Collective punishment in the context of October 2023 Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip

The deportation of the Crimean Tatars (Crimean Tatar: Qırımtatar halqınıñ sürgünligi, Cyrillic: Къырымтатар халкъынынъ сюргюнлиги) or the Sürgünlik ('exile') was the ethnic cleansing and the cultural genocide of at least 191,044 Crimean Tatars that was carried out by Soviet Union authorities from 18 to 20 May 1944, supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, chief of Soviet state security and the secret police, and ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Within those three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to deport the Crimean Tatars, even Soviet Communist Party members and Red Army soldiers, from Crimea to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. They were one of several ethnicities that were subjected to Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.

Officially, the Soviet government presented the deportation as a policy of collective punishment, based on its claim that some Crimean Tatars collaborated with Nazi Germany in World War II, despite the fact that the 20,000 who collaborated with the Axis powers were half the 40,000 who served in the Soviet Red Army. Several modern scholars believe rather that the government deported them as a part of its plan to gain access to the Dardanelles and acquire territory in Turkey, where the Turkic ethnic kin of the Tatars lived, or remove minorities from the Soviet Union's border regions. By the end of the deportation, not a single Crimean Tatar lived in Crimea, and 80,000 houses and 360,000 acres of land were left abandoned. Nearly 8,000 Crimean Tatars died during the deportation, and tens of thousands subsequently perished due to the harsh living conditions in which they were forced to live during their exile. After the deportation, the Soviet government launched an intense detatarization campaign in an attempt to erase the remaining traces of Crimean Tatar existence.

The Herero and Nama genocide or Namibian genocide, formerly known also as the Herero and Namaqua genocide, was a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment waged against the Herero (Ovaherero) and the Nama people in German South West Africa (now Namibia) by the German Empire. It was one of the earliest genocides to begin in the 20th century, occurring between 1904 and 1908. Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama were killed in the genocide.

In January 1904, the Herero people, who were led by Samuel Maharero, and the Nama people, who were led by Captain Hendrik Witbooi, rebelled against German colonial rule. On 12 January 1904, they killed more than 100 German settlers in the area of Okahandja. In August 1904, German General Lothar von Trotha defeated the Ovaherero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of dehydration. In October 1904, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans, only to suffer a similar fate. The first phase of the genocide was characterized by widespread death from starvation and dehydration, due to the prevention of the Herero from leaving the Namib desert by German forces. Once defeated, thousands of Hereros and Namas were imprisoned in concentration camps, where the majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion.

Kin punishment is the practice of punishing the family members of someone who is accused or suspected of committing a crime, either in place of or in addition to the perpetrator of the crime. It refers to the principle in which a family shares responsibility for a crime which is committed by one of its members, and it is a form of collective punishment. Kin punishment has been used as a form of extortion, harassment, and persecution by authoritarian and totalitarian states. Kin punishment has been practiced historically in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, China, Japan, and South Korea; and presently in Israel and North Korea.

The restrictions on movement and goods in Gaza imposed by Israel date to the early 1990s. After Hamas took over in 2007, Israel significantly intensified existing movement restrictions and imposed a complete blockade on the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip. In the same year, Egypt closed the Rafah border crossing. The blockade's stated aims are to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza and exert economic pressure on Hamas. While the blockade's legality has not been adjudicated in court, human rights groups believe it would be deemed illegal and that it is a form of collective punishment, as it restricts the flow of essential goods, contributes to economic hardship, and limits Gazans' freedom of movement. The land, sea, and air blockade isolated Gaza from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory and the world. The blockade and its effects have led to the territory being called an "open-air prison".

Exit and entry into Gaza by sea or air is prohibited. There are only three crossings in and out of Gaza, two of them controlled by Israel and one by Egypt. Israel heavily regulates Palestinians' movement through Erez, with applications considered only for a small number of laborers (less than 5% of the number considered in 2000) and for limited medical and humanitarian reasons. Israel's military cooperation with Egypt and its control of the population registry (through which it controls who can obtain the necessary travel documents) gives it influence over movement through Rafah. Imports are heavily restricted, with "dual use" items permitted only as part of donor projects. This includes construction material and computer equipment. Exports are also heavily restricted, with the main impediment to economic development in Gaza being Israel's ban on virtually all exports from the Strip.

On 9 October 2023, Israel intensified its blockade of the Gaza Strip when it announced a "total blockade", blocking the entry of food, water, medicine, fuel and electricity after the October 7 attacks and the ensuing Gaza war. The blockade has been credited with contributing significantly to the Gaza genocide. Israel has conditioned its lifting of the blockade with the return of the hostages abducted by Hamas, which has been criticized as collective punishment and an apparent war crime. As of August 2025, 27 European countries and over 100 international aid organizations have called for an end to Israel's blockade of aid into Gaza.

A few weeks after 9 October 2023, Israel eased the complete blockade, but still continued to severely restrict the amount of aid entering the Gaza Strip. The first supplies entered on 21 October 2023. The blockade exacerbated Gaza's humanitarian crisis. In January 2024, Israeli authorities blocked 56% of humanitarian aid to northern Gaza. On 9 February 2024, UNRWA's director Philippe Lazzarini said that Israel had blocked food for 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Since the beginning of the Gaza war on 7 October 2023, the Israeli military and authorities committed numerous war crimes, such as the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, attacks on civilians in densely populated areas (including bombings of hospitals and medical facilities, refugee camps, schools and educational institutions, and municipal services); the torture and executions of civilians; sexual violence including rape; and genocide. Further war crime charges against Israel include forced evacuations, mistreatment and torture of Palestinian prisoners, and the destruction of cultural heritage. Humanitarian organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B'tselem, and Oxfam, as well as human rights groups and experts, including the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry and United Nations special rapporteurs, have documented these actions.

Israel has faced legal charges for its conduct in the war. At the International Court of Justice, Israel was charged with committing genocide in Gaza. In May 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a weapon of war.