| Al Jazeera, Oct 11, 2008 | |||
Sarah Palin, the US Republican vice-presidential candidate, abused her power as Alaska’s governor when she fired the state’s public safety commissioner, a legislative committee has found. A report to the committee concluded late on Friday that a family grudge was not the sole reason for her firing of Walter Monegan, but said that it likely was a contributing factor. Palin supporters have called the investigation politically motivated. The inquiry looked into Palin’s dismissal of Monegan, who said he lost his job because he resisted pressure to fire a state trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor’s sister. Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute. “I feel vindicated,” Monegan said. “It sounds like they’ve validated my belief and opinions. And that tells me I’m not totally out in left field.” Stephen Branchflower, who led the investigation, told the bipartisan committee that Palin had violated a state ethics law that prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain. Polls ‘down’ Supporters of Palin and John McCain, the Republican party’s presidential nominee, had hoped results from the investigation would not be released until after November’s election. The investigation began before Palin was selected as the vice-presidential nominee for her party and McCain said he was aware of the controversy when making the choice. Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan said: “There were concerted efforts by John McCain’s campaign to dissuade this investigation from going forward. Jordan said the report could prove a disastrous blow for Palin, “especially when you consider polling in the last couple weeks”. “Her poll rating has gone down … this is not the sort of thing you want coming out just 25 days until the election,” Jordan said. Republicans, however, cautioned against making too much of the report. Gary Stevens, a state senator on the investigating committee, said: “I think there are some problems in this report. I would encourage people to be very cautious, to look at this with a jaundiced eye.” The almost 300-page report did not recommend sanctions against Palin, nor a criminal investigation. |
US probe says Palin abused power
October 11, 2008
Latest US Drone Strike in North Waziristan Kills At Least Nine
October 10, 2008A missile strike by a US drone hit a house in Ghundai, a village 20 km east of Miramshah in Pakistan’s North Waziristan province today, killing at least nine people. It is the second US air strike in the province in less than a week, as a strike on Friday evening killed at least 21 people.
Today’s strike targeted the home of Maulvi Sahar Gul, who is said to be affiliated with the tribal fighters which signed a peace treaty with Pakistan in February. Five of those killed were reported to be civilians, with another four “suspected foreign militants.”
Area mosques issued loudspeaker calls asking for help to retrieve an unknown number of injured people from the debris. One unnamed witness, described only as a “tribal militant” said the death toll could rise as there may still be people trapped under the roof.
Pakistani helicopters were in the area, but villagers say they did not fire on the drones. Last month, US and Pakistani ground troops traded fire for about five minutes across the border near the site of today’s strike. Pakistan has warned the US several times about launching strikes on its territory, but Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has insisted that the strikes will continue.
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compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author
The Time for Mordechai Vanunu is Now
October 10, 2008By Rannie Amiri | Counterpunch, Oct 9, 2008
As the world awaits the announcement of this year’s recipient(s) of the Nobel Peace Prize, there is no doubt 2008 has been witness to a call to war.
The pressure exerted by Israel in goading the United States to attack Iran has been relentless, and thankfully, resisted up to now. In this context, is there any better person to receive the Peace Prize than the man who initially exposed the Middle East’s first—and only—nuclear power over two decades ago?
After divulging pictures related to Israel’s clandestine atomic stockpile during a 1986 interview with The Sunday Times, Mordechai Vanunu was lured back to Israel by the Mossad and subsequently spent the next 18 years in prison (11 of them in solitary confinement) before being released in 2004. “I am proud and happy to do what I did,” he said at the time. He had remained unrepentant and indeed, unbreakable.
Life after release has not been easy, however. In flagrant violation of Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Israelis placed numerous prohibitions and restrictions on Vanunu’s movements and travels. His freedom to speak with the press or any non-Israeli citizen for that matter was also severely curtailed. In 2007, he was found to be in violation of his parole, in part for attempting to leave Jerusalem in order to visit Bethlehem, and sentenced to six months in prison. The sentence was suspended pending appeals, and this past September an Israeli court reduced the term to three months, citing “…the absence of indications that his actions put the country’s security at risk.”
As many are no doubt keenly aware, unlike Iran, Israel is a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and prohibits full inspection of its Dimona reactor by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) personnel.
At the IAEA’s 52nd General Conference of Member States which recently concluded in Vienna, a resolution was passed calling for a Middle East nuclear-free zone. It implored countries “not to develop, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons” until such a zone is established and demanded all Middle East nations open up suspected facilities to the agency’s inspectors. The vote was 82-0 in favor of the resolution. The United States and Israel were among the 13 countries abstaining. Although a second resolution more critical of Israel was narrowly defeated after opposition by the United States and the European Union, a clear message was nonetheless sent to the region’s only true rogue nuclear state.
All of this would not have been possible without the courage of Vanunu 20 years ago and today. Although often described as a mere “whistleblower”, the term does not do him justice. He was rather the “siren” who first alerted the world that nuclear weapons had found their way into the volatile Middle East.
As he sits incarcerated, and as the nuclear outlier that imprisoned him manufactures the casus belli required to plunge the region into a war ironically over non-existent nuclear weapons, there can be no more a compelling set of circumstances than these needed to award the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize to Mordechai Vanunu. The overdue recipient should wait no longer. His time has come and it is now.
Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on the Arab and Islamic worlds. He may be reached at: rbamiri <at> yahoo.com.
Afghan Peace Talks Widen US-UK Rift on War Policy
October 10, 2008Analysis by Gareth Porter | Inter-Press Service
WASHINGTON, Oct 9 – The beginning of political talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban revealed by press accounts this week is likely to deepen the rift that has just erupted in public between the United States and its British ally over the U.S. commitment to an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
According to a French diplomatic cable that leaked to a French magazine last week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government is looking for an exit strategy from Afghanistan rather than an endless war, and it sees a U.S. escalation of the war as an alternative to a political settlement rather than as supporting such an outcome.
The first meetings between the two sides were held in Saudi Arabia in the presence of Saudi King Abdullah Sep. 24 to 27, as reported by CNN’s Nic Robertson from London Tuesday. Eleven Taliban delegates, two Afghan government officials and a representative of independent former mujahideen commander Gulfadin Hekmatyar participated in the meetings, according to Robertson.
Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith of the British command in Afghanistan enthusiastically welcomed such talks. He was quoted by The Sunday Times of London as saying, “We want to change the nature of the debate from one where disputes are settled through the barrel of the gun to one where it is done through negotiations.”
If the Taliban were prepared to talk about a political settlement, said Carleton-Smith, “that’s precisely the sort of the progress that concludes insurgencies like this.”
The George W. Bush administration, however, was evidently taken by surprise by news of the Afghan peace talks and was decidedly cool toward it. One U.S. official told The Washington Times that it was unclear that the meetings in Saudi Arabia presage government peace talks with the Taliban. The implication was that the administration would not welcome such talks.
A U.S. defence official in Afghanistan told the paper the Bush administration was “surprised” that it had not been informed about the meeting in advance by the Afghan government.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates, on his way to discuss Afghanistan with NATO defence ministers in Budapest, made it clear that the Bush administration supports talks only for the purposes of attracting individual leaders to leave the Taliban and join the government. “What is important is detaching those who are reconcilable and who are willing to be part of the future of the country from those who are irreconcilable,” he said.
Gates said he drew line at talks with the head of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
However, representatives of the Taliban leader are apparently involved in the talks, and President Hamid Karzai is committed to going well beyond the tactic of appealing to individual Taliban figures.
Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in a news conference Oct. 4 that resolution of the conflict required a “political settlement with the Taliban”. He added that such a settlement would come only “after Taliban’s acceptance of the Afghan constitution and the peaceful rotation of power by democratic means.”
The Afghan talks come against the backdrop of a Bush administration decision to send 8,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, and the expressed desire of the U.S. commander, Gen. David. D. McKiernan, for yet another 15,000 combat and support troops. Both Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain have said they would increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan.
Obama has said he would send troops now scheduled to remain in Iraq until next summer to Afghanistan as an urgent priority, whereas McCain has not said when or how he would increase the troop level.
Such a U.S. troop increase is exactly what the British fear, however. The British ambassador in Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted in a diplomatic cable leaked to the French investigative magazine “Le Canard enchaine” last week as telling the French deputy ambassador that the U.S. presidential candidates “must be dissuaded from getting further bogged down in Afghanistan”.
In the French diplomatic report of the Sep. 2 conversation, Cowper-Coles is reported as saying that an increase in foreign troop strength in Afghanistan would only exacerbate the overall political problem in Afghanistan.
The report has the ambassador saying that such an increase “would identify us even more strongly as an occupation force and would multiply the targets” for the insurgents.
Cowper-Coles is quoted as saying foreign forces are the “lifeline” of the Afghan regime and that additional forces would “slow down and complicate a possible emergence from the crisis.”
In an obvious reference to the intention to rely on higher levels of military force, Cowper-Coles said U.S. strategy in Afghanistan “is destined to fail”.
Cowper-Coles is reported to have put much of the blame for the deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan on the Karzai government. “The security situation is getting worse,” the report quoted him as saying. “So is corruption, and the government had lost all trust.”
The report makes it clear that the British want to withdraw all their troops from Afghanistan within five to 10 years. Cowper-Coles is said to have suggested that the only way to do so is through the emergence of what he called an “acceptable dictator”.
The British foreign office has denied that the report reflected the policy of the government itself. Nevertheless, statements by Brigadier Carleton-Smith, the senior British commander in Afghanistan, last week, underlined the gulf between U.S. and British views on Afghanistan.
“We’re not going to win this war,” said Carleton-Smith, according to The Sunday Times of London Sep. 28. Carleton-Smith, commander of an air assault brigade who completed two tours in Afghanistan, suggested that foreign troops would and should leave Afghanistan without having defeated the insurgency. “We may leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency,” he said.
Like Cowper-Coles, Carleton-Smith suggested that the real problem for the coalition was not military but political. “This struggle is more down to the credibility of the Afghan Government,” he said, “than the threat from the Taliban.”
When Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as British prime minister in June 2007, British officials concluded that the Taliban was too deep-rooted to be defeated militarily, according to a report in The Guardian last October. The Brown government decided to pursue a strategy of courting “moderate” Taliban leaders and fighters who were believed to be motivated more by tribal obligation than jihadi ideology.
That idea was in line with U.S. strategy as well. Now, however, both Karzai and the British have moved beyond that to a policy of negotiating directly and officially with the Taliban. For the British it appears to be part of an exit strategy that is not shared by Washington.
Defence Secretary Gates responded to Carleton-Smith’s remarks Tuesday by reiterating the official U.S. view that additional forces are needed in Afghanistan and implying that the British’s officer’s views are “defeatist”. Gates said, “[T]here certainly is no reason to be defeatist or to underestimate the opportunity to be successful in the long run.”
*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.
Iraq must rid itself of US troops, Iran says
October 10, 2008No freedom in Kashmir
October 9, 2008It is about time that New Delhi stopped treating the crisis in Kashmir as a law and order issue and began to address the many genuine grievances that Kashmiris have against Indian rule in the Valley. A two-day curfew, the arrest of key Kashmiri leaders and the deployment of thousands of soldiers and other security personnel may have put paid to plans of holding a massive freedom rally in Srinagar on Monday, but this triumph is bound to prove short-lived for the administration. So long as state repression continues and India keeps up its present troop levels in the territory, it is unlikely that the protests, which have been continuing since June, will die down. The protests were originally linked to the disputed allotment of several hectares of land for accommodating Hindu pilgrims. But these massive demonstrations have now come to reflect the general resentment that the Valley’s largely Muslim population harbours towards the Indian authorities. Equally disturbing are the communal overtones that these protests have acquired.
India must recognise that it is a popular uprising and not a Pakistan-backed insurgency that it is dealing with in Kashmir. It can no longer point the finger of blame at Islamabad. The situation today is completely different from the events of yesteryear, when the popular Kashmiri revolt of 1989 was virtually hijacked by extremists who sought to give the struggle a religious hue. India, instead of cashing in on a period of relative peace in Kashmir following Islamabad’s about-turn on certain security polices post-9/11, has done little to assuage the political and economic woes of the Kashmiris or repeal the draconian laws that govern their lives. Nor has there been feasible progress on finding a solution along with Pakistani and Kashmiri leaders to a festering territorial dispute.
Whether New Delhi likes it or not, the Kashmir question is becoming internationalised more than ever before. With Pakistan safely on the sidelines, the pressure is mounting on the Indian authorities to deal with issues that are leading to anger and may be a factor in India’s home-grown militancy. However, coming down with a heavy hand on the freedom of assembly and speech in Kashmir can hardly be effective. It will breed greater resentment besides making India’s democratic credentials suspect in the eyes of the world community. A well-defined political solution, acceptable to the Kashmiris, is the need of the hour if further alienation of the Valley’s inhabitants is to be prevented.
[Editorial note-Dawn-October 8, 2008]
Jordan: Torture in Prisons Routine and Widespread
October 9, 2008Reforms Fail to Tackle Abuse, Impunity Persists
(Amman, October 8, 2008) – Jordan should end routine and widespread torture in its prisons, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Human Rights Watch called on the government to overhaul mechanisms for investigating, disciplining and prosecuting abusers, and in particular to transfer prosecutor’s investigations into prison abuse from police to civilian prosecutors.
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Torture in Jordan’s prison system is widespread even two years after King Abdullah called for reforms to stop it once and for all. The mechanisms for preventing torture by holding torturers accountable are simply not working. 
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The 95-page report, “Torture and Impunity in Jordan’s Prisons: Reforms Fail to Tackle Widespread Abuse,” documents credible allegations of ill-treatment, often amounting to torture, from 66 out of 110 prisoners interviewed at random in 2007 and 2008, and in each of the seven of Jordan’s 10 prisons visited. Human Rights Watch’s evidence suggests that five prison directors personally participated in torturing detainees.
“Torture in Jordan’s prison system is widespread even two years after King Abdullah called for reforms to stop it once and for all,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The mechanisms for preventing torture by holding torturers accountable are simply not working.”
The most common forms of torture include beatings with cables and sticks and the suspension by the wrists from metal grates for hours at a time, during which guards flog a defenseless prisoner. Prison guards also torture prisoners for perceived infractions of prison rules. Human Rights Watch found evidence that at times Islamists accused or convicted of crimes against national security (Tanzimat) were punished en masse.
Prison officials say beatings and other ill-treatment are isolated incidents and that a prison reform program initiated in 2006 is improving prison conditions and accountability for abuse. Human Rights Watch’s research shows that while the reform program may well be improving the chief areas of its focus – health services, overcrowding, visitation, and recreation facilities – impunity for physical abuse remains the norm.
In October 2007, an amendment to the Penal Code made torture a crime for the first time, and in early 2008, the Public Security Directorate (PSD) assigned prosecutors to investigate abuses at seven prisons. But to date there have been no prosecutions under that law.
In February 2008, the PSD allowed the National Center for Human Rights to set up an office inside Swaqa prison. However, critical reporting about a prison riot there in April 2008 led the PSD to stop its cooperation with the center.
“Jordan has made some attempts to address the problem of torture in prison, but the bottom line is that the measures have been insufficient, and torture persists as a consequence,” Whitson said.
Two separate incidents involving the torture and abuse of large groups of detainees highlight failures in accountability. Despite extensive evidence that guards in Juwaida and Swaqa prisons tortured Islamist prisoners following a successful escape by two Islamist prisoners from Juwaida in June 2007, the Jordanian authorities failed to launch any investigation. In a third incident, the PSD, which directs security agencies including the prison service, did launch an extensive investigation into events surrounding the prison riot and fire on April 14, 2008 at Muwaqqar prison that left three prisoners dead. The investigators did not prosecute a guard who prisoners alleged had tortured some of them just prior to the fire, included some who died in it. An independent non-judicial investigation by the National Center for Human Rights found ill-treatment at the heart of the prison riot. Despite this evidence, the investigation concluded that no official had done anything wrong.
Part of the problem lies in the authority of prison officials to discipline internally, which is used as way of avoiding formal prosecution of torturers. For example, in 2007, while the PSD investigated 19 allegations of torture across Jordan, referring six to court for prosecution, the directors of three prisons, Muwaqqar, Qafqafa, and Swaqa, told Human Rights Watch that they had internally disciplined six guards for abuse without involving the PSD. Prison directors in Jordan have authority to settle abuse cases as “misdemeanors,” including ill-treatment, without resorting to the Police Court.
“The PSD’s reluctance to prosecute and punish torturers within its ranks stems from a misguided desire to preserve the reputation of the prison service,” Whitson said. “Instead, protecting guards who torture from prosecution tarnishes the image of the entire profession, including those guards who fulfill their duties without resorting to torture and abuse of prisoners.”
Furthermore, Human Rights Watch pointed out that it is police prosecutors and police judges who are responsible for investigating, prosecuting and trying their fellow officers for prison abuses, including torture, in the Police Court. Grievances officials, who investigate prison abuses, referred cases for prosecutions only in a small number of cases where there was overwhelming evidence.
Even where the government has prosecuted some egregious cases of torture, the Police Court’s verdicts have been flawed. In one case, the Police Court sentenced former Swaqa prison director Majid al-Rawashda to a fine of JOD 120 (around US$180) for ordering and participating in the beating of 70 prisoners in August 2007. The court found 12 other guards who had participated in the beatings not guilty because they were “following orders.” The court sentenced prison guards who had beaten Firas Zaidan to death in Aqaba prison in May 2007 to two-and-a-half years in prison. The court also reduced to two-and-a-half years the sentence of guards who had beaten Abdullah Mashaqba to death in Juwaida prison in 2004 because they were “in the prime of their youth.”
“The police and prison service cannot credibly investigate itself,” said Whitson. “Civilian prosecutors and judges should take over all investigations of prison abuse to end impunity for torturers and begin to provide redress for victims of torture.”
Since beginning its prison reform program in 2006, Jordan has sought international advice on improving prison conditions. The New York-based Kerik Group provided training and advised on prison management, equipment, and new construction, including a super-maximum security prison with 240 solitary confinement-only cells to be opened in late 2008. Currently, Austria’s Ministry of Justice is in an EU-sponsored “twinning project” with the PSD to reform the penitentiary system.
Human Rights Watch calls on Jordan’s donors to address the widespread torture, and to condition part of their assistance on the establishment of independent investigation and prosecution mechanisms.
Holy war strikes India
October 9, 200835 Christians killed and 50,000 forced from their homes by Hindu mobs enraged at Swami’s murder
By Andrew Buncombe in Phulbani, Orissa | The Independent, Oct 9, 2008
AP
A woman shows her grief at the religious violence in Orissa during a gospel hymn service
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As she recalled her awful story, Puspanjali Panda made no attempt to halt the tears flooding down her face.
Holding her daughter close, she told how a baying Hindu mob dragged her husband – a Christian pastor – from his bed, beat him to death with stones and iron rods and then threw him into a river. She found his corpse two days later, washed up on the bank. When she went to the police, they told her to go away.
Mrs Panda and thousands of others like her are victims of the worst communal violence between Hindus and Christians that India has seen for decades. For a country that boasts of its mutual religious tolerance, the long-simmering tension that has erupted in the Kandhamal district of the state of Orissa – a nun being raped, churches being burned, at least 35 people killed and thousands forced from their villages – is both a belated wake-up call and a mounting embarrassment. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, called it a “national disgrace”.
But for Mrs Panda, sheltering in a wretched relief camp in the state capital, Bhubaneswar, it is much worse than that. The 38-year-old said she had no idea what would now happen to her and her bewildered-looking child, Mona Lisa. “I do not want to go back. They have destroyed my home,” she wailed.
The journey to the heart of the violence follows a bone-shaking road east from Bhubaneswar to the district capital, Phulbani. It was here in late August that thousands of Hindus armed with swords, sticks and primitive guns began taking matters into their own hands after the murder of an elderly religious leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati.
The swami, a senior member of a right-wing Hindu organisation known as the Vishswa Hindu Parishad (VHP), had reportedly been working to prevent low-caste Hindus converting to Christianity. His followers claimed he had been murdered by local Christians, though police said there was no evidence of that. Either way, in the days that followed, groups of Hindus wrought a terrible revenge on Christian families whom they had lived alongside for decades. In addition to the deaths, 140 churches and prayer halls were attacked and up to 50,000 people forced to flee. In instances the violence appears staggering in its cruelty. Rabindranath Pradhan, now a refugee, had to watch helplessly while a 300-strong mob doused his disabled brother with petrol and set him alight. “He was shouting ‘Help me, Help me.’ I could not help – there were so many of them,” he said.
Palestinians Must Unite against Racist Israel
October 10, 2008Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
There is a striking similarity in the anti-Muslim policies of the so-called “democracies” like basically conservative India, Israel and USA, both at home and abroad. The anti-Islamic chord has worked quite well to the regimes in covering up their state corrupt and criminal activities in the country and abroad. Practices of anti-Islamism have kept these regimes in good stead at least outwardly. These racist and fascist trends continue to dominate the national politics and, as a result, have resulted in genocide, and torture and insults to Islam and Muslims. Leader after leader, Israel keeps its flock together on an emphatic anti-Arab platform. So much so, any move towards peace with Palestinians evokes loudest protest and regime change in Israel.
ONE: Israel Racism and Terrorism
In 1948 Israel came into being on lands annexed from Palestine. Palestinians in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967. The settlements that Israel has built in the West Bank are home to around 400,000 people and are deemed to be illegal under international law. Leaders like Yasser Arafat sacrificed their lives for the establishment of Palestine state and safeguard the lives of innocent Palestinians living at the mercy of a terrorist Israel. Israel under Ariel Sharon evacuated its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and withdrew its forces, ending almost four decades of military occupation. But after his disappearance form public scene, things have gone worse for the Palestinians. USA and Israel worked over night to split the Palestinians and they succeeded. After the Islamic group Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007 following the dismissal of its elected government by PLO President Mahmoud Abbas at the behest of the USA and Israel, Israel intensified its economic blockade of the Strip.
While Kadima is embroiled in peace talks with the Palestinians, Likud says it will wait until there is a stronger negotiating partner on the other side and try to boost the West Bank economy in the meantime. The Kadima party was formed nearly three years ago when then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon split from Likud in what has been described as a “big bang” of Israeli politics. Instead of throwing out the rebel leaders from his Likud party, he himself came out to float a new party Kadima and came to power in the next poll. The issue that tore Likud apart was Sharon’s plan to withdraw, or “disengage”, Israeli troops and settlers, first from the Gaza Strip, and then from parts of the West Bank. It was an abrupt U-turn from a man who had urged Israelis to “settle every hilltop”.
Israel considers the Palestinians as ‘terrorists” because they have been struggling to get back their lands form the terrorist Israel. Racist Jews have been cruel to the Palestinians. More evidence is available to show how shabbily Israel treats the Palestinians whose lands it occupies. An Israeli civil rights group, the Association for Civil Rights, has said racism against Arab citizens of Israel has risen sharply in the past year. In a report, it said expression of anti-Arab views had doubled, and racist incidents had increased by 26%. Christian or Muslim Arab citizens of Israel make up 20% of the population. But the civil rights quoted polls suggesting half of Jewish Israelis do not believe Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights. About the same amount said they wanted the government to encourage Arab emigration from Israel.
TWO: Human Rights Evasions
Israel considers Arabs less clean and less intelligent than themselves and Americans. Anti-Arab policies being pursued by Israel for decades have created a wedge between them and Arabs. A prominent Israeli Arab politician, Mohammed Barakeh, said the poll results were the natural outcome of what he called the anti-Arab policies of successive Israeli governments. Commenting on the findings of the report, the association’s president Sami Michael warned: “We live in a democratic regime whose foundations are constantly weakening.”
Occupied territories Part of the group’s annual report is dedicated to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. The report says: “Most of the human rights violations in the occupied territories are by-products of the establishment of settlements and outposts.” Restrictions on the movement of Palestinians designed to allow settlers “free and secure movement”, have virtually split the West Bank into six separate parts. The organization says that the West Bank barrier “does not separate Palestinians from Israelis, but Palestinians from other Palestinians”. The report also asserts that despite its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Israel retains “moral and legal responsibility” for the Palestinians there because Israel controls access to the coastal territory.
As usual, a government spokesman Mark Regev responded that the Israeli government was “committed to fighting racism whenever it raises its ugly head and is committed to full equality to all Israeli citizens, irrespective of ethnicity, creed or background, as defined by our declaration of independence”. As Israel keep expanding its illegal settlement projects in Palestine, Israel’s Construction and Housing Minister Zeev Boim said the rights group’s report was biased and without credibility.
THREE: Palestine Unity
The success of the fascist and racist terror forces of India, USA and Israel has much to do with the global “terrorism” trend and inability of the Muslims under siege and tortures to unite against the global enemies. There are many freedom groups in Kashmir, though they have just one point program of gaining sovereignty back from occupying India. Similarly Fatah and Hamas have been waging a mutual war, instead of fighting the enemy tooth and nail. Islamic world is hopelessly divided amongst themselves and unable to fight the global terrorists USA, and its “allies” Israel and Hindu India.
Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – who is also leader of Fatah – ends his term in office on 8 January 2009. The parliament – which is controlled by Hamas – is currently scheduled to remain in power until January 2010. Hamas MPs have demanded Abbas hold presidential elections before 8 January, and said they would no longer recognize his legitimacy after that time. Many feel this would deepen the already-protracted rift.
There have been strenuous efforts from several quarters to bring about a unity among the Palestinian groups to force Israel to come up with a final settlement plan. Egypt, the mediator in the dispute, has proposed establishing a government of technocrats acceptable to all factions, re-organization of the Palestinian security forces, and new parliamentary and presidential elections. Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said the factions would form technical committees to discuss the issues. The committees will take their time, one or two or three months, these are issues that cannot be resolved in days or weeks. Another official from Gaza said: “We in Hamas accept that elections are on the table for discussion.” However, he expressed opposition to simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections for the Palestinian Authority.
Israel will finally concede and surrender the Palestinian lands only if they see the need and they are under international pressure to do so and a united force in Palestine. This writer had suggested way back for creating a Islamic Security Organization ISO (ref: Middle East Online) to defend the Islamic states and Muslims the world over from the anti-Islamic forces. Meanwhile the peace move from concerned Muslim nations could continue. Hamas officials in Cairo say they will meet representatives of the rival Fatah movement this month to discuss the timing of fresh Palestinian elections. Hamas leaders, the popular “militant” movement in control of Gaza, made the announcement after talks with Egypt’s intelligence chief in Cairo. Egypt hopes the Palestinian groups will reach a reconciliation agreement including elections and other reforms. But some analysts say there are few signs of a narrowing of their differences. Abbas should, without worrying about reactions form USA and Israel, take bold initiatives to unite the Hamas Fatah factions and form a government or hold the elections for smooth functioning of an elected government. As the senior most leader of Palestine, it is his duty– and has obligation — to take all factions into confidence in whatever he does about the establishment of Palestine state.
Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal has been a university teacher, and worked in various Indian institutions like JNU, Mysore University, Central Institute of English FL, etc. He is also a political commentator, researcher, and columnist. He has widely published in India and abroad, and has written about state terrorism.
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Tags: anti-Islamism, anti-Muslim policies, Gaza and West Bank, Hamas and Fatah, illegal settlements, Israel, Kadima party, Kashmir, occupied territories, Palestinians
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