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Israel’s decision to deprive Palestinian civilians living in Gaza of access to basic needs violates international law, former Human Rights Watch chief Kenneth Roth said.

“In the realm of humanitarian necessities, the Israeli government has imposed a siege on all of Gaza,” Roth said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Roth, who now teaches at Princeton University, added that the atrocities committed by the Hamas armed group against Israeli civilians do not justify the “revenge” and “collective punishment” against Palestinian civilians.

“A basic premise of international humanitarian law is that war crimes by one side never justify war crimes by the other. There’s an independent obligation by both sides to respect the laws of war.

“It increasingly does look like the Israel military is proceeding without adequate care to spare civilians. And that kind of indiscriminate and disproportionate attack … is in itself a war crime.”

  • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    It’s war, and they put themselves in this position.

    Did they also put themselves in the inhumane conditions that sparked this war too? Or is decades of inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people immaterial to the situation?

    Because Israel is a good part of the reason Hamas is as powerful as they are, so I guess they put themselves in this position too?

      • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Who knows why they harbor them

        Yeah, who could ever know why Palestine harbors the group that Israel funded to delegitimize the more moderate political parties? It’s not like the group Israel funded explicitly advocates for aggression against Israel in the name of freeing the Palestinians from the murderous boot of Israel and their decades long campaign of slowly exterminating the Palestinians and stealing all of their land.

        It’s a complete mystery…