naar eigen zeggen een ‘regering van verandering’, een minder agressieve Palestinapolitiek zou voeren dan de voorafgaande kabinetten-Netanyahu, kwam bedrogen uit. Het beleid van Bennett is minstens zo grimmig, zoals afgelopen week ook bleek uit het op de Israëlische terrorismelijst plaatsen van zes Palestijnse maatschappelijke organisaties.
‘Zionistische onderneming’
De komende weken en maanden krijgen nog meer plannen voor grote bouwprojecten in Palestijns gebied definitief vorm. Daaronder plannen voor 3.500 woningen in het E1-gebied, alsmede voor een nieuwe nederzetting met duizenden woningen in het E2-gebied en een nieuwe nederzetting met negenduizend woningen in de wijk Atarot in Oost-Jeruzalem.
Zondag maakte minister van Huisvesting en Woningbouw Ze’ev Elkin bovendien bekend de komende vijf jaar 1.500 woningen te willen bouwen in 21 nederzettingen in de Jordaanvallei. Voor het project heeft zijn ministerie een budget van ruim zestig miljoen euro vrijgemaakt. In navolging van zijn collega van Binnenlandse Zaken Ayelet Shaked plaatste Elkin de illegale kolonisering – onder het oprichtingsverdrag van het Internationaal Strafhof een oorlogsmisdaad – in het kader van het zionisme: ‘Het versterken en uitbouwen van de nederzettingen in Judea and Samaria [de bijbelse benaming voor de Westelijke Jordaanoever] is een noodzakelijk en uiterst belangrijk deel van de zionistische onderneming.’
De ‘vervolmaking van het zionistische project’ is ook de drijfveer van Naftali Bennett, de kolonistenvoorman die het tot premier schopte. Bennett is een fanatiek tegenstander van een Palestijnse staat en wil van vredesbesprekingen met de Palestijnen niets weten. Twee weken geleden kondigde hij aan ook de illegale Israëlische kolonies op de bezette Syrische Hoogvlakte van Golan (Jawlan) te zullen uitbreiden en het aantal kolonisten te zullen verviervoudigen.
Europees en Amerikaans protest
Donderdag veroordeelden twaalf EU-lidstaten, waaronder Nederland, de aangekondigde bouw van de 2.860 woningen in een gezamenlijke verklaring. Met zijn nederzettingenpolitiek schendt Israël het internationaal recht en ondermijnt het pogingen om tot de tweestatenoplossing te komen, stellen de twaalf. Zij manen Israël de bindende resolutie 2334 van de VN-Veiligheidsraad uit 2016 alsnog te gehoorzamen. Daarin wordt onder meer van Israël geëist dat het de vestiging van kolonisten en de bouw en uitbreiding van nederzettingen in Oost-Jeruzalem en op de Westoever direct staakt, en een eind maakt aan de confiscatie van Palestijns land, de sloop van Palestijnse woningen en de verdrijving van Palestijnen.
Ook de Britse minister voor het Midden-Oosten en Afrika kwam donderdag met een verklaring waarin Israël wordt gemaand de kolonisering te staken. Een dag eerder al reageerden de Amerikanen in harde bewoordingen. Nog voor de vergadering waarin de Israëlische autoriteiten groen licht voor de nieuwbouw gaven, maande minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Antony Blinken Israëls minister van Defensie Benny Gantz telefonisch de bijeenkomst af te gelasten, schrijft de krant Haaretz. Zet Israël de bouw toch door, dan kan het op ‘een harde Amerikaanse reactie’ rekenen, aldus Blinken.
Gantz geloofde het wel en liet de vergadering doorgaan, met dezelfde zorgeloosheid waarmee hij een week eerder de zes Palestijnse maatschappelijke organisaties op de terrorismelijst plaatste. Israël weet dat het kritiek op dergelijke maatregelen krijgt en er een enkele keer met consequenties wordt gedreigd, maar heeft geleerd dat de buitenwereld alleen blaft en nooit bijt.
Medeplichtig
Israël weet dat het een hele reeks bindende VN-resoluties aan de laars kan blijven lappen omdat het door de internationale gemeenschap consequent wordt uitgezonderd van sancties. Keer op keer heeft die gemeenschap Israël nieuwe grenzen laten overschrijden en zich bereid getoond de eigen verplichtingen – om de internationale rechtsorde te handhaven en de Palestijnen in bescherming te nemen – te negeren. Met die opstelling heeft de internationale gemeenschap zich medeplichtig gemaakt aan de kolonisering en de militaire bezetting, het apartheidsregime en de grootschalige schendingen van de mensenrechten waarmee die gepaard gaat.
Het internationale beleid is hypocriet, betoogden wij onlangs, en als dat ergens duidelijk valt te zien is het in Den Haag. Nederland is wereldkampioen bezorgdheid uitspreken en waarschuwen voor de gevaren die de kolonisering inhoudt voor de tweestatenoplossing, de formule voor vrede die al 25 jaar door Den Haag wordt gepredikt. In de praktijk echter is straffeloosheid de norm en laat het Israël zijn gang gaan. Erger, Nederland draagt concreet bij aan de levensvatbaarheid van de illegale nederzettingen, zoals wij in ons betoog beschreven.
Geregeld hebben fracties in de Tweede Kamer gesteld dat sancties tegen Israël nu toch echt in beeld kwamen, om het daar vervolgens bij te laten. Een bekend voorbeeld is toenmalig buitenlandwoordvoerder van het CDA Pieter Omtzigt, die in juni 2013 met betrekking tot de nederzettingen sprak van een ‘rode lijn’ die Israël niet mocht passeren zonder sancties over zich af te roepen. Een ander voorbeeld is de motie die het CDA in juni 2016 samen met de PvdA en D66 indiende, waarin de regering werd opgeroepen om, ‘wanneer partijen afzien van constructieve deelname aan vredesbesprekingen en ondermijnend beleid blijven voeren, concrete maatregelen te nemen, bijvoorbeeld door opschorting van bilaterale of Europese samenwerkingsovereenkomsten’.
Inmiddels is Omtzigts ‘rode lijn’ uit 2013 met circa 150 duizend kolonisten overschreden en heeft Israël opnieuw een toonbeeld van ondermijnend beleid als premier. In Den Haag is geen politicus die kan uitleggen hoe de gepropageerde tweestatenoplossing nog gerealiseerd zou kunnen worden. De Palestijnen op de Westoever en in Oost-Jeruzalem en Gaza leven inmiddels 54 jaar onder een wrede bezetting – een bezetting waaronder geen van onze politici ook maar een dag zou willen leven, en waaronder geen van hen de Israëli’s 54 jaar zou laten leven. Maar voor Palestijnen gelden andere regels. Hun rechten doen er niet toe. Niet alleen in Israël, ook in Den Haag worden zij beschouwd als children of a lesser God.
Kruispunt
In Brussel staan de Palestijnse rechten evenmin op de agenda. Riep het Europees Parlement onlangs nog op tot harde maatregelen tegen de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten – onder meer een internationale boycot van de wereldtentoonstelling Expo Dubai – vanwege systematische schendingen van de mensenrechten, als het om de aanzienlijk zwaardere en langduriger schendingen van Israël gaat is het stil. Liever bijt Brussel zich vast in de vraag of het taalgebruik in Palestijnse schoolboeken wel vredelievend genoeg is. O wee als daar lelijke dingen in staan over de Israëlische overheersing, dan zal de EU toch echt genoodzaakt zijn subsidie in te houden. Israël daarentegen werd eerder deze week toegelaten tot het prestigieuze Europese onderzoeksprogramma Horizon Europe 2021-2027, dat het land naar verwachting 360 miljoen euro meer oplevert dan het bedrag dat het er zelf aan bijdraagt.
Met de nieuwe Israëlische uitbreiding van de nederzettingen en het op de terrorismelijst plaatsen van de zes Palestijnse organisaties staan Den Haag en Brussel voor de zoveelste keer op een kruispunt. Treffen zij nu wél sancties tegen Israël, of volharden zij in hun medeplichtigheid aan een wrede overheersing die iedere hoop op vrede tot een utopie maakt?
EINDE BERICHT
Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Noot 8/Astrid Essed vloert Vomar
”En zoals u zult weten, zijn kolonisten bewoners van in bezet gebied gestichtenederzettingen, die illegaal zijn volgens het Internationaal Recht [4] EN regelrechte landdiefstal, omdat zij worden gebouwd op gestolenPalestijns land of, zoals in het geval van Oost-Jeruzalem bij die uitgezettePalestijnse families, gestolen Palestijnse huizen.Waarbij Israelische kolonisten vaak ook nog eens verantwoordelijk zijnvoor bijna dagelijks geweld tegen de bezette Palestijnse bevolking! [5]”
SUPERMARKT VOMAR, STOP MET DE VERKOOP VAN ISRAELISCHE
ISRAELISCHE NEDERZETTINGEN, ILLEGAAL VOLGENS HET INTERNATIONAAL RECHT
”It is unlawful under the Fourth Geneva Convention for an occupying power to transfer parts of its own population into the territory it occupies. This means that international humanitarian law prohibits the establishment of settlements, as these are a form of population transfer into occupied territory”
When a territory is placed under the authority of a hostile army, the rules of international humanitarian law dealing with occupation apply. Occupation confers certain rights and obligations on the occupying power.
Prohibited actions include forcibly transferring protected persons from the occupied territories to the territory of the occupying power. It is unlawful under the Fourth Geneva Convention for an occupying power to transfer parts of its own population into the territory it occupies. This means that international humanitarian law prohibits the establishment of settlements, as these are a form of population transfer into occupied territory. Any measure designed to expand or consolidate settlements is also illegal. Confiscation of land to build or expand settlements is similarly prohibited.
Reacties uitgeschakeld voor Noten 9 en 10/Astrid Essed vloert Vomar
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