Palestinian Terrorists Violate Ceasefire

by IsraeliLawStudent | August 11, 2008 at 11:40 am

160 views | 2 Recommendations | 6 comments

Palestinian terrorists operating in Gaza fired a Qassam rocket into Israel on Monday August 11, interrupting the Jewish day of mourning, Tisha B'av. This is the 13th rocket fired since the June 19th ceasefire, the first of which has landed directly on the city of Sderot, and not on its neighbouring towns. Sderot Media Center reports that no injuries or damage resulted from this rocket.

In response to an increased security threat, the Israeli government announced that it will shut down the border crossing between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Israel on Tuesday.

IsraeliLawStudent, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Share your stories with me!

Greetz from the north

Here's a related story:

Breaking the Gaza Blockade

IsraeliLawStudent, do you think the attacks could be linked to the Israeli governments collective punishment of the 1.5 million people in Gaza?

Here's another related story from NowPublic's Sameh Habeeb who reports from Gaza City, Gaza Strip,

Gazans live back in the Middle Ages

The suffering and the torture could be a reason for nation's collapse or fall down. However, it could be a way to achieve victory or some of its commencements. I always gather my ideas to penetrate this suffering to tell the story of my people through my words.

I having nothing but a strong will to write and tell the untold story of my people in the besieged Gaza strip. I truly became addicted on reporting daily sufferings encountered by 1.5 million besieged in Gaza, the New Biggest Concentration Camp!

The state of affairs of the people living in Gaza is tragic. My heart goes out to all of those suffering. The responsibility for the situation must be placed directly in the hands of those who refuse to make peace and continue to stunt the economic growth of its own people.

The Hamas government openly supports terror attacks against Israeli civilians, and does not promote any message of peace whatsoever. It refuses to work with the Israeli government on joint efforts, and therefore keeps its own people in a destitute position - living in absolute squalor, as the article you referenced shows. While the Israeli government has no choice but to prevent the continuous stockpiling of new weapons intended to be used against Israel in terror attacks, the Hamas government has a choice - to abandon terror and work towards a better future for thePalestinian people, or to continue to bear the responsibility of the humanitarian disaster faced by the Palestinians.

Let's hope Hamas changes its ways, and chooses a better life for its citizens.

"The responsibility for the situation must be placed directly in the hands of those who refuse to make peace and continue to stunt the economic growth of its own people."

So you condone the collective punishment of "all" 1.5 million men, women and children in Gaza because of Hamas'?

Do your law studies include the Geneva Convention?

The Fourth Geneva Convention (or GCIV) relates to the protection of civilians during times of war "in the hands" of an enemy and under any military occupation by a foreign power.

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime.

Collective punishments

Article 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed.

It's so ironic that the drafters of the Geneva Conventions wrote the section on Collective Punishments with Nazi attrocites in mind.

Israel indeed ratified the 4th Geneva convention in 1949. However, your interpretation of Article 33 is incorrect and misleading, and you neglected to mention the rest of the clause, which cites the prohibition against terror.

Furthermore, despite the fact that legally the conflict in Gaza is not covered by the Geneva convention (since it is not occupied territory nor a high contracting party), Israel fulfills the convention's requirements beyond the letter of the law and supplies the Gazan people with food and medicine. Please note that the application of economic sanctions against a hostile entity is fully authorized by international law. See the following sources for more information on the aforementioned clause.

ON MAY 27th, 1942, the Deputy Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, was assassinated by the Czech underground as he drove to his office in Prague, writes SEÁN GANNON .

In an effort "to make up for his death", the SS rounded up the residents of the nearby village of Lidice. Some 200 men were immediately executed. The women were sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp where most subsequently died;80 per cent of their children were gassed at Chelmno in July.

Two years later, a partisan bomb killed 33 members of an SS police battalion as it marched through central Rome. In reprisal, the city's Gestapo chief, Herbert Kappler, ordered that 10 Italians be executed for every dead German. The following day, 335 people were taken down to the Ardeatine Caves and shot in the back of the neck.

Such were the type of atrocities that the framers of the Fourth Geneva Convention had in mind when they outlawed "collective punishment" in 1949. Article 33's stipulation that no person "be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed" refers to the active imposition of criminal penalties in reprisal for another party's guilt.

Prof. Michael Krauss, on the faculty of law at George Mason University, points out-

The charge of collective punishment is appropriately leveled against one side in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute; but that side is not Israel. As Joseph Klein recently pointed out in a Front Page Magazine article, the innocent Israeli women and children slaughtered while going about their daily lives in homes, schools, on buses and at shopping malls are not warriors against the Palestinian people. They are in large number the victims of the Hamas' measures of collective punishment against Jews -- intimidation and terrorism, which violate their most basic of human rights - life itself. Indeed, Israel has targeted the perpetrators of these atrocities individually, entirely in conformity with its international obligations. When Israel kills such targets, precisely the people who have individually committed acts of war against Israel, it highlights the difference between legal force and collective punishment.

First Flagged at 1:38 PM, Aug 15, 2008 by growline

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