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Likud Chairman, Benjamin
Netanyahu Calls on the Israeli Government to Cut Water and Electricity to the Gaza Strip, a Violation
of International Humanitarian Law
On Thursday, 17 May, former
Israeli Prime Minister and present Chairman of the Likud Party, Binyamin
Netanyahu, called on the Israeli government to impose a closure, and cut the
supply of water and electricity to the Gaza Strip, an act that would be a grave
and blatant breach of international humanitarian law, and considered a war
crime.
During his speech at the Menachem Begin
Heritage Center
in Jerusalem,
commemorating the 30-year anniversary of the party's 1977 rise to power,
Netanyahu stated:
The government can do
a lot to protect its people. […] It could evacuate whomever necessary, enact a
closure on the Gaza Strip, stop providing services like electricity and water,
or decide on a limited invasion of four or five kilometers to distance the
range of the Kassams.
The denial of water and electricity
to civilians is a form of collective punishment and is illegal under
international humanitarian law (Geneva Conventions: Additional Protocol I, Article 75).
Moreover, international law specifically forbids the denial of water to
civilians during conflict. It states under article 14 of the second protocol of
the Geneva Conventions:
Starvation of civilians
as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack,
destroy, remove or render useless for that purpose, objects indispensable to
the survival of the civilian population such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas
for the production of food-stuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water
installations and supplies and irrigation works (Geneva Conventions: Additional Protocol II, Article
14).
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