Ref: 81/2012

On Thursday afternoon, 27 September 2012, the
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) concluded the second session of its
seminar on “Accountability for International Law Violations in the Occupied
Palestinian Territory,” which started in the morning, with the participation of
the Executive Committee of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers
(IADL) and in the presence of a large gathering of academics, human rights
activists and representatives of human rights, non-governmental and media
organizations.

The session, which was entitled: “The Closure
and Its Impact on the Economic and Social Rights,” was presided by Mr. Mohsen
Abu Ramdan, Chairman of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network in
Gaza. The meeting included four presentations. In The first one, Isam Younis,
Director of Al-Mizan Centre for Human Rights, emphasized that the Gaza Strip is
an occupied territory and its status as a territory under occupation did not
change when Israel redeployed its forces outside Gaza in 2005. Younis clarified
that Israel knows the value of control on people and goods and that this policy
is deeply-rooted in the Israeli doctrine since the beginning of its occupation of
the Gaza Strip referring to all the military orders by which Israel ruled and influenced
all aspects of the life of the Palestinian people. At the conclusion of his
speech, Younis stressed that the closure is a form of collective punishment
that all the principles of international humanitarian law criminalizes,
criticizing the role played by the International Community towards this closure
by keeping silent about it despite the gravity of its consequences.

In his presentation, Lawyer Ronald Well, an
IADL member, affirmed that the closure is illegal and Israel lies when it
claims that it is protecting herself because it does not practically face any
threat.  However, in case it faces any
threat, it does not have the right to play the police role in the world because
the UN Charter recognizes the right to self-defense, while it does not talk
about the protective defense. Well considered that all the excuses adduced by
Israel to justify the closure are false pretenses as the closure is illegal not
only because it restricts the movement of the Palestinian people, but because
it also isolates them from the world and prevents them from communicating with other
countries.

In his presentation, Lawyer Mario Joseph, an
IADL member, outlined the experience of his country, Haiti, and the forms of
injustice they suffered, as its origins is due to a decision that was taken in
the halls of the UN.  Joseph clarified
that his country, which had been under the rule of the US. Army for 19 hears,
could not achieve victory and independence without that unity that gathered all
its spectrums. He considers that the similarities between the Palestinian and
the Haiti models are several as the Palestinian people suffer from injustice which
the people of Haiti suffered early, and he stressed the Palestinian struggle to
achieve justice will not succeed until the Palestinians unite, and by that time
only they can confront the powers that work against them and establish the
independent and just society they deserve.

Lawyer Louis Roberto Zamora Bolanos, an IADL’s
Executive committee member, talked, in the fourth and last presentation of the
second session, about the closure and the right to peace outlining the
experience of his country, Costa Rika, in achieving and maintaining peace,
pointing out the stages peace went through in Costa Rika. Bolanos also talked
about the formulation of human rights principles in Costa Rika and addressed
the Israeli closure imposed on the Gaza Strip stressing that it is a flagrant
violation for the UN Charter and the human rights principles.

The second session of the PCHR’s seminar was
concluded with a number of interventions by the audience, which addressed
several topics, primarily: the role of the international community in facing
the closure and forcing Israel to end it, the importance of international convoys
to break the siege and their effect  on
the legal work related to confronting this measure.