Adalah to Prime Minister and Defense Minister: Cutting off Electricity Supply to Palestinians in Gaza Strip is a War Crime

On 20 September 2007, Adalah sent an urgent letter to the Head of the Supreme Court Petitions Department in the Attorney General's Office, Attorney Osnat Mandel, stating that unless it received the department's response to the Cabinet Committee's decision to cut off the electricity and fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip, it would submit a petition to the Supreme Court.

Adalah Attorney Fatmeh El-‘Ajou sent the letter the day after the Cabinet approved a decision to define the Gaza Strip as a “hostile entity” and to cut the supply of electricity and fuel to Gaza in response to the firing of Qassam rockets at Sderot and other communities in the western Naqab (Negev). In the letter, Adalah asked the Attorney General's Office whether the decision is final and whether it had undergone a legal review, as stated in the decision itself.

The security cabinet began to discuss punitive measures against the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip at the beginning of September 2007. On 5 September, the Cabinet convened and discussed a proposal to implement measures such as temporary interruptions in the supplies of electricity and water to Gaza. A day earlier, Defense Minister Ehud Barak had instructed the defense establishment “to examine the operational and legal aspects of taking steps to limit the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”

In response to the Defense Minister's directive and the convening of the Cabinet to discuss punitive measures against the Gaza Strip, Attorney El-‘Ajou sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Barak and Attorney General Menachem Mazuz. In the letter, Adalah warned that the punitive measures proposed by the government contradict the principles of international humanitarian law and constitute a war crime.

“Cutting off the supply of electricity and water to Gaza would harm the most vital civilian infrastructure to its residents. For example, it would disrupt the functioning of hospitals, water-pumping stations, schools, civilian installations and homes, which are objects protected from attack under the laws of war,” argued Adalah in the letter. “Since these planned actions are directed against the civilian population and are intended to harm its humanitarian needs, they are forbidden under international law. They violate the overriding principle of the laws of war, which require that a distinction be drawn between combatants and civilians during warfare and prohibit the intentional harming of civilians.”

Adalah further argued that, “The proposed measures are also prohibited because they constitute collective punishment, which is forbidden under the laws of war and the laws of occupation”. Furthermore, international law recognizes the possibility of harming a civilian population as part of the collateral damage caused by an attack against legitimate targets only; this limited recognition, however, is not designed to legitimize the deliberate harming of a civilian population, Adalah contended.

Moreover, the planned measures contradict not only the precepts of international law, but also the norms of Israeli administrative law, which apply to state authorities that operate outside of Israel's sovereign territory. “The temporary interruptions of electricity and water that are aimed at engendering political change in Gaza, and primarily harm the civilian population, are thus not measures that serve an appropriate purpose and are certainly not proportionate,” argued Adalah in the letter. Adalah therefore demanded that the Prime Minister, Defense Minister and Attorney General honor these overriding principles and refrain from approving any decision that intentionally harms the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.