Skip to main content

Israel: Flouts International Law - yet again!

The world sits by and watches as Israel, yet again, flouts international law. Not a murmur of condemnation. Just a tutting tutting! The time has surely come when the world must say to Israel - enough is enough! To say that Israel is becoming a renegade State, openly cocking its nose at international law and convention, is probably now an under-statement.

Israel's latest action is that it will collectively punish the people of Gaza by either restricting, or cutting off altogether, electricity and water, to the already devastated territory.

BBC News reports:

"Israel's defence minister has approved sanctions against Gaza, including cuts in the supply of electricity and fuel to try to halt rocket attacks.

Ehud Barak authorised the cuts, which are expected to follow immediately after rocket attacks are launched.

Palestinian leaders say the measure amounts to collective punishment.

Israel supplies 60% of the electricity for Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants - but last month Israel declared Gaza a "hostile entity".

By formally declaring Gaza "hostile", Israel argues it is no longer bound by international law governing the administration of occupied territory to supply utilities to the civilian population.

But the position accepted by the international community is that Israel remains legally responsible for the coastal strip, despite withdrawing two years ago, because it still controls Gaza's borders, airspace and territorial waters.

Israel imposed an economic embargo on Gaza after the Islamist militant group, Hamas, seized control from the rival Fatah group in June. It is also limiting the movement of people in and out of the territory.

But the top United Nations humanitarian official has now urged Israel to lift its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pentagon's eye-popping spending....and waste!

Only a gigantic bureaucracy could get away with spending of such dimensions - and the amazing waste involved in part of that ginormous spend.   Think US Pentagon..... "From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades.  Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...
Post a Comment
Read more

What does a no-fly zone actually mean?

As some countries consider imposing a no-fly zone in relation to Libya, the pertinent question must be what does that mean and entail? FP provides the answers: "It depends on the circumstances. There are two primary types of no-fly zones imposed by air forces. The first is imposed by one military over another, while the two sides are at war. In practice, this type of no-fly zone amounts to a warning from one side that it will engage the other's aircraft if they are spotted in a given territory. The second type, more applicable to the situation in Libya, is when an outside power possessing overwhelming air superiority restricts flights over a given country in order to discourage an internal conflict or humanitarian crisis. This is a relatively recent tactic, which was used most famously in Bosnia and Iraq during the 1990s. No-fly zones are often a compromise in situations where the international community is demanding a response to ongoing violence, but full military interven...
6 comments
Read more