The real history of Israel’s movement controls in the OPTs

I just went to an excellent briefing that the Israeli saint (and journo) Amira Hass gave to Human Rights Watch about the background to the extremely intrusive and life-strangling system of movement controls that Israel has maintained on the 3.5 million Palestinians of the occupied territories for the past 17 years.
The central point of Hass’s briefing was to focus on the importance of a key administrative change the occupation authorities made on January 15, 1991. For the 20 years prior to that, the basic approach of the occupation authorities had been to promote the idea of “open borders” between Israel and the OPTs. (That, in line with the approach Moshe Dayan had pioneered earlier, whereby Palestinians would be encouraged to work in Israel and to satisfy themselves with some economic gains, in the hope they might forget about their national cause.)
From the early 1970s through January 1991, Hass noted, the prevailing idea was that the Palestinians of the OPTs should have freedom of movement within the West Bank and Gaza, between them and Israel, and between the two of them, as well. Thus, as she recalled– as I have, too– that during the first intifada, organizers and activists would move freely between the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and Israel.
In those days, some Palestinians, as individuals, had restraining orders that forbade them to move from their house, or their town or city. But those were exceptions, made on a name-by-name basis by the IOF.
On January 15, 1991, all that changed. Overnight, the prevailing approach was changed to one whereby Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza were prohibited from entering Israel— and even from entering occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel claimed as its own. That meant also that West Bankers could not visit Gaza, and vice versa.
At that point, only those Palestinians who could get specific, named permission from the IOF were allowed to cross those boundaries. Freedom of movement was transformed from a basic right, to a privilege granted only to a few.
At the time, Hass said, that big change wasn’t much noted because it was part of a much wider clampdown imposed on the OPTs as Israel geared up (or hunkered down?) for the First Gulf War. She said everyone simply assumed that when the war was over, the whole clampdown would be lifted. But the new system of movement controls never was lifted. Indeed, over the years that followed 1991 it was fine-tuned and extended by its IOF administrators; and later, a whole system of truly Orwellian checkpoints and movement control centers was constructed deep inside both territories, on the basis of that administrative change.
Hass noted, crucially, that that change in the movement control philosophy was enacted more than two years before the first ever Palestinian suicide bombing against a target in the West Bank, which occurred in 1993, and more than three years before the first suicide bombings against Israeli civilians inside Israel– which occurred in April 1994, in response to Baruch Goldstein’s massacre in the Hebron Mosque, as the suicide bombers and their masters described their action at the time.
She also talked a lot about the close connection between the movement control regime in the West Bank and the still-continuing Israeli settlement project there.
Another good point she made was to describe the pressure the IOF places on all the OPT’s Palestinians as the “boil the frog slowly” approach…
… On a related note, I see HRW has a new press release out today that criticizes Israel’s the tight restrictions Israel has been placing on the delivery of fuel into Gaza. The criticism is voiced in the fourth paragraph down in these terms:

The restrictions on electricity and fuel to an effectively occupied territory amount to collective punishment of the civilian population, a serious violation of international humanitarian law. Unlawful attacks by one side to a conflict do not justify unlawful actions by the other.

I find that wording a little flimsy, though it’s better than nothing. Also, the photos they use to accompany the release are far from being the most compelling a person could have taken.
But I think the release has a more serious problem when it says this, right up near the top:

Israel’s stated goal is to exert pressure on Hamas, the de facto authority in Gaza, to stop firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian-populated areas in Israel – attacks that constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian law. But the energy cuts have had no discernible impact on Hamas’s ability to carry out these attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. Instead, they have had a terrible impact on civilian life in Gaza, crippling sanitation facilities and curtailing access to schools, hospitals, and other services essential for the civilian population.

I don’t believe that it is of any concern to a human rights organization whether the collective punishment that Israel has mounted against the Palestinian population has “worked” in the way the Israeli authorities stated they wanted it to, or not. Collective punishment is a deliberate attempt by one party to a conflict to entangle the civilian population of the other party in its pursuit of the conflict. And it is therefore, quite simply, illegal. Whether it “works” or not, in the way stated by its perpetrators, is immaterial to whether it is legal or not. (If HRW judged that it “worked”, would that mean that they would applaud it?)
It is fine for the press release to report on what Israel states its goal to be with the fuel-cuts and other aspects of its collective punishment. But HRW’s response to that should simply be that collective punishment of this sort is always illegal, regardless of the validity (or otherwise) of the stated goal, and regardless of the efficacy (or otherwise) of the collective punishment in question from bringing about achievement of the goal.
HRW should cut out nearly the whole of that second sentence there and move up its criticism of this illegal act. Perhaps in the following terms:

Israel’s stated goal is to exert pressure on Hamas, the de facto authority in Gaza, to stop firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian-populated areas in Israel – attacks that constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian law. But restrictions on electricity and fuel to an occupied territory constitute collective punishment of the civilian population, a serious violation of international humanitarian law. They have had a terrible impact on civilian life in Gaza, crippling sanitation facilities and curtailing access to schools, hospitals, and other services essential for the civilian population…

So, Human Rights Watch, if illegal acts can be described as “working” in some sense, does that make them less illegal and more justifiable for you? I think you have a problem in your argument there.
Excellent, though, to have organized that informative session with Amira Hass. Thanks for that.