UN Expert Repeats Call For Threat Of Sanctions Against Israel Over Gaza Blockade
New York, Dec 29 2009 4:10PM The United Nations independent expert on Palestinian rights has again called for a threat
of economic sanctions against Israel to force it to lift its blockade of Gaza, which is preventing the return to a
normal life for 1.5 million residents after the devastating Israeli offensive a year ago.
“Obviously Israel does not respond to language of diplomacy, which has encouraged the lifting of the blockade and so
what I am suggesting is that it has to be reinforced by a threat of adverse economic consequences for Israel,” Richard
Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, told
UN Radio.
“That probably is something that is politically unlikely to happen, but unless it happens, it really does suggest that
the United States and the Quartet and the EU [European Union] don’t take these calls for lifting the blockade very
seriously and are unaffected by Israel’s continuing defiance of those calls,” he said, referring to the diplomatic
Quartet of the UN, EU, Russia and US, which have been calling for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), the main UN body tending to the needs of some 4 million
Palestinian refugees, said today Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age,” because UNRWA
was reduced to building houses out of mud after the 22-day offensive Israel said it launched to end rocket attacks
against it.
“The Israeli blockade has meant that almost no reconstruction materials have been allowed to move into Gaza even though
60,000 homes were either damaged or completely destroyed. So we in UNRWA have been saying ‘let's lift this senseless
blockage,’” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told UN Radio.
“We are the United Nations and we always hope that diplomacy will prevail, and it will prevail above the rationale of
warfare. But if you look at what is going on in Gaza, and if you look at the continued blockade and the fact that that
blockade is radicalizing a population there, then one has to have one’s doubts.”
In a statement last week, Mr. Falk stressed that the “unlawful blockade” was in its third year, with insufficient food
and medicine reaching Gazans, producing further deterioration of the mental and physical health of the entire civilian
population.
Building materials necessary to repair the damage could not enter Gaza, and he blamed the blockade for continued
breakdowns of the electricity and sanitation systems due to the Israeli refusal to let spare parts needed for repair get
through the crossings.
Mr. Falk also deplored the wall being built on the borders between Gaza and Egypt.
“I’m very distressed by that, because it is both an expression of complicity on the part of the government of Egypt and
the United States, which apparently is assisting through its corps of engineers with the construction of this
underground steel impenetrable wall that’s designed to interfere with the tunnels that have been bringing some food and
material relief to the Gaza population,” he told UN Radio.
“And of course, the underground tunnel complex itself is an expression of the desperation created in Gaza as a result of
this blockade that’s going on now for two and a half years, something that no people since the end of World War II have
experienced in such a severe and continuing form.”
As a Special Rapporteur, Mr. Falk serves in an independent and unpaid capacity and reports to the Geneva-based UN Human
Rights Council.
In a new policy brief, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), entrusted with promoting the integration of
developing countries into the world economy, reported that more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s population are now
impoverished; 43 per cent unemployed; and 75 per cent lack food security. “In view of the eroded productive base,
poverty is likely to widen and deepen unless reconstruction begins in earnest and without further delay,” it warned.
ENDS