_a.jpg "Photo: Ron Ben Yishai")
No hunger in Gaza
Op-ed: Turkel Committee’s conclusions prove that aid flotillas to Gaza were completely unnecessary
Part 1 of article
The Turkel Committee that examined the Gaza-bound flotilla was formed as result of a constraint. Had the Israeli government not decided to establish it, Turkey’s Islamist government would have dragged us uninterruptedly to a path of inquiries, condemnations and possibly sanctions as well in the international theater. However, the current government, experienced after the Goldstone Report affair, wisely decided to prepare for the diplomatic blow in advance.
Turkel Committee
Yoaz Hendel
Op-ed: We shouldn’t launch inquiries every time someone accuses Israel of committing war crimes
The government took advantage of the rule that a sovereign state with a functioning, professional legal establishment can make the calls for international inquiries redundant or at least weaker, as long as it conducts a serious investigation on its own. Hence, the moment Israel announced the committee’s appointment it scored some points in the diplomatic war.
Another wise decision by the government was to include two professional foreign observers in the committee with global reputation in the fields of rules of war and international humanitarian law. This granted international credibility to the committee’s conclusions and enabled Israel to score valuable points on the diplomatic and legal front.
The public, official confirmation granted to the committee’s conclusions by two other foreign experts, a German and a Brit who followed the inquiry throughout, gave these conclusions validity that no international element, including the Turkish government, would be able to ignore. Turkel also made sure to counter the criticism over the committee’s mandate and powers after presenting an ultimatum in respect to the testimonies of Navy commandoes.
Turkel also summoned the Marmara captain and the head of the Turkish IHH group as well as other flotilla participants, yet some of them chose not to appear before the committee. By doing so Turkel added an important component of legal objectivity and fairness to the committee’s work. Equipped with all of the above, Judge Turkel was able to face the world and the Israeli public and offer the State of Israel and the IDF a full, detailed acquittal from accusations of breaking the law.
Full right to impose blockade
Israel’s government and citizens could not have hoped for a better result. The Turkel committee unequivocally ruled that the State of Israel has the full right to impose a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, where missile offensives and terror attacks against Israel originated from, in order to prevent a Hamas buildup. The committee also ruled that the naval blockade and policy of transferring goods through border crossings were undertaken while fully taking into account Gaza’s civilian population and its vital humanitarian needs, in line with international humanitarian law.
These two rulings dismiss the legal and humanitarian basis of the arguments made by Turkey and the coalition of international groups that initiated the flotilla, as if there was legal and humanitarian justification for the effort to forcefully breach the naval blockade. The Turkel Committee decisively ruled that there was no hunger or shortage of medicine in Gaza that justified such violent act. It ruled that no such hunger or shortage exists now either.
A no less important ruling was that Israel had the right to use military force in order to stop the flotilla. This ruling is important in the face of most arguments brought up in the global diplomatic arena, for example by the anti-Israel body known as the UN Human Rights Commission. The Commission ruled that Israel had no right to forcefully stop the flotilla in international waters and therefore committed a war crime when it acted that way.
However, the Turkel Committee ruled that the moment flotilla organizers and captains on board the vessels were clearly warned, it was permissible to forcefully stop them in international waters as well. This ruling, premised on the San Remo Convention, may be the most important component of the committee’s legal conclusions.
Part 2 of article to be published Monday evening
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