Israel cuts off Gaza aid. Does it violate international law?

Not only is Israel not required to transfer aid under the present circumstances, but pressuring Israel to do so is, in itself, a war crime.

It what may be perhaps the most significant single strategic move since the start of the war in Gaza, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced today, “as of this morning, the entry of all goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip will be halted.” Contrary to claims of “war crimes” and “starving civilians,” this new approach to Gaza is not only completely consistent with international law, but is likely to save civilian lives on all sides and bring the war to a close far more quickly than any other approach.

Photo: AI image for illustration only. Not a real depiction.

The massacre of October 7, 2023 saw the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust. The internationally designated Hamas terror organization, along with Palestinian civilians and U.N. staff, invaded Israel, killed over 1,200, took 251 hostage, committed mass torture and mass rape, and brought about sixteen months of war. As I wrote the other day, Israel and Hamas are completing “Phase 1” of a three stage ceasefire agreement, that has resulted in the release of some of the Israeli hostages. However, the parties have so far failed to negotiate the terms of “Phase 2.” U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, presented a framework for continuing negotiations, which Israel accepted but Hamas rejected. In response, Israel made this morning’s announcement, and closed Gaza to aid deliveries.

Israel maintains a legal weapons blockade on Gaza, which is governed by the Geneva Conventions, The Hague Conventions, and the San Remo Convention. Under these agreements, a legal blockade is permitted as a defense against armed attack. Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which began in 2007, fits this requirement, as it is a response to Hamas’s ongoing rocket barrages on Israeli civilians. Under these same international rules, the blockading party may not intentionally starve civilians as a tool of warfare. This effectively means that the blockading power is required to transfer humanitarian aid into the blockaded area: a requirement that Israel has fulfilled at a massive scale.

However, the aid that enters into Gaza is typically not transferred to civilians. To the contrary, Hamas, habitually steals international aid, as well as torturing and killing civilians who attempt to take the aid for themselves. This reality has been confirmed by multiple international sources including the United Nations, and has been caught on camera numerous times.

Hamas uses stolen aid supplies to fuel its rockets, equip its troops, and sells some of what’s left to civilians as a way of raising funds for its war effort. Indeed, many of the resources Hamas used on October 7, and in the months since, were taken from aid supplies, including the tunnels where Israeli hostages are currently held: built with cement funded by America’s USAID agency.

In effect, Israel has been fighting a war of survival while also funding both sides: a strategy doomed to fail. This kind of national suicide is absolutely not required by international law. To the contrary, Article 23 of Geneva Convention IV specifically states that a power is not required to allow the passage of humanitarian aid unless it is satisfied that the aid will not be diverted to enemy combatants. Therefore, not only is Israel not required to transfer aid under the present circumstances, but pressuring Israel to do so is, in itself, a war crime. International law is structure this way for good reason: funding both sides of a conflict only serves to prolong hostilities and thus increase completely avoidable harm to civilian populations on all sides.

In this case, aid to Gaza ends up almost exclusively in the hands of an internationally designated terror organization that is also an enemy combatant. The international community has had 18 years since the beginning of the blockade in 2007, and 16 months since the October 7 massacre, to find a solution to this particular war crime, yet has both failed and refused to do so. The consequence, has been to prolong the current war, the captivity of the Israeli hostages, and also war’s deleterious impact on the lives of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

This morning, the war crime of compelling Israel to provide aid to enemy combatants, in violation of Article 23 of Geneva Convention IV, has come to an end. This can only result in a quicker defeat of Hamas, and a quicker end to the current war. Such a result will, in turn, provide immeasurable benefits to Israelis, to Palestinians, and to the entire world at large.