[lbo-talk] a collage of lies

Victor Friedlander victor at kfar-hanassi.org.il
Thu Jun 10 09:40:37 PDT 2010


It has no choice. Israel's ongoing control of the main aspects of life in the Gaza Strip creates obligations. Since 1967 Israel has been ruling the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as an occupying power. Even after completing the "disengagement" plan in September 2005, in which Israel pulled permanent military installations and civilian settlements out of the Gaza Strip, it has continued to fully control the territorial waters and airspace of the Gaza Strip and the land crossing points between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Israel also maintains indirect but substantial control of the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Israel's control of the crossings between the Gaza Strip and the outside world, in addition to its control of other significant aspects of life in the Gaza Strip, such as the population registry and the taxation system, creates Israel’s obligation towards the population of the Gaza Strip. It is Gisha's position that these obligations derive from international humanitarian law because Israel is the occupying force in Gaza.

Even the Israeli Supreme Court, which considers that the laws of occupation do not apply to Gaza, ruled that Israel continues to bear obligations towards the residents of Gaza deriving from the state of combat between Israel and militants in Gaza, its ongoing control of Gaza's borders, and the strong dependence created in Gaza upon services provided by Israel as a result of the years in which Israel controlled the Gaza Strip directly, from 1967 to 2005. One way or another, Israel is still responsible for the Gaza Strip and its residents in the areas that it controls, including movement of people into and out of Gaza. Furthermore, Israel is obligated by international humanitarian law to maintain public order and guarantee normal life for the civilian population. Therefore, Israel is responsible for ensuring that its policy regarding the crossings allows the residents of the Gaza Strip a normal life.


>From the Gisha site
http://www.gisha.org/index.php?intLanguage=2&intSiteSN=119&intItemId=1798

On 10 June 2010 18:15, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Victor Friedlander wrote:
>
>
> > Gaza is not a sovereign state but only a
> > break-away district of the State of Israel.
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Does Israel claim to be sovereign over Gaza ?
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip
>
>
> Gaza Strip
>
> The Gaza Strip (Arabic: قطاع غزة‎ Qiṭāʿ Ġazza/Qita' Ghazzah, Arabic
> pronunciation: [qitˤaːʕ ɣazza]) lies on the Eastern coast of the
> Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel
> on the south, east and north. It is about 41 kilometers (25 mi) long,
> and between 6 and 12 kilometers (4–7.5 mi) wide, with a total area of
> 360 square kilometers (139 sq mi). The territory takes its name from
> Gaza, its main city.
>
> The territory has a population of about 1.5 million people, as of July
> 2009,[1] 1 million of whom were, as of March 2005, refugees[2] who
> fled to the territory as part of the 1948 Palestinian exodus following
> the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, from those parts of Mandate Palestine that
> became Israel, and their descendants. The population is predominantly
> Sunni Muslims and speaks a Western Egyptian dialect of Arabic.
>
> The Gaza Strip acquired its current boundaries at the cessation of
> fighting in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which was confirmed in the
> Israel-Egypt Armistice Agreement on 24 February 1949.[3] Article V of
> the Agreement declared that the demarcation line was not to be an
> international border. The Gaza Strip continued to be occupied by
> Egypt. At first it administered the territory through the
> All-Palestine Government and then directly from 1959 until 1967, when
> Israel occupied it following the Six-Day War. Pursuant to the Oslo
> Accords signed between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation
> Organisation in 1993, the Palestinian Authority was set up as an
> interim administrative body to govern Palestinian population centres,
> with Israel maintaining control of Gaza Strip's airspace, some of its
> land borders and territorial waters, until a final agreement could be
> reached. As agreement remained elusive, Israel unilaterally disengaged
> from Gaza in 2005, saying it was no longer the occupying power there.
> The UN, Human Rights Watch and many other international bodies and
> NGOs still consider Israel to be the occupying power of the Gaza
> Strip,[4][5][6] which Israel disputes.[6]
>
> The Gaza Strip is one of the territorial units forming the Palestinian
> territories.[7][8][9][10] Actual control of the area within the Gaza
> Strip borders is in the hands of Hamas, an organization that won civil
> parliamentary Palestinian Authority elections in 2006 and took over de
> facto government in the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority by
> way of its own political maneuvering and armed militia in July 2007,
> while consolidating power by violently removing the Palestinian
> Authority's security forces and civil servants
>
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-- Victor Friedlander



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