It’s about time.
The security cabinet on Wednesday voted to declare the Gaza Strip a “hostile entity,” approving among other things the disruption of power and fuel supplies to the Strip, as a response to the ongoing Qassam rocket fire at Israeli communities.
The ministers decided, however, not to disrupt Gaza’s water supply.
The security cabinet unanimously approved a number of sanctions to be imposed on the Gaza Strip should the rocket fire on southern Israel continue. The steps are designed to create “civilian levers” that will pressure Gaza’s Hamas rulers to bring the rocket fire to a halt.
A statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office after the meeting said that Hamas bore responsibility for the “hostile activity” emanating from the territory where the Islamic movement had seized power in June.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization that has taken control of the Gaza Strip and turned it into hostile territory,” the statement said. “This organization engages in hostile activity against the State of Israel and its citizens and bears responsibility for this activity.”
“The objective is to weaken Hamas,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during the meeting, according to one participant.
Barak also said that Israel is moving closer to a large-scale military operation in Gaza. “Every day that passes brings us closer to an operation in Gaza,” Barak was quoted as saying. He said an array of options would be considered before a major invasion.
The PMO statement also said that there would be restrictions on “the passage of various goods to the Gaza Strip,” but stressed that all steps “will be enacted following a legal examination, while taking into account both the humanitarian aspects relevant to the Gaza Strip and the intention to avoid a humanitarian crisis.”
Would have been nice to have seen this type of action a few years (and hundreds of Qassams) ago, but at least its a step in the right direction.
Updates (Israel time):
9:00PM: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged Israel to
reconsider, warning that any cutoff of vital services would violate international law. I would love to know which international law obliges us to provide services to a population in an area we no longer occupy, and from which we are subjected to daily attacks.
If he is referring to collective punishment, I would have thought the palestinian residents of Gaza would not constitute protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which are defined in article 4:
Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.
Am I missing something?
9:20PM: And here’s another thought: why aren’t Egypt supplying these services to their Arab brethren in Gaza? Israel is constantly helping out Jewish brethren from around the world without blinking an eyelid. Heck, we are even helping out others, such as the Sudanese refugees (who have been routinely killed by Egyptian soldiers while trying to enter Israel, to a deafening world silence might I add).
12:50AM: A few hours after Israel announced her intentions, the terrorists fired 2 rockets at Sderot. They just won’t let their own people’s welfare get in the way of some good ol’ fashioned Jew killing, will they?
