Except that wasn't quite the question Steven

You are right otway . Why lentils ?. I would go on to add why anything ?. By what act of insanity does it place the onus on israel to provide virtually all of gaza s needs including food , medicines, gas , electricity , fuel . All this to an entity , Hamas which is determined on israels destruction and attempts to make good on that by firing more then 8000 rockets at Israeli citizens .
Israel quit gaza in 2005 . We are no longer responsible for it. The fact that Hamas have rendered gaza unproductive , unable to pay it's way , unable to feed it's own people despite billions of dollars of handouts does not mean it's israels responsibility to maintain this hideous chimera . In case you are unaware .
Israel should place the UN on a 12 month notice that henceforth it's borders will no longer be open to gaza and that alternative arrangements need to be made . This means either gaza reverts to Egypt , or failing that all gazas requirements pass through Egypt border crossing .
It's not israels problem!

Jon, the collective punishment banned under international law include military or criminal actions.
Disallowing certain goods entering Gaza from its borders constitutes restraint of trade; not the same thing, and not included in international law. The US has banned trade with Cuba for 50 years. They're free to trade elsewhere.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/02/collective_punishment_and_news.ht...

The Israeli Government's reduction of fuel and electricity exports to the Gaza Strip has recently been termed a modern instance of collective punishment that violates Israel's obligations under the laws of war. In a lawsuit filed by Israeli and Palestinian civil rights groups before Israel's Supreme Court, these organizations asked the Supreme Court to make Israel end fuel restrictions that caused power blackouts in the Gaza Strip. The activists argued, as did representatives of many members of the Security Council in their special meeting on the Middle East on January 22, 2008, that the restrictions constitute collective punishment of Gaza's 1.5 million people and violate the Fourth Geneva Convention.

But this claim is nonsense, and makes a mockery of international law. This is so for the following reasons:

It conflates failure to aid with active criminal harm. Acts of war are launched daily against Israel from Hamas-run Gaza. Bombs are lobbed against Israeli cities (especially Sderot), resulting in official government rejoicing when an Israeli civilian is killed or maimed. Hamas denies Israel's right to exist, and has masterminded countless acts of war against military and civilian targets in Israel.

The Jewish state has the uncontested right to defend itself against such acts of war. The bar on collective punishment forbids the imposition of criminal or military penalties (imprisonment, death, etc) on some people for crimes committed by other individuals. But ceasing trade with a country is not inflicting a criminal or military penalty against that country's citizens, not least because those citizens have no entitlement to objects of trade that they have not yet purchased. If Canada tolerated and celebrated car-bombings of Buffalo from Fort Erie, Ontario, the United States could cease exporting cars to Canada - such cessation of trade was never contemplated as collective punishment, because it is not a military or a criminal sanction. The United States quite legally froze trade with Iran after that country committed an act of War against the USA following the 1979 Revolution.

Even prevention of access of goods coming from third parties is not collective punishment: the U.S. blockade of Cuba after they installed nuclear missiles directed at the United States was not a collective punishment of the Cuban people, it was a non-violent act of war in self-defense. In any case, Israel has made no effort to prevent Gaza from receiving electricity from Egypt; it has merely declined to furnish this assistance itself. Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions clearly does not outlaw such acts. The current misuse of the term in the Security Council would have exactly that effect.

The electricity withheld from sale was a military tool. Article 52 of the 1977 Amendment to the Geneva Convention explicitly countenances attacks on legitimate military objectives, which are "those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage." As Israel has pointed out, its (minor) reduction in electricity sold means that "Hamas will have to decide whether to provide electricity to hospitals or weapons lathes." Diesel will be allowed in to fuel ambulances, sewage pumps, generators and garbage trucks, but gasoline will be restricted. According to estimates, Israel still exports approximately US$500 million worth of goods and services into the Gaza Strip each year.

The claim is Newspeak. The charge of collective punishment is appropriately leveled against one side in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute; but that side is not Israel. As Joseph Klein recently pointed out in a Front Page Magazine article, the innocent Israeli women and children slaughtered while going about their daily lives in homes, schools, on buses and at shopping malls are not warriors against the Palestinian people. They are in large number the victims of the Hamas' measures of collective punishment against Jews -- intimidation and terrorism, which violate their most basic of human rights - life itself. Indeed, Israel has targeted the perpetrators of these atrocities individually, entirely in conformity with its international obligations. When Israel kills such targets, precisely the people who have individually committed acts of war against Israel, it highlights the difference between legal force and collective punishment.

Michael I. Krauss is Professor of Law, George Mason University
on "Collective Punishment and Newspeak"

Harvey no one is asking Israel to provide anything. The issue is Israel's preventing other people providing stuff