The Blockade of the Gaza Strip The permit system connected to the blockade of the Gaza Strip is justified by Israel on the basis of security, and it includes restrictions on goods and movement of people. Restrictions on how pallets with goods from the Gaza Strip need to be stacked, or what their size must be in order to pass security screenings illustrates the arbitrary nature of Israeli restrictions which limit the export of products that have been approved for export.44 Such regulations significantly affect the competitiveness of the Gaza Strip’s economy. The entire premise for the permit regime is that Israel is able to examine individual permit applications and only grant permits to those Palestinians ‘who do not constitute a security threat’. However, by denying all Palestinian students from the Gaza Strip permits to study in the West Bank or vice versa, since 2000, Israel indirectly acknowledges that the intended goal is not to “filter out” those Palestinians who constitute a security threat, but instead to target and punish all Palestinians, with no regard to their individual circumstances. Some Israeli officials have publicly recognized that this policy is aimed to “separate” the Gaza Strip from the West Bank to put pressure on the authorities in the Gaza Strip.45 Health Permit applications for medical reasons are often denied on security grounds. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said that during 2014 Israel denied almost half of the applications for medical treatment from residents of the Gaza Strip, with the majority rejected on the basis of “security”. This was despite the fact that many of those applications were to seek life-saving treatment inside Israel.46 Moreover, in some cases, individuals were given a permit for treatment but denied their application for the follow-up. If a person is really deemed a threat by Israel, there is little logic to first giving them a permit and then to deny them the second time. Furthermore, PHR reported at least 15 cases in which residents of the Gaza Strip were blackmailed to provide 44 Corporate Watch, “Trading under siege, the dying export industry in the Gaza Strip”, 3 November 2014. Available at: https://corporatewatch.org/news/2014/nov/03/trading-under-siege-dyingexport-industry-gaza-strip 45 ACT Palestine Forum, “The “Permit Regime” and Israeli Attacks on Palestinian Freedom of Worship”, 22 February 2013, available at:http://actpalestineforum.org/files/The-%E2%80%9CPermitRegime%E2%80%9D-and-Israeli-Attacks-on-Palestinian-Freedom-of-Worship.pdf; Ben White, “How Israel uses its ‘security needs’ to justify discrimination”, The National, 21 November 2015, available at:http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/how-israel-uses-its-security-needs-to-justifydiscrimination. 46 Palestine News Network, “PHR: Israel denies right to medical treatment in Gaza”, 16 June 2015, available at: http://english.pnn.ps/2015/06/16/phr-israel-denies-right-to-medical-treatment-in-gaza/ 19