Israel's collective punishment of Gaza slammed
On Jan. 20, Israel turned its prolonged blockade of Gaza into a full-scale lockdown, cutting fuel supplies to the territory's main power plant and petrol stations and stopping aid shipments, including food and humanitarian supplies.
The move marked a new peak in the ongoing crisis in the Palestinian territory as electricity generation, water supply, sewage treatment, food supplies and medical services ground to a halt under Israel's punishing blockade.
Arab leaders, U.N. officials and rights groups warned that Gazans faced a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented magnitude with widespread disease and famine rapidly becoming reality.
The Jewish state later allowed limited shipments of cooking gas and fuel into Gaza, but the situation remained desperate.
Some 700,000 people – almost half of Gaza's population – flooded into the Egyptian side of Rafah and clamored to buy petrol, cigarettes, olive oil and other foodstuffs, which have been in short supply in Gaza.
"The bakeries are not working and there are difficulties in getting the things we need," said a 42-year-old housewife who gave her name as Umm Raid and crossed the border with two of her children days after the lockdown. "I came to buy milk for my children and to get medicine for diabetes."
Israel claims its moves are retaliation for continued rocket attacks from Gaza, but the crude home-made rockets usually strike empty fields or uninhabited areas, and rarely cause major damage or casualties. Amnesty International said rockets fired by Palestinian militants were responsible for two civilian deaths in 2006.
World Condemnation
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Israel's blockade as "collective punishment".
"When you deprive the people of water, electricity, and humanitarian goods, even air, the people must explode, and they live in a besieged strip," Abbas said in a speech in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Jan. 26.
The European Union and international agencies have also called the closure "collective punishment" on Gaza's 1.5 million people, most of whom depend on foreign aid.
"I am against this collective punishment of the people of Gaza," European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement on Jan. 21.
She said neither the blockade nor recent military strikes in the narrow coastal strip of Palestinian territory would prevent rocket strikes being launched into Israel. "Only a credible political agreement this year...can turn Palestinians away from violence," she said.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon also urged Israel to end the closure, saying it cut off the population from fuel supplies needed to pump water and generate electricity for homes and hospitals.
And the U.N.'s undersecretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs called for a better solution: "We all understand the security problems and the need to respond to that, but collective punishment of the people of Gaza is not, we believe, the appropriate way to do that," John Holmes said.
"Collective punishment"
Israel's use of "collective punishment" appears to be part of a pattern that has played out in the Strip for decades.
U.N. officials cite numerous human rights violations by Israel, including military incursions and arrests in the West Bank, new settlements and construction of a wall in Palestinian territory, roadblocks, and withholding of taxes—all of which create hardship for ordinary Palestinians, not just militants.
Israel, which occupied the impoverished territory in 1967, pulled troops and settlers out in 2005, but still controls its northern and eastern borders, airspace and coastal waters.
Israel says its checkpoints and roadblocks are meant to prevent militants from launching attacks, while Palestinians call them a collective punishment measure that also hampers their economy.
The Jewish state also launches deadly military operations directed at militants, but which often result in large numbers of civilian casualties.
According to Israeli human rights watchdog B'Tselem, Israeli troops killed 373 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in 2007, 35 percent of whom were not involved in hostilities.
The same year, Palestinians killed seven Israeli civilians -- the lowest number since the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising in 2000 -- and six soldiers, the group said.
Israel's ongoing settlement activity also drives Palestinians away from land that is legally theirs, adding to the problems of homelessness and poverty. Close to half a million Jews live on West Bank land seized by Israel in 1967, including Arab East Jerusalem.
In addition, Israeli human rights group B'Tselem estimates that 28,000 Palestinians have been left homeless as a result of Israel's practice of mass demolition of Palestinian homes during the four-year intifada and upto March 2005.
The policy has sparked repeated condemnations by human rights groups which claim it amounts to collective punishment and a breach of international law.
Brief snapshots of what Palestinians consider Israel's "collective punishment" policies can be found in the backgrounders that are part of this In-Focus feature.