“Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it also has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care,” Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s U.K. director, told the Telegraph. “Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible.”I remember that for a while there was a billboard on the way home from work--it had a picture of a little girl and something about how kids had a 'right' to affordable healthcare. It sounded like an odd way to use the word 'right'--I wondered at what point would the girl in the picture reach the age where she suddenly lost that right to affordable healthcare.
There are a few problems here. First, food, clean water, electricity and medical care may be all kinds of things, but they aren’t human rights. They may indeed be the minimum obligations a modern state must meet in terms of its citizens’ needs, but there is no inalienable right to material stuff.
More important, we are constantly told that the Palestinians aren’t Israel’s people. Whatever obligations Israel might have to provide food, water, electricity and health care to its own citizens, it’s not clear why it has those obligations to the Gazans, particularly when those Gazans are committed to the destruction of Israel.
Human-rights groups say Israel must provide these things because Israel is the “occupying power.” But Israel no longer occupies Gaza, which Amnesty knows. That’s why they say Israel’s “blockade” of Gaza is indistinguishable from occupation.
But whether or not “blockade” is the right word for Israel’s actions, it’s not the same thing as an occupation. America had a blockade of sorts against Iraq for a decade. Then we occupied it. If there’s no difference between the blockade and the occupation, what has everyone been arguing about?
The phrase 'human rights' seem to be expanded in much the same way.
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