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Istanbul statement backs Hamas and sets out ‘obligations’ to the people of Gaza

March 25, 2009

The Istanbul statement claims God has granted victory to Gazans over their “Zionist Jewish occupiers”. But it also complains of an “international and local conspiracy” against Gaza, implicating Palestine leaders in the West Bank and accusing the Egyptian government of treason (though without mentioning it by name). The statement then sets out eight “obligations” for the Muslim community – “its religious scholars, its rulers and its peoples”:

• To aid the people of Gaza in rebuilding “what the Zionist aggression destroyed”; to compensate the injured and support widows and orphans.

• In the delivery of aid and reconstruction, to deal only with Hamas.

• Not to recognise the Palestinian Authority as representative of the Palestinian people.

• To withhold aid from the undeserving or untrustworthy and to punish those who cause “mayhem, negligence and waste” of funds.

• To find a fair formula for reconciliation “between the sons of the Palestinian people” (ie Fatah and Hamas), so as to establish a legitimate authority that will “carry on with jihad and resistance against the occupier until the liberation of all Palestine”.

• To open all crossings in and out of Palestine, giving the Palestinians access to “money, clothing, food, medicine, weapons and other essentials”.

• To regard all those who contribute substantially to the “crimes and brutality” of Israel in the same way as Israel itself.

• To reject and “fight by all means” the sending of foreign warships into Muslim waters on the basis of “claiming to control the borders and prevent the smuggling of arms to Gaza”.

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U.N. reports say Israel targeted civilians in Gaza

March 24, 2009
  • Reports say child used as human shield
  • Right to food, health violated, report says
  • Report also cites Hamas violations

By Robert Evans | Reuters, March 23, 2009

GENEVA, March 23 (Reuters) – United Nations investigators said on Monday Israel violated a range of human rights during its invasion of Gaza, including targeting civilians and using a child as a human shield.

The accusations came in reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council which also called for an urgent end to Israeli restrictions on humanitarian supplies to Gaza and a full international investigation into the conflict.

“Civilian targets, particularly homes and their occupants, appear to have taken the brunt of the attacks, but schools and medical facilities have also been hit,” said one report by Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

The Sri Lankan human rights lawyer visited the region in early February. She cited a long series of incidents to back her charges.

In one, she said, Israeli soldiers shot a father after ordering him out of his house and then opened fire into the room where the rest of the family was sheltering, wounding the mother and three brothers and killing a fourth.

In another, on January 15, at Tal al Hawa south-west of Gaza City, Israeli soldiers forced an 11-year-old boy to walk in front of them for several hours as they moved through the town, even after they had been shot at.

An Israeli commander in the 22-day Gaza invasion said on Monday Israel’s efforts to protect troops from Palestinian fire may have contributed to unwarranted killing of civilians.

“If you want to know whether I think that in doing so we killed innocents, the answer is, unequivocally, yes,” Tzvika Fogel, a reserve brigadier-general, told Reuters. Fogel added that such incidents were exceptional.

ISRAEL CRITICISES REPORT
Coomaraswamy’s comments formed part of a much longer report from nine U.N. investigators including specialists on the right to health, to food, to adequate housing and education and on summary executions and violence against women.

All cited violations by Israel — and in some cases by the Hamas Islamic movement that controls Gaza — during the invasion from December 27 until January 17 which Israeli leaders say was launched to stop rocket attacks by Hamas from the territory.

Palestinian officials say 1,434 people in Gaza — 960 of them civilians — were killed in the fighting, a figure Israel contests. The report from the nine gave the total as 1,440, saying of these 431 were children and 114 women.

The overall report was criticised in the 47-nation Council by Israel’s ambassador Aharon Leshno Yar, who said it “wilfully ignores and downplays the terrorist and other threats we face,” and the use by Hamas of human shields.

Leshno Yar said the 43-page document was part of a pattern of “demonising Israel” in the Council — where an informal bloc of Islamic and African nations usually backed by Russia, China and Cuba has a built-in majority.

Another report presented to the Council on Monday came from Robert Falk, a U.S. academic and the body’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Falk, whom Israel barred from entry last year after accusing him of bias and prejudice, said Israel had subjected civilians in Gaza to “an inhuman form of warfare that kills, maims and inflicts mental harm.”

His report, in which he called for an independent experts group to probe possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas and also suggested that the U.N. Security Council set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal, was issued late last week. (Editing by Dominic Evans)

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Israel has a case to answer

March 24, 2009

Editorial

The Guardian, UK,  Tuesday 24 March 2009

Evidence that Israel committed war crimes in its 23-day operation in Gaza mounts by the week. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have both appealed for a United Nations inquiry, after conducting their own investigations. Last week Ha’aretz published the testimonies of Israeli soldiers who alleged that a sniper shot a Palestinian mother and her two children, and that a company commander ordered an elderly woman to be killed. Yesterday Physicians for Human Rights accused soldiers of ignoring the special protection that Palestinian medical teams are entitled to receive. Today the Guardian releases three films in which our reporter Clancy Chassay reveals evidence that Israel used drones to fire at civilian targets, killing at least 48; he interviews three Palestinian youths used by Israeli soldiers as human shields and alleges that soldiers targeted paramedics and hospitals.

None of this is to deny that a case also exists against Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. Firing unaimable rockets at civilians in southern Israel is also a war crime. But there is no symmetry of guilt. Israel has weapons it can place to within a metre of its intended targets. Its drones have high-quality optics that can see the colour of the target’s sweater. And they film everything both before and after each attack. The army has the means to refute these allegations, but feels no obligation to do so. An international inquiry should be launched for no other reason than to hold it accountable.

Israel has not got a history of co-operating with international inquiries into the actions of its army, but it has reacted twice to domestic allegations. It admitted that one of its tanks fired two shells at the apartment of a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian doctor whose three daughters were killed and whose grief touched the nation, but it concluded that the action was “reasonable”. The Ha’aretz material prompted a criminal inquiry by the military advocate, and two unusual statements by the outgoing defence minister, Ehud Barak, and the chief of staff, General Gabi Ashkenazi, each of whom praised the “moral” actions of the army. The prospects of a full international investigation of these allegations are mixed. The international criminal court has received more than 220 complaints from the Palestinian National Authority, the Arab League and the Palestinian justice minister. But whether the court has jurisdiction is another matter.

If the ICC route fails, there is always the UN, whose schools and stores found themselves in the line of fire. The secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, will this week receive the results of a private board of inquiry. This is narrow in scope, only examining incidents at UN facilities. But what happened there was bad enough, including the use of white phosphorus shells.

There are five reasons why we should have an international inquiry into the Israeli assault on Gaza. First, the conflict has not gone away. It could reignite at any moment under a prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who is determined to finish the job. Second, the weight of evidence points not to isolated incidents, but to a new and deadly relaxation of the rules of engagement. This emerges from the soldiers’ own testimony in Ha’aretz. “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza,” one soldier said. “You see a person on a road … He doesn’t have to be with a weapon. You don’t have to identify him with anything. You can just shoot him.” Gaza was fought to a certain mood music. It suggested that the lives of Palestinian civilians did not matter when weighed against those of Israeli soldiers. Third, Israel is not immune to international opinion. A narrow rightwing coalition under Mr Netanyahu will be sensitive to criticism from Barack Obama, who has yet to reveal his cards. Fourth, what Israel does or is allowed to get away with doing affects attempts to establish the rule of international law in other conflicts. Fifth, we know what doing nothing leads to: another war, and ultimately a third intifada.

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Questioning U.S. aid to Israel

March 23, 2009

Socialist Worker, March 19, 2009

WHILE THE Obama stimulus program has generated much disagreement over what new economic policies need to be implemented and how they should be funded, there is one policy in which both capitalist parties speak with unanimity: the American “special relationship” with Israel.

According to a recent book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, our “special relationship” with Israel costs American taxpayers over $3 billion a year in the form of direct foreign aid. This sounds generous, but there’s even more. Unlike other foreign country entitlement programs, which the U.S. pays in quarterly installments, Israel has a special deal: It gets its entire annual appropriation (a direct cash transfer) in the first 30 days of the fiscal year.

Unfortunately for U.S. taxpayers, their government must borrow the money in order to pay Israel up front, costing millions of dollars in additional yearly interest. And, as if this weren’t enough, Israel reinvests its unspent balance in U.S. treasury bills from which it collects millions of extra dollars in additional interest. (Guess who’s paying?)

Due to lax oversight arrangements, detecting cases of misappropriation after aid reaches Israel is difficult. As an example, the authors cite a huge embezzlement scheme operated by an Israeli brigadier general who succeeded in illegally diverting millions of U.S. aid dollars.

In addition to direct U.S. government cash grants and loan guarantees, Israel receives an estimated $2 billion each year in private donations from wealthy American citizens; the authors indicate these are tax deductible due to a special clause in the U.S.-Israeli tax treaty. Isn’t this the kind of tax break most Americans could live without?

Mearsheimer and Walt also show that America’s continuing support for Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian lands has fueled Islamic anti-Americanism and its concomitant terrorist problem. While endorsing the argument for Israel’s existence, they question the moral rationale for supporting the unspeakable brutality inflicted on Palestinians trying to survive under occupation by a state that doesn’t even have a permanent border.

Due to American largesse, the world economic depression hasn’t reached our “special” friends in Zion yet, but it’s being felt here. And, boy-o-boy does it hurt! Since, as Obama has said, “everything is on the table,” perhaps it’s time to ask him why jobless Americans with foreclosed mortgages, no health care and little prospect of a dignified retirement are being expected to subsidize one of the world’s weathier countries, which has no strategic importance and has succeeded in turning a large part of the Islamic world against the U.S.

If they haven’t already read it, many socialist readers may be interested in the material presented in this well argued, thoroughly researched and fair book.
Trystram Trotz, from the Internet

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The Forked-Tongue Eunuchs and Israel

March 22, 2009

By Rami G. Khouri | Information Clearing House, March 21, 2009

If rhetoric is the first step toward action, then one of the rhetorical trends of our time indicating a giant step backward toward inaction is the American and European tendency to describe Israel’s aggressive and illegal actions in the occupied Palestinian territories in increasingly soft and imprecise terms.

For years, US administrations called Israeli settlements “illegal” and an “obstacle to peace,” but in recent years those terms have been replaced by a mere “unhelpful.” On her first official trip to the region earlier this month, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton referred to the Israeli demolition of Palestinian Arab homes in East Jerusalem as “unhelpful.” Earlier this week, the European Union presidency said that Israel’s demolition of homes in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem “threatens the viability of a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement, in conformity with international law.”

If I were the Israeli government, I would be laughing all the way to my next colonial adventure in destroying Palestinian homes and infrastructure, uprooting Palestinian Arabs and replacing them with imported settlers from Israel, or Brooklyn, or Russia, or from wherever the world’s longest running modern colonization venture gets its human ammunition and reinforcements.

It is bad enough when two of the world’s powerhouses pull back from their previous positions of branding Israel’s contraventions of international law and United Nations resolutions as illegal and impermissible and instead call them “unhelpful” or just a threat to a lasting settlement. It is infinitely worse when the United States and the European Union, who spend half their waking hours trying to spread democracy and the rule of law to the rest of the world, end up watering down Israeli contraventions of international law so that Israel spends half its waking hours laughing at every American and European official in sight.

The rhetorical downgrading of Israel’s criminality is a problem (assuming it is still okay to use the word criminality to describe undermining the law). That, at least, is what my British and American teachers in primary and high school taught me when I learned English: Use the precise, accurate word when you have it at hand, and do not beat around the bush. Clarity is good for communication.

The first problem with Western obsequiousness to Israel is that it perpetuates the Zionist colonial enterprise in a manner that is harmful to all concerned, including Israelis, Palestinians and Westerners who end up being sucked into our maelstrom of violence. The second problem is that it helps to disqualify the US and EU and others who share their position – such as the UN, increasingly – from playing the role of an active, credible mediator. Arabs and Israelis cannot solve their conflict on their own, and mediation by the Turks or Egyptians can only move things forward so much. A permanent, comprehensive negotiated peace agreement requires intensive American and European involvement in negotiations, consummating an agreement, peace-keeping, and promoting post-peace economic growth. This is impossible if the US and EU have no credibility.

A third problem with the cowardice of sheltering in the safe world of “unhelpful” rather than “illegal and impermissible,” is that those Western powers that choose this route send a terrible message: They deny and ignore the rule of law when it comes to more than four decades of Israeli actions, but enthusiastically promote it when it comes to their aspirations to transform the Arab and Islamic world. A little bit of hypocrisy is standard fare for politicians; but when this becomes elevated to the level of official policy that transcends administrations, decades and generations, it enters the realm of the pathological.

Great powers and noble organizations that disrespect their own rules are not so great in the eyes of a bewildered world that thought that decolonization concluded about half a century ago, but wakes up every morning to find itself the continuing victim of new forms of criminal colonization – in the form of Zionist-Israeli settlers, or Western diplomats whose tongues are so forked they often resemble rattlesnakes walking on two feet.

Colonialism is either legal or illegal, acceptable or criminal. Laws matter or they don’t matter. There is no such thing as “unhelpful” colonialism, any more than there is merely naughty rape, awkward murder, or unfortunate incest. Why is it that those in the West who celebrate and seek to export their commitment to the rule of law find it so hard to adopt both the rhetoric and policies that acknowledge the criminal illegality and political catastrophe that is the modern and continuing Israeli colonial rampage? What is it that makes giants in the West become eunuchs in the face of Israeli deeds?

Rami G. Khouri is published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.

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Israelis told to fight ‘holy war’ in Gaza

March 21, 2009

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem |The Independent, UK,  March 21, 2009

Many Israeli troops had the sense of fighting a “religious war” against Gentiles during the 22-day offensive in Gaza, according to a soldier who has highlighted the martial role of military rabbis during the operation.

The soldier testified that the “clear” message of literature distributed to troops by the rabbinate was: “We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the Gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land.”

The claim comes in the detailed transcript of a post-war discussion by soldiers, publication of which has triggered a military police inquiry into allegations about the use of lethal firepower against unarmed civilians.

The investigation was ordered by the military’s advocate general Avichai Mandleblit on Thursday after the liberal daily newspaper Haaretz published extracts from the transcript describing incidents in which Palestinian civilians were killed and property wantonly damaged.

In the fuller version of the transcript published yesterday, the soldier, a unit commander from the Givati brigade, says: “This was the main message and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war.” He recalled that his own sergeant was from a hesder yeshiva, a college combining religious study and military service, who led the whole platoon in prayer before going into battle. The commander added that he had sought to talk to the men about Palestinian politics and society and, “about how not everyone in Gaza is Hamas and not every inhabitant wants to vanquish us”.

After the offensive, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group called for the dismissal of the military’s head chaplain, Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, a brigadier general. It said that he had distributed to troops a booklet saying that it was “terribly immoral” to show mercy to a “cruel enemy” and that the soldiers were fighting “murderers”.

The longer transcript conveys a fuller sense of the debate involving graduates from the Yitzhak Rabin military preparatory course. At one point Danny Zamir, the head of the course, says he would have questioned the killing of 180 traffic policemen during bombing on the first day of the operation. One pilot replies: “Tactically speaking you call them police. In any case they are armed and belong to Hamas … during better times they take Fatah people and throw them off the roofs and see what happens.”

The latest casualty figures published by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights list the names of 1,434 dead of whom they say 926 were civilians, 236 fighters and 255 police officers.

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Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques – IDF fashion 2009

March 21, 2009

A T-shirt printed at the request of an IDF soldier in the sniper unit reading ‘I shot two kills.’

Last update – 22:41 20/03/2009
By Uri Blau | Haaretz, Israel,  March 20, 2009
The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit’s insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques – these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription “Better use Durex,” next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter’s T-shirt from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, “1 shot, 2 kills.” A “graduation” shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, “No matter how it begins, we’ll put an end to it.”

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, “Bet you got raped!” A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies – such as “confirming the kill” (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim’s head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.

Continued >>

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Urgent: Ahmad Sa’adat transferred to solitary confinement in Asqelan prison!

March 20, 2009

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat

70_saadat_ap220.jpg

Uruknet.info, March 19, 2009

On March 19, 2009, Ahmad Sa’adat was suddenly transferred from Hadarim prison and to Asqelan prison, where he is being held in solitary confinement.

Ahmad Sa’adat alongside 11,000 other Palestinian prisoners, has been repeatedly subjected to solitary confinement and punitive measures at the behest of the Israeli regime. Sa’adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison, and often placed in solitary confinement or isolation.

Palestinian lawyer Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for Palestinian prisoners, stated that this is part of the Israeli policies towards
Palestinian prisoners. Sa’adat has been particularly targeted because he is
both a Palestinian national leader and a leader among the prisoners, whose presence within the prison strengthens the prisoners’ unity and steadfastness.

Furthermore, Ahmad Sa’adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment. Now, they are returning him to isolation where he will face even more serious medical neglect and injury.

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended.

Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the
conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem.jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the
urgent situation of Ahmad Sa’adat!

The imprisonment of Sa’adat, facing a 30 year sentence for his powerful and
political leadership of the Palestinian people, is a symbol of Israel’s
attempts to isolate and target the Palestinian people and their national
movement for liberation, through massive imprisonment. They have not succeeded in breaking the will of the people of Palestine, through imprisonment, massacres, and siege, and will never succeed in breaking the will of Sa’adat, the Palestinian prisoners, or the Palestinian people.

Freedom for Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners now!

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/

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MIDEAST: Israelis Using ‘Excessive’ Force Against Protesters

March 20, 2009

By Mel Frykberg | Inter Press Service

RAMALLAH, Mar 19 (IPS) – The critical wounding of a U.S. activist has highlighted the excessive use of force by Israeli forces.

The activist, Tristan Anderson, 38, was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers during a protest against Israel’s separation barrier in the Palestinian West Bank last week. He remains in intensive care in Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv.

Anderson was one of approximately 400 international, Palestinian and Israeli protestors taking part in a demonstration in the village of Ni’ilin, near the central West Bank city Ramallah, when he was hit by a teargas canister.

Since Israel’s devastating three-week war on Gaza, human rights organisations and activists have accused the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) of using indiscriminate violence and testing new weapons on unarmed protestors.

The teargas canister which hit Anderson is a new variety being used by the IDF, and is particularly lethal if fired directly at protestors.

The gas canister can travel over 400 metres. It does not make a noise when fired, or emit a smoke tail, and has a propeller for mid-air acceleration. A combination of velocity and silence increases the danger it poses.

Witnesses gave testimonies to the media and to human rights organisations that they saw Israeli soldiers aiming at Anderson before they shot the canister from a distance of about 60 metres. It hit him directly on the forehead. The impact of the canister caused severe damage to the right eye, and Anderson has had to undergo critical brain surgery.

Israeli soldiers continued to fire teargas canisters towards the wounded man and the people surrounding him as he lay critically injured on the ground and Palestinian medics tried to give him first aid.

Later, a Palestinian ambulance trying to rush Anderson to hospital was blocked at least five minutes by Israeli soldiers. Only after other foreigners engaged the soldiers in heated debate did they allow the ambulance to pass.

Anderson was then delayed another 15 minutes while an Israel ambulance was called, because Palestinian ambulances are not allowed to cross into Israeli territory without special permit.

Jonathan Pollack, an Israeli activist who witnessed the event said that the soldiers had fired unnecessarily. “There was no way that their lives were even remotely in danger or that they might have been injured,” Pollack told IPS.

“Even if the IDF (Israeli defence forces) argument was true that they had been the targets of stones before they shot him, no stone could travel uphill for 60 metres and threaten them, and Anderson had definitely not been involved in any violent activity.”

Pollack said the demonstration had finished and most of the demonstrators had left when the teargas was fired. “At the time of the shooting there were no confrontations, and Anderson was standing amongst about 10 remaining protestors just milling about.”

Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman for the Israeli rights group B’Tselem says that the IDF has at times used crowd control measures indiscriminately. “The teargas canister is not meant to be used as a weapon or fired directly at protestors but in an arc or at an angle,” she told IPS.

“We have many credible witnesses, and I myself have seen soldiers fire at people who are nowhere near and have nothing to do with any stone- throwing. And even when the soldiers have the right to shoot on grounds of self-defence, they are obliged to use the minimum of force and in a strictly proportionate way.”

B’Tselem is concerned about the even more severe crowd control methods being employed by the IDF.

An Israeli journalist was recently shot in the chest with a rubber-coated steel bullet (marble-sized metal ball covered in 0.5mm of rubber) when the soldiers knew full well the target was a journalist. Towards the end of last year the IDF began once again to use Ruger rifles, which use .22 calibre ammunition, against unarmed protestors.

“We have written a letter to the judge advocate general (JAG) protesting and questioning the use of Ruger rifles,” said Michaeli.

According to B’Tselem, back in 2001 then JAG Major-General Menachem Finkelstein had ordered that use of the Ruger rifle be stopped. The decision followed the killing of several children in the Gaza Strip by Ruger rifle fire, and an order by the Central Command to cease using the rifle. The order came after it was found that soldiers often used the rifle against demonstrators without justification.

Furthermore, Israeli soldiers are using live ammunition against protestors, contrary to IDF laws of engagement.

Although Anderson’s case made international headlines because of his status as a foreigner, four Palestinians were killed by the IDF in the village of Ni’ilin last year.

Ahmed Mousa, 10, was shot dead with live ammunition in July last year. The following day Yousef Amira, 17, was left brain-dead, and died a week later after he too had been shot in the head with rubber-coated steel bullets.

Arafat Rateb Khawaje, 22, was shot in the back with live ammunition in December. The same day Mohammed Khawaje, 20, was also shot in the head with live ammunition. He died three days later.

The villagers of Ni’ilin and their supporters have been protesting weekly against the confiscation of their land by Israeli authorities for expansion of nearby Israeli settlements, and against the separation barrier.

The separation barrier, which slices through the village, divides Palestinian farmers from their land. It was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. (END/2009)

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Falk: Gaza offensive possible ‘war crime’

March 20, 2009
Al Jazeera, March 20, 2009

Falk said the Gaza border blocade trapping Gazans in a war zone may also be a crime against humanity

The United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories has said Israel’s military offensive on Gaza “would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law”.

Richard Falk calls the Israeli attacks a “massive assault on a densely populated urbanised setting”, with the civilian population subjected to “an inhumane form of warfare that kills, maims and inflicts mental harm”.

His findings were written in a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday.

Islamic and African countries backed by China, Cuba and Russia have a majority in the 47-member forum.

Neither Israel nor US, its principal ally, are members.

Falk said the Geneva Convention required forces at war to be able to distinguish between military targets and civilians.

If that is not possible, then “launching the attacks is inherently unlawful”.

Israel launched its offensive on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in December saying it aimed to stop rocket fire by Hamas into southern Israel.

A ceasefire was declared on January 18 after the offensive left 1,300 Palestinians dead, many of them women and children.

Three Israeli civilians and 10 soldiers were killed during the offensive.

Another crime

Falk said that the Gaza border blockade also was not legally justified and may represent a “crime against peace”, a principle established at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.

Sealing the border, denying people the right to flee the war zone as refugees, may also be a crime against humanity, his report said.

In video

Gaza family tells of Israeli shooting

Israeli soldiers say killing civilians ‘allowed’

He said Israel’s violations included alleged “targeting of schools, mosques and ambulances” during the offensive, and its use of weapons including white phosphorus, as well as Hamas firing rockets at civilian targets in southern Israel.Falk called for an independent experts group to investigate possible war crimes committed by both the Israeli military and Hamas.

He recommended witness testimonies as well as explanations from Israeli and Palestinian military commanders.

Falk gave the same death toll from Israel’s offensive in December and January – 1,434 Palestinians, 960 of those civilians – as the Palestinian Human Rights Centre.

Israel disputes the figures and accuses Hamas fighters in Gaza of using civilians as human shields.

Falk said Israel’s allegation should be investigated.

Criminal tribunal urged

Falk suggested the UN Security Council might set up an ad hoc criminal tribunal to establish accountability for war crimes in Gaza, noting Israel has not signed the Rome statutes establishing the International Criminal Court.

He was refused entry into Israel two weeks before the offensive started, preventing him from a planned mission to Gaza. In the report, he said the refusal had set an “unfortunate precedent” for treatment of a special rapporteur.

Israel dropped bombs on Gaza saying it wanted to halt rocket fire from Hamas [EPA]

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Santa Barbara, California, Falk said he is not optimistic that his report will lead to concrete action.”There is a lack of political will on the part of several major governments,” he said.

“There has all along been a pervasive double standard with respect to the implementation of international criminal law.

“It has been applied to non-Western countries in the south and has exempted actors associated with Europe, North America and, generally, the north.”

Falk’s criticism came as reports surfaced in the Israeli media suggesting that Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under what may have been lax rules of engagement during the Gaza offensive.

Property ransacked

Quoting Israeli soldiers who fought in the offensive, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Thursday that soldiers had ransacked and destroyed civilian property.

The soldiers’ testimony, made at a course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon, runs counter to the Israeli army’s claims that troops observed a high level of moral behaviour during the operation.

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader in which he relates an incident where an Israeli sharpshooter shot a Palestinian mother and her two children, Haaretz reported.

If proved, the soldiers’ testimonies could contribute to war crimes charges against Israel.

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