March
10, 2024
In
partnership with
In
recent months, international media attention has rightfully been devoted to the
unprecedented scope of death and destruction wrought by the Israeli military in
the Gaza Strip. Daily news bulletins have grown increasingly concerned with the
deprivation of food, water, medicine, and other basic supplies resulting from
the intensified siege that Israel imposed shortly after the Hamas-led attacks
of October 7.
Israeli military vehicles seen near the Israeli-Gaza fence, February 28, 2024. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
Yet
much of this focus tends to view the current policies of restriction and
deprivation in isolation. This is a profound mistake.
In
fact, the Israeli stranglehold on Palestinians in Gaza has been gradually
tightened over the course of decades, as a means of control, pressure, and
collective punishment. Even in “ordinary” times, between its periodic military
offensives in the Strip, Israel’s sweeping restrictions on the movement of
people and goods have long undermined basic living conditions in Gaza and
violated other human rights that depend on it — such as the rights to family
life, education, medical treatment, and pursuing one’s livelihood.
The
catastrophic situation today must be understood within the context of Israel’s
pre-October 7 policies, including vis-à-vis Palestinians’ freedom of movement
between Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. Over more than half a century, the
violence of Israel’s ongoing occupation, repeated military assaults, and
“separation policy” between Gaza and the West Bank have created a broken and
bleeding stretch of land. These policies have manufactured and maintained a
humanitarian disaster; separated Palestinians in Gaza from those in Israel and
the West Bank; and promoted Israel’s illegitimate political and demographic
objectives.
The
birth of a permit regime
The
Gaza Strip was never meant to exist as a distinct territorial unit. There are
not enough resources in its tiny area to support an independent economy, and
certainly not the economy of 2.3 million people who are deprived of the basic
right to move freely. But for decades, Israeli restrictions on the movement of
people and goods have led to deteriorating living conditions in the Strip and
cut it off from the outside world.
In
1948, approximately 200,000 Nakba refugees from across Palestine were forced to
flee to what became the Gaza Strip. This almost quadrupled the area’s
population, which had, until then, been concentrated mainly in the ancient town
of Gaza City. The humanitarian crisis prompted by this sudden influx of
refugees has persisted to this day.
Since
occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel’s military has developed a
complex system of rules and sanctions to control the movement of the millions
of Palestinians who live in these areas, as well as those living within
Israel’s 1948 borders. Initially, Israel instituted a “general exit permit,”
allowing Palestinians to travel relatively freely between Israel and the
occupied territory, but this was canceled in 1991.
In
its place, Israel began requiring Palestinians to obtain individual travel
permits from Israeli authorities, thereby establishing the permit regime
through which it has continued to restrict Palestinian movement and access to
this day. Predictably, this led to a steady decrease in movement to and from
Gaza.
In
1993, during the Oslo process, Israel for the first time declared a weeks-long
general closure on the occupied territory, blocking all travel regardless of
its purpose. Shortly thereafter, it began constructing an electric fence and
segments of a concrete wall surrounding the Gaza Strip.
These
trends worsened following the failure of the Camp David negotiations and the
onset of the Second Intifada in late 2000. In the months before the Intifada
began, more than 26,000 Gaza residents had held permits to work in Israel,
clocking some 500,000 exits into Israel via the Erez Crossing each month. After
the Intifada broke out, Israel revoked and canceled numerous travel permits —
not only as a method of countering security threats, but as a means of
collective punishment.
In
the first year of the Second Intifada, the Erez Crossing was closed to
Palestinians 72 percent of the time. By the end of 2000, the number of
residents holding Israeli work permits had dropped to less than 900.
The
illusion of ‘disengagement’
Since
the implementation of Israel’s “disengagement plan” in the late summer of 2005,
many Israelis and internationals have falsely believed that Israel relinquished
its control over Gaza, thus ridding itself of the responsibilities it owed the
Strip’s residents as the occupying power.
But
despite withdrawing its troops and citizens from within the enclave, Israel has
continued to wield control over almost all aspects of life in Gaza by virtue of
its ongoing restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of the
Strip.
After
Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, Israel
tightened these restrictions further still, imposing a full closure. The entry
of goods into Gaza was limited to what Israel defined as the “humanitarian
minimum.” The exit of goods from the Strip to be marketed in Israel and the
West Bank — to which Gaza had until then exported a combined 85 percent of its
goods — was entirely prohibited. The entry of fuel was substantially reduced.
And the movement of people into and out of Gaza was slowed to a virtual halt.
In
September 2007, a few months after Hamas took sole control of the Strip, the
Israeli cabinet declared Gaza a “hostile territory.” From that point on, Israel
has insisted that it has no obligation to enable even minimal humanitarian
access to or from the Strip — and that any decision to do so is made ex gratia,
not as a result of any legal obligation.
Israel
has since enforced sweeping travel restrictions that have blocked Gaza
residents’ access to employment, education, and medical treatment, as well as
to their family members living in Israel, the West Bank, and abroad. Israel
also severely restricted the entry of goods into Gaza.
In
2012, a prolonged legal battle by Gisha, the human rights organization where I
work, led Israel’s Defense Ministry to reveal a document entitled “Food
Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Lines,” which included information about
the policy of restricting the entry of food into Gaza between 2007 and 2010.
The document contained, among other things, calculations of the amount of
calories permitted to enter Gaza per resident.
Even
after retracting this policy, Israel continued to prohibit the entry of
numerous items and raw materials it defined as “dual-use” — meaning Israel
considers them to have both civilian and military uses. This effectively banned
many goods that are essential for the development of civilian infrastructure
and the advancement of the local economy, such as fertilizer, cement mixers,
and any type of heavy machinery. Israel also continued to determine what
products could exit Gaza, and where they could be sold, how much of them, and
when.
Moreover,
decades after the signing of the Oslo Accords, which included an agreement to
pass control over the Palestinian population registry to the Palestinian
Authority, Israel continues to control the registry in practice. As such, it
retains the power to designate Palestinians as either residents of Gaza or of
the West Bank — dictating where they can live, work, and start a family.
Israel’s
continuous control over Gaza extends to the Strip’s maritime territory and
airspace, too. Contrary to the agreements reached in the Oslo Accords, Israel
has prohibited the construction of a seaport and prevented the reconstruction
of the international airport in Gaza, which was destroyed by Israeli bombings
in 2001. It has blocked Gaza’s airspace and deepened control over its
telecommunications, limiting the available frequencies so as to deprive
Palestinians of third- and fourth-generation technologies. Israel also
violently enforces a “fishing zone” of 10-15 nautical miles off Gaza’s coast,
and has established a “buffer zone” along the separation barrier, restricting
access to the area where most of the Strip’s agricultural lands are located.
Therefore,
despite persistent claims to the contrary, Israel’s ongoing control effectively
amounts to a continuation of the occupation — and such control entails moral
and legal obligations toward the civilian population. But instead of
acknowledging its fundamental duty to protect the human rights of Palestinians,
Israel has consistently disavowed its responsibility and opted for collective
punishment and economic warfare, in violation of international law.
Isolation,
separation, and fragmentation
The
enclosure of Gaza has always been part of a wider set of movement restrictions
imposed as part of Israel’s “separation policy,” the goal of which is to
isolate and sever the territory from the West Bank and Israel. Israel has
justified the policy as a security necessity, but its sweeping restrictions on
travel and goods cannot be explained by security alone.
Rather,
these restrictions are imposed in order to advance Israel’s illegitimate
political and demographic goals: to undermine the national institutions that
were supposed to underpin a Palestinian state; to fragment Palestinian society
and their economy; to promote de facto annexation of the West Bank and limit
Palestinians’ access to it; and to maintain Israeli control over the region as
a whole.
As
a result of the policy, the Palestinian economy was effectively split between
Gaza and the West Bank. Students from Gaza were blocked from studying in West
Bank universities. Medical teams, academics, employees of civil society
organizations, and professionals in every field could not travel between the
two areas, even for meetings or trainings. Families split between Gaza and the
West Bank could not reunite, except in the most exigent circumstances.
In
recent years, the few Palestinians who did obtain permits to leave via Erez all
belonged to one or more of three categories: traders or laborers (subject to
narrow quotas dictated by Israel), patients (and their companions) in need of
urgent medical treatment that is not available in Gaza, and a handful of other
cases defined as “humanitarian and exceptional,” like people seeking to attend
a wedding, visit a sick relative, or attend a funeral — but only of a
first-degree family member.
Travel
via Egypt, Gaza’s other neighbor, has also been restricted over the years, as
has access to goods. Egypt, too, has obligations toward Palestinians in Gaza
arising from its physical proximity, including facilitating the entrance of
humanitarian access and, like every other country in the world, actively
preventing breaches of international law. But unlike Israel, Egypt does not owe
obligations to Palestinians under the law of occupation, nor does it control
Gaza residents’ access to the other parts of the occupied territories.
Attempts
to divert responsibility to Egypt — a common and longstanding trope in Israeli
discourse — are part of a broader project of obscuring and shirking Israel’s
own responsibility toward Gaza’s residents. Regardless of Egypt’s policies
toward the Strip, Israel has the duty, at the very least, to enable access to
all that is needed in order to ensure normal living conditions for the entire
population under its control.
Five
months into the bloodiest and most destructive war Gaza has ever known, it is
difficult but vitally important to remember that any “day after” plan must
include access between Gaza, Israel, the West Bank, and the rest of the world.
Going back to the status quo ante — a life of closures, separation, permits,
and endless wars — is not an option.
Israeli
threats to cut off Gaza “permanently” may stem from fear, but doing so won’t
make anyone safer. The future of all people living between the Jordan River and
the Mediterranean Sea depends on freedom and human rights, including freedom of
movement, for all.
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