27 December 2008

 

PRESS RELEASE

 

STATEMENT BY PROF.
RICHARD FALK,

UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL
RAPPORTEUR FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

IN THE OCCUPIED
TERRITORIES

 

ON THE CRISIS IN THE GAZA
STRIP

 

 

For
further information, contact

Phyllis
Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington
DC

email:                      pbennis@ips-dc.org

telephone:   1-202-234-9382 ex 206

mobile:       
1-202-309-1377

 

 

The
Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of
international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in
regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the
laws of war.

 

Those violations include:

 

Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded
Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

 

Targeting civilians – the airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the
most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated
area of the Middle East.

 

Disproportionate military response – the airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security
office of Gaza’s elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of
civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to
find transportation home from the university.

 

Earlier Israeli actions,
specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza
Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food),
have resulted in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the
inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment
for the injured, and the inability of Gaza’s besieged doctors and other medical
workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

 

Certainly the rocket attacks
against civilian targets in Israel
are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right,
neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate
international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity
in its response.  I note that Israel’s escalating military
assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one
Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over
a year.

 

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas’ diplomatic initiatives to
reestablish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on 26 December.

 

The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human
toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain
complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel’s violations of
international law.  That complicity includes those countries knowingly
providing the military equipment including warplanes and helicopters used in these
illegal attacks, as well as those countries that have supported and
participated in the siege of Gaza
that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

 

I remind all Member States of the
United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation
to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international
humanitarian law – regardless of what country may be responsible for those
violations.  I call on all Member
States, as well as officials and every
relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not
only to condemn Israel’s
serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection
for the Palestinian people.

 

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