UN envoy says Gaza a prison for Palestinians

GENEVA, Sep 26 (Reuters) Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for Palestinians where life is ''intolerable, appalling, tragic'' and the Jewish state appears to have thrown away the key, a UN human rights envoy said today.

UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory John Dugard said that the suffering of the Palestinians was a test of the readiness of the international community to protect human rights.

''If ... the international community cannot ... take some action, (it) must not be surprised if the people ... disbelieve that they are seriously committed to the promotion of human rights,'' he told the United Nations' Human Rights Council.

Israel hit back saying there was an ''alarming disconnect'' between the rapporteur's report to the UN's human rights watchdog and the experience of Israelis who continued to ''face the daily threat of Palestinian terrorism''.

The South African lawyer, who has been a special UN investigator since 2001, repeated earlier accusations that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law with security measures which amount to ''collective punishment.'' Israel says its security restrictions, which include the construction of a steel and concrete barrier in the West Bank, are designed to stop suicide bombers entering Israel. Bombings have declined since the barrier was built.

It also maintains tight restrictions on the movement of goods and people into and out of Gaza, a coastal strip that it pulled out of last year after 38 years of occupation.

''UNPUNISHED'' Mr Dugard also attacked the United States, the European Union and Canada for withdrawing funding for the Palestinian Authority in protest at the governing party Hamas's refusal to accept Israel's right to exist.

''Israel violates international law as expounded by the Security Council and the International Court of Justice and goes unpunished.

But the Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the US and the EU,'' Dugard said.

But Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva Itzhak Levanon said that by putting the ''entire blame'' on Israel the report ''absolves the terrorists that have taken Palestinian society hostage from even the most minimal responsibility.'' Mr Dugard said that three-quarters of Gaza's 1.4 million people were dependent on food aid. Bombing raids by Israel since the June 25 capture of an army corporal by Palestinian militants had destroyed houses and the territory's only power plant.

''Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key,'' he said.

The West Bank also faced a humanitarian crisis, albeit not as extreme as Gaza, in part due to the barrier, which Dugard alleged was no longer being justified by Israel on security grounds but was part of a move to annex more land.

Palestinians living between the barrier and the Green Line, the frontier at the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, could no longer freely access schools and places of work and many had abandoned local farms, he said.

''In other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing but political correctness forbids such language where Israel is concerned,'' Mr Dugard said.

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