Israeli settler pullout won't make Gaza free
By Paul McCann
The Toronto Star, August 18, 2005
It seems that Israel
wants to lock up Gaza and throw away the key, says Paul McCann
There is a Bedouin
village - breeze-block shanties built on sand dunes - in the north of the Gaza
Strip that has been overlooked by the army watchtowers of the Jewish settlement
of Nisanit. On most nights during the intifada, soldiers in these watchtowers
fired down into the alleys of the village, keeping everyone hemmed into their
homes at night.
On occasion, children,
disorientated and panicked by the firing, had been known to run out of their
shacks and into the line of fire.
There were many
randomly-firing watchtowers surrounding the Israeli settlements in Gaza. They
have killed hundreds of Palestinians, both militant and innocent, and are hated
by the local population.
Their removal this
week, along with the settlements themselves, will rightly be a moment of
celebration. But just because the most visible and oppressive signs of the
Israeli occupation will be gone, no one should be under the illusion that Gaza
will cease to be the world's largest prison camp.
Last week, the
Israeli cabinet decided it would maintain troops on the border between Gaza and
Egypt for the foreseeable future - along the so-called Philadelphia corridor.
It was from a watchtower on this border that peace activist Tom Hurndall was
shot in 2003.
The same cabinet
meeting also decided that Israel
must continue to control who enters and exits Gaza through Egypt and proposed a
new border crossing at Kerem Shalom where Israel, Gaza and Egypt meet.
This busy cabinet
meeting also decided that it would allow Gaza to have 5 kilometres of
territorial waters; after that Israel
would control the sea. It had already been decided that Israel will continue to control Gaza's airspace.
Earlier this year,
the International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian of international
humanitarian law, sent the Israeli government a confidential position paper
making clear that the removal of the Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza will
not end the occupation.
The paper stated:
"Israel will retain
significant control over the Gaza Strip, which will enable it to exercise key
elements of authority. Thus ... it seems at this stage the Gaza Strip will
remain occupied for the purposes of international humanitarian law."
It is a view backed
by the highly respected Harvard Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict
Research. In a legal brief prepared for the donor community, the program's
director wrote: "The partial redeployment of Israel's military presence in and around the territory is not the
controlling factor in international law to determine the end of occupation ...
The end of occupation rests essentially on the termination of the military
control of the Occupying Power over the government affairs of the occupied
population that limits the people's right to self-determination."
Why this matters is
made clear in the disengagement resolution passed by the Israeli government
last summer. That states: "The completion of the (disengagement) plan will
serve to dispel claims regarding Israel's
responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
But if it is still
the occupying power, then in law Israel
has very specific responsibility for the welfare of the population of Gaza.
If the occupation
is seen to have ended, then it can wash its hands of all 1.3 million of them.
At the moment, Israel talks of improving conditions
at the notorious Erez crossing from Gaza into Israel, where thousands of Palestinian cheap labourers are
routinely humiliated for hours before they can get into Israel to work. But in the longer term, it seems Israel wants to lock up Gaza and throw
away the key.
Shaul Mofaz, the
minister of defence, and Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister, have both gone
on record this summer as saying that no Palestinian workers will be allowed
into Israel from 2008.
The wording of the
disengagement bill states there are to be no labourers "in the longer
term."
At the G8 summit,
the international community promised to invest $3 billion in Gaza. But without
access to the outside world, these funds will do little to improve life or
create permanent jobs.
If Gaza is to feel
the benefits of disengagement, the fishermen need to be able to fish, merchants
to travel and import and crucially, after 38 years of enforced integration with
Israel's economy, labourers will
still need to work on the building sites of Tel Aviv and Ashkelon.
Otherwise the
watchtowers of Gaza will only have moved a few hundred metres and no doubt will
soon fire down once more on Palestinians - both militant and innocent.
Paul McCann was
spokesman for the U.N.'s Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza from 2001 to 2005.
This article first appeared in the Independent newspaper Tuesday.
Copyright 2005 Toronto Star Newspapers,
Ltd.