Oxfam embarrassed by baseless claims at UK Parliament
The UK Parliament’s International Development Committee is conducting an enquiry into the "Humanitarian and Development Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories," to which NGO Monitor contributed evidence. A number of NGOs have submitted
, including
,
,
,
,
,
and
. War on Want’s "
" revealed that it partners with
, and explained the "horrific nature of Israel’s actions towards Gaza" and Israel’s ""illegal aggression against the Palestinian people," while ignoring Palestinian rockets and attacks on Gaza border crossings. Troicare’s
also demonized Israel through distortions of international law, claiming "Israel’s ‘unlawful use of force,’" and that it has imposed "a regime of institutionalized violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)."
Oxfam’s submission provided a number of un-sourced statistics, in addition to repeating claims by Gisha, UN OCHA and Palestinian witnesses. Adam Leach, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Director, gave oral evidence to the Committee on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. The Chairman asked Leach for more details about Oxfam’s claim that "Israel unilaterally established a list of only 18 items it would allow into Gaza" [the UNWRA representative who gave evidence had no knowledge of this list]. Leach admitted that Oxfam did not know which 18 items appeared in this list, and that it was relying on the International Crisis Group (ICG) as a source for this claim. ICG’s report cites the International Red Cross (page 6, footnote 2), yet there is no trace of the "list of 18" in the ICRC’s publication. A cursory check by Oxfam’s researchers would have found this claim baseless.
Oxfam also claimed that "Israel remains the Occupying Power in Gaza because it maintains effective control over Gaza’s land, sea and airspace, making it responsible for the civilian population under international humanitarian law." This argument is completely fallacious (see "
The collective punishment hoax
"), and largely parrots
a "legal" opinion circulated by the PLO
shortly prior to Israel’s disengagement.