A/HRC/10/20 page 11 V. REFUGEE DENIAL 18. In unprecedented belligerent policy, Israel refused to allow the entire civilian population of Gaza, with the exception of 200 foreign wives, to leave the war zone during the 22 days of attack that commenced on 27 December. As the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees stated on 6 January 2009, Gaza is “the only conflict in the world in which people are not even allowed to flee”. All crossings from Israel were kept closed during the attacks, except for rare and minor exceptions. By so doing, children, women, invalids and disabled persons were unable to avail themselves of the refugee option to flee from the locus of immediate harm resulting from the military operations. This condition was aggravated by the absence of places to hide from the ravages of war in Gaza, given its small size, dense population and absence of natural or man-made shelters. 19. International humanitarian law has not specifically and explicitly at this time anticipated such an abuse of civilians, but the policy as implemented would suggest the importance of an impartial investigation to determine whether such practices of “refugee denial” constitute a crime against humanity as understood in international criminal law. The initial definition of crimes against humanity, developed in relation to the war crimes trials after the Second World War, is “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population”.8 Refugee denial under these circumstances of confined occupation is an instance of “inhumane acts”, during which the entire civilian population of Gaza was subjected to the extreme physical and psychological hazards of modern warfare within a very small overall territory. It should be kept in mind that this restriction on free movement, to escape from the war zone, was imposed on a population already severely weakened by the effects of the blockade. 20. The small size of Gaza and its geographic character also operated to deny most of the population remaining within its borders of an opportunity to internally remove itself from the combat zones. In this sense, the entire Gaza Strip became a war zone, although the actual combat area on the ground was more limited. In effect, leaving Gaza was the only way to remove oneself to a position of safety. In this respect, the option to become an internally displaced person was, as a practical matter, unavailable to the civilian population, although some civilians sought relative safety in shelters that were made available on an emergency basis for a tiny fraction of the population, mainly through the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and other United Nations 8 A more authoritative definition is contained in article 7, subparagraph 1(k) of the Rome Statute, according to which crimes against humanity include “inhumane acts ... intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health”.