MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) on Sunday appealed to Defense Minister Ehud Barak to open the border crossings to the Gaza Strip, which the ministry decided to close in response to rocket fire from Gaza toward Ashkelon last week. The Kerem Shalom crossing is used to transfer goods between Israel and Gaza while the Erez crossing, which was also shut except for urgent cases, is used for people to cross over the border. Khenin urged Barak to stop any act of collective punishment on the Gaza Strip.

In a letter to Barak, Khenin wrote: “The recent steps are not derived from concrete security needs but indicate a new policy in managing the issues with Gaza, which constitute measures of collective punishment to the local population”. MK Khenin stressed that this type of punishment is forbidden under international law and “if this is indeed a new policy, then it is a dangerous policy that has already proven to be ineffective in the past.”He urged the ministry to return to its previous policy and warned that acting against that policy can only do harm and create a fertile ground for escalation between the two sides.

Gisha Executive Director Sari Bashi added about the decision to close crossings in Gaza in response to the firing of a grad rocket over Ashkelon: “Israel’s declaration this week, that the closure of Gaza’s crossings to civilian movement is a response to rocket fire, signals a worrying regression to a policy that has been discredited according to any and all criteria — legal, moral, and utilitarian.“