UN: Who Says Gaza Kidnapping Tunnel To Be Used For Kidnapping?

New York, March 22 – The United Nations Security Council reacted this morning with dismay to Israeli efforts to destroy a tunnel from the Gaza Strip, denouncing Israel for collectively punishing Gaza residents by denying all of them the ability to sneak into Israel and sow destruction or kidnap soldiers.

“We condemn Israeli measures that punish the entire population of the Gaza Strip for the actions of a few,” the Security Council statement read, in part. “Preventing every single Gaza Strip resident from surreptitiously gaining entry to Israel and harming Israeli soldiers, civilians, or infrastructure constitutes a clear violation of the Geneva Convention,” under which efforts to protect soldiers must include reasonable measures not to harm the civilian populace in the area. “Putting up barriers to the free movement of Gazans into Israel in order to harm Jews and Jewish interests unfairly targets those Gazans who have not done so.”

Instead, the panel agreed, the Israeli Defense Forces should wait until militants from the coastal territory actually make use of such a tunnel to infiltrate into Israel to kidnap a soldier and hold him or her hostage for prolonged periods, as has happened in recent years. Only then, argues the Council, would Israel be justified in dismantling the tunnel.

“The assumption of the Israeli military that such a tunnel will necessarily be used for kidnapping or terrorizing Israelis is unwarranted,” said Council spokesman Ahmad Dehaisheh of Sudan, a country noted for its meticulous adherence to the laws of warfare. “It could be used by Gaza residents simply to take a break from the unpleasantness above ground,” he suggested, “or perhaps to bring in to besieged Gaza a shipment of IDF uniforms,” which everyone needs if they are to make full use of other such tunnels.

Israel has defended its destruction of the tunnel as a military necessity, completely ignoring the Palestinian right, seldom questioned in he UN, to vent anger at collective Arab failures over seventy years by trying to kill Jews. Dehaisheh dismissed the Israeli contention, noting that the vast majority of countries in the world disagree with Israel’s so-called right to live unmolested. “No other peoples in the region enjoy such a right,” he asserted, citing the events of recent years in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia as examples.