Collective punishment is a war crime under section 33 of the Geneva Convention, and New Zealand is one of the 194 signatory countries to that Convention. Not that this has meant very much to us in recent weeks and months, as it applies to Israel’s actions in the Middle East. We should care. Because according to Richard Falk, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, the Israeli military offensive against Gaza does amount to ‘severe and massive violations’ of the Geneva Conventions.

Those violations include :

• Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

• Targeting civilians: The air strikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

• Disproportionate military response: The air strikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza’s besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.

Even before the Israeli offensive began, Gaza was a socio- medical catastrophe, amid NGO reports reports that a third of the population ( or 450,000 people) had no access to clean drinking water. Subsequently, and since a disproportionate response is in itself a war crime, it is worth looking more closely at the casualty figures involved in the Gaza conflict , on both sides.

Source: Gorden Cambell of scoop.co.nz