{"id":114385,"date":"2018-07-16T12:01:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T11:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=114385"},"modified":"2018-07-12T14:36:36","modified_gmt":"2018-07-12T13:36:36","slug":"the-gaza-blockade-is-illegal-and-so-is-the-use-of-force-to-maintain-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/07\/the-gaza-blockade-is-illegal-and-so-is-the-use-of-force-to-maintain-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gaza Blockade Is Illegal\u2013 And So Is the Use of Force to Maintain It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Palestinian paramedics evacuate an injured man on the Gaza side of the Israel-Gaza border, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, during March 30 Land Day demonstrations. \u00a9 2018 Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Jul 2018 – <\/em>Human Rights Watch (HRW) is among the leading guardians of human rights in the world. Sari Bashi is HRW\u2019s Israel\/Palestine Advocacy Director. She can lay claim to an impressive academic pedigree (BA, Yale; JD, Yale), and she co-founded the important Israeli human rights group Gisha. It thus cannot but depress that Bashi is so wanting in elementary moral and legal judgment when it comes to the people of Gaza.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the Israeli massacre in Gaza on 14 May 2018, Bashi posted a commentary under the title,\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t Blame Hamas for the Gaza Bloodshed.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u200b<\/a>Its essence is captured in the opening sentence: \u201cIsrael has a right to defend its borders, but shooting unarmed protesters who haven\u2019t breached its frontier is disproportionate and illegal.\u201d Insofar as the demonstrators didn\u2019t pose an \u201cimminent threat to life,\u201d Bashi concludes, Israel had no right to use lethal force against them and, in any event, did not \u201cexhaust\u201d nonlethal means \u201csuch as tear gas, skunk water, and rubber-coated steel pellets\u201d to throw back the assembled crowd.<\/p>\n

The UN has pronounced Gaza\u00a0unlivable<\/a>, while Sara Roy of Harvard\u2019s Center for Middle Eastern Studies has written, \u201cInnocent people, most of them young, are slowly being poisoned by the water they drink.<\/a>\u201d Is it not a tad unseemly, not to say unsettling, for the representative of a respected human rights organization to coach Israel how to stay within the letter of the law\u2014before resorting to bullets, you must first try \u201ctear gas, skunk water, and rubber-coated steel pellets\u201d\u2014while it\u2019s herding two million people, half of them children, in an unlivable space in which they are slowly being poisoned?<\/p>\n

To be sure, Bashi is not oblivious to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza caused by Israel\u2019s blockade. But she makes out no legal nexus between the effects of the siege and Israel\u2019s right to use force. Instead, she dwells on the apparently paradoxical outcome that whereas Israel imposed the blockade to weaken Hamas, it has in fact \u201chelped Hamas grow in strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sari Bashi of Human Rights Watch, from her twitter feed.<\/p><\/div>\n

But the siege is not irrelevant to a\u00a0legal\u00a0determination of Israel\u2019s right to use force\u2014be it proportionate or disproportionate, moderate or excessive, lethal or nonlethal\u2014to prevent demonstrators from breaching Gaza\u2019s perimeter fence. For brevity\u2019s sake, I would want to touch here on one basic, uncontroversial point. (A forthcoming article by Jamie Stern-Weiner and this writer parses the more nuanced legal issues.)<\/p>\n

It is a tenet of international law that no state can resort to forceful measures unless \u201cpeaceful means\u201d have been exhausted (UN Charter, Article 2). This principle is as sacred to the rule of law as the analogous Hippocratic Oath,\u00a0primum non nocere (first, do no harm), is to medicine. Now consider the situation in Gaza. Nearly all competent observers agree:<\/p>\n