United Nations Radio

Samir Aldarabi spoke to Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian territories about the situation in Gaza.

Richard Falk, Rapporteur Palestinian Rights

Aldarabi: The UN human rights experts call for immediate protection of civilians in the Middle East conflict. Would you elaborate more on the call that has been launched by you and your colleagues today?

Falk: Yes, I think that this is a very important call, it comes in a way late in the day, because the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza have really required and deserved protection from the international community, for quite some time, even before these attacks that began on December 27th. The effect of the blockade that has been maintained for 18 months by Israel, prevented sufficient food, fuel and medical supplies to reach the population, and put it in a situation of deteriorating health, mentally and physically that caused the situation that was already a humanitarian catastrophe. So we have to understand that the attack by Israel with modern weaponry to an essentially defenseless society came in the midst of what was a pre-existing humanitarian catastrophe, caused by the blockade. So it is very welcome that the UN call now is for the protection of civilians in Gaza now who are under a situation of extreme stress and danger.

Aldarabi: Mr. Falk, would you give us more details about how the picture looks like there when it comes to the international human rights and the international humanitarian law?

Falk: Well, it is a very deep challenge to the responsibility to Israel as the occupying power to uphold international humanitarian law.  To begin with, imposing the blockade and attacking a defenseless society in the manner that it has been attacked since December 27th, is a massive and severe violation of the prohibition on collective punishment which is contained in Article 33 of the Geneva convention. As well as a continuing violation of Article 55 of the same international treaty that requires Israel to make sure that a civilian population of an occupied country receives adequate food and medicine. Israel, of course, claims not to be an occupying power because of the 2005 disengagement, but that claim has very little legal and no moral force given their total control over the borders, airspace and sea fronts. So there is a real challenge that is aggravated in a very serious way by launching military attacks in a manner that has been widely misunderstood by the world media, because there had been a ceasefire that had held rather effectively ever since June of 2008, and had been respected largely by both sides but starting in November of 2008 Israel began attacking inside Gaza and on November 4th initiate a major operation that lead to the death of some six Palestinians and it was only then that rocket fire began to be increased and even then though until the December 27th attacks there were no Israeli casualties. For more than a year not a single Israeli had died from the rocket attacks and there were virtually no wounded in any serious manner. So that claim that Israel needed to do this as a matter of self-defense and in retaliation seems completely false, and that the reality is that to the extent that Hamas was responsible for firing rockets, which I have said repeatedly is an unlawful and immoral act, because they do seek to inflict injury on civilians. But to the extent they did this, it was Hamas that was retaliating, and it was if anything Gaza that was being victimized by prior acts of war, the maintanence of a blockade on a society is treated as an act of war. So there has been a great deal of misleading representation of how this conflict became so violent in recent weeks.

Aldarabi: Mr. Falk the Security Council meeting two days ago, many ambassadors didn't agree with your assessment of what is going on in Gaza, and they still believe that Hamas is the main responsible for the deteriorating situation there. What's your reaction to that?

Falk: Well I think that it is a great shame that the facts as they have unfolded have not been more impartially interpreted and understood, as I say I think Hamas has done some very wrongful things recently and even more so in the past, at the same time, it is the governing authority in Gaza it has consistently offered long time truces that have been ignored in Israel, it has even proposed a ten-year truce, it has indicating in acceptance of the 1967 borders of Israel more or less indefinitely if Israel were to withdraw. And so there has been a great deal of Hamas diplomacy that just has not been acted upon, not acknowledged by diplomats and not reported on adequately by the media. So all of this contributes to what I think is a misunderstanding of who is responsible for the outbreak of this recent surge of violence

Aldarabi: But Mr. Falk, you are talking about Hamas, but many view Hamas as a terrorist organization and no one is willing to talk to it, and they feel it's illegal to talk to Hamas. So how can we by the idea that they are offering a truce, they are willing, but no one is willing to talk to them.

Falk: Well, I think that's an unfortunate feature of the situation.  The Turkish government after Hamas won the elections in January of 2006, tried to encourage other governments to accept the outcome of those elections, and to create a more normal diplomatic relationship with a popularly elected government and Hamas as I have said, acted in certain ways that would encourage a greater degree of stability and order in that part of the world to characterize them as a terrorist organization is to make it impossible to deal with the political actor that is in effective control of 1.5 million Palestinians. And has the burden of trying to establish security of those under its control. And I think it's unfortunate the label terrorist is used as a way to justifying collective violence of the sort we have witnessed the last several days and also prevent any kind of meaningful diplomacy.  You will recall that the same kind of terminology has been used for years to prevent contact with the PLO. Then all of a sudden it was given a kind of legitimacy and became the representative of the Palestinian people that was available for negiotion, and there was a peace process that was initiated through that diplomacy.  That's what's needed today.

Aldarabi:  Last questions Mr. Falk, when it comes to the actions being taken on the ground now. Yesterday for example the Israelis targeted one of Hamas leaders and during this operation at least 12 members of the same family were killed among them children and women. It was considered as a success by some of the Israeli media, and considered as an illegal action by others. When it comes to the international humanitarian laws and international humanitarian conventions, where do you put it?

Falk: Well I think to begin with, this policy of targeted assassination of civilian leaders is itself something that violates international humanitarian law, which is generally understood. And in a circumstance such as this where the person being targeted is living with women and children and otherwise ordinary civilians, this constitutes a war crime to deliberately target a civilian group which may contain a person that Israel believes is a legitimate target all though as I have said, that belief is not shared by most people who look at international humanitarian law from an impartial perspective.

Aldarabi: Mr. Falk, the UN Human Rights Special Reporter for the Palestinian Occupied Territories, thank you very much.

(duration: 10'23")