[UN] Report Finds Naval Blockade by Israel Legal but Faults Raid

[hack89]

Last edited Mon Aug 18, 2014, 11:36 AM - Edit history (1)

Just a reminder that in 2011 the UN found that Israel's blockade of Gaza is legal under international law.

UNITED NATIONS — A long-awaited United Nations review of Israel’s 2010 raid on a Turkish-based flotilla in which nine passengers were killed has found that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is both legal and appropriate.

The report takes a broadly sympathetic view of Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza.

“Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza,” the report says in its opening paragraphs. “The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”

But the Palmer committee said that while it had concerns about that policy and urged that it be loosened further, it saw the naval blockade as a purely security-oriented tool that had been imposed to stop weapons from arriving in Gaza by sea. It also expressed strong concern about the thousands of rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel from Gaza in recent years. It said that because Gaza’s port could not handle large ships, a naval blockade had little impact on the supply of civilian goods.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/middleeast/02flotilla.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I also concur with the UN that Israel was too heavy handed in their response to the Turkish flotilla.

[King_David]

1. Everybody here keeps on telling us all that the blockade is illegal nt

[hack89]

2. Everybody is wrong. nt

[DanTex]

3. U.N. experts say Israel's blockade of Gaza illegal

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says the blockade violates the Geneva Conventions, but hey, what do they know.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/us-un-gaza-rights-idUSTRE78C59R20110913

The so-called Palmer Report on the Israeli raid of May 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists said earlier this month that Israel had used unreasonable force in last year's raid, but its naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled strip was legal.

A panel of five independent U.N. rights experts reporting to the U.N. Human Rights Council rejected that conclusion, saying the blockade had subjected Gazans to collective punishment in "flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law."

...

An earlier fact-finding mission named by the same U.N. forum to investigate the flotilla incident also found in a report last September that the blockade violated international law. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says the blockade violates the Geneva Conventions.

...

Richard Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and one of the five experts who issued Tuesday's statement, said the Palmer report's conclusions were influenced by a desire to salve Turkish-Israeli ties.

"The Palmer report was aimed at political reconciliation between Israel and Turkey. It is unfortunate that in the report politics should trump the law," he said in the statement.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says blockade is illegal under international law.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/05/israel-flotilla-un-idUSLDE65404020100605

[hack89]

4. So when the UN comes to a definitive conclusion

let me know.

[DanTex]

5. I doubt they will on this. Kinda like the war in Iraq.

The US has a veto on the Security Council.

[hack89]

6. Nothing involving IP is clear and unambiguous.

which is a big part of the problem - either side can point to things that say they are right.