Matthew Phillips: What the U.S. sanctions on Iraq tell us about the siege of Gaza

What the U.S. sanctions on Iraq tell us about the siege of Gaza

By Matthew Phillips
Mondoweiss

On June 13th, two weeks after Israel’s attack on the Mavi Marmara, a profile of the respected liberal intellectual and Just War theorist Michael Walzer appeared in Haaretz. Amidst his professed concern about Israel’s diminished standing in world, Walzer offered this bit of wisdom regarding the siege of Gaza:

Think of the American effort to embargo the regime of Saddam Hussein in 1991 to 2003. It was entirely justified and even originally had United Nations authorization, but over time the consequences of the blockade did affect the living standard of ordinary Iraqis partly because of the way the Iraqi government behaved but also partially because of the nature of the blockade. So at a certain point Colin Powell came forward with the idea of smart sanctions, which are designed to have the necessary military restraints without having these effects on the population or without having the same affects on the population. Now what you need are smart sanctions.

Whether the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu will be compelled to emulate the American example of “smart sanctions” is an open question. That the Israeli government’s current siege on Gaza is causing a humanitarian crisis of unknown proportions is certain, despite the length Israeli leaders have gone to deny it. Walzer, in his classic book Just and Unjust Wars, calls siege “the oldest form of total war”; Walzer also justified the Six-Day War in 1967 by calling attention to Egypt’s closing of the Straits of Tiran, which Israel used as a casus belli in that conflict. Where on the spectrum does this leave the far graver economic strangulation affecting Palestinians today? Walzer has never said.

Continued. . .