PCHR Position Paper on the Easing of the Closure of the Gaza Strip

One month after the deadly attack on the humanitarian flottilla heading to Gaza, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) releases a new position paper on the illegality of the closure imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip and its alleged ‘easing’.

PCHR remarks that the closure is illegal and constitutes a form of collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza. One month after the killing of nine people and injuries of many more passengers of the humanitarian convoy, which has focused the world’s attention on the suffering of the population of Gaza, nothing has really changed.

PCHR emphasizes that in order to put an end to the severe crisis that is affecting Gaza a dramatic change in Israeli policy is needed. The illegal closure has caused not only a humanitarian crisis but a crisis of human rights and human dignity of the population of the Gaza Strip.

Measures announced recently to ease the blockade are vague, purely cosmetic and fail to deal with the root causes of the crisis, which can only be addressed by an immediate complete lifting of the closure, including lifting the travel ban into and out of the Gaza Strip and the ban on exports.