By Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service
RAMALLAH, Nov 5 (IPS) – Palestinian women continue to suffer abuse and denial of basic human rights at the hands of Israeli settlers and soldiers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
This is in flagrant violation of Israel’s obligations as a signatory to the UN Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). CEDAW is the first international human rights treaty devoted to the rights of women.
China View, November 5, 2009
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) — Vietnam here Wednesday voiced concern over the “absence of Israel’s cooperation,” as well as their failure to take “precautious measures” to prevent further abuses of international and human rights law.
Bui The Giang, Vietnamese deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, made these remarks at his address during the plenary General Assembly session here to consider the Goldstone report, which accused both Israel and Hamas militants of war crimes during the 22-day Gaza conflict that broke out on Dec. 27, 2008.
| Al Jazeera, Nov. 5, 2009 | |||||||
Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, the chief Palestinian negotiator has said. Speaking to reporters in Ramallah on Wednesday, Saab Erekat said it may be time for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to “tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option”. Israel has rejected the idea of a de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank, incorporating the Palestinians as citizens, as a “demographic timebomb” that would make Jews the minority. Citing a 2003 peace “road map”, Abbas has made a cessation of Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank a precondition for resuming statehood talks with Israel.
On Wednesday Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, called again for a complete freeze in Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.Clinton called the settlements illegitimate after talks with Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, in Cairo. “We do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity and we have a very firm belief that ending all settlement activity, current and future, would be preferable,” Clinton said. “Getting into final status negotiations will allow us to bring an end to settlement activity.” ‘Unprecedented offer’ Erekat said Clinton – who had earlier praised as “unprecedented” Netanyahu’s August offer to temporarily limit construction of West Bank settlements – was only opening the door to more settlements in the next two years. The alternative left for Palestinians is to “refocus their attention on the one-state solution where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live as equals”, Erekat said. “It is very serious. This is the moment of truth for us.” Erekat said Netanyahu’s concept of a separate Palestinian state alongside Israel with limited powers of sovereignty, and his uncompromising position on the future of Jerusalem were tantamount to dictating the terms of peace negotiations. Netanyahu, Erekat said, had told the Palestinian president “that Jerusalem will be the eternal and united capital of Israel, that refugees won’t be discussed, that our state will be demilitarised, that we have to recognise the Jewish state, that it’s not going to be the 1967 borders, that the skies will be under his control”. “This is dictation and not negotiations,” he said. Netanyahu and Abbas last met in New York in September in a handshake meeting arranged by Barack Obama, the US president. Palestinians seek to establish the West Bank and Gaza as the territory of a Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on borders set before Israel captured land from Jordan and Egypt in its 1967 six-day war. “Anything short of that is a non-option for us,” Erekat said. No freeze While Netanyahu’s stated plan would place a freeze on new settlements in the occupied West Bank, no Israeli restrictions would be placed on 3,000 buildings already under construction.
Furthermore, no restrictions will be placed on settlement projects in East Jerusalem.”If the Israelis believe they want to partition the West Bank with us, this is a no-go. This is a non-starter,” Erekat said, in reference to Israeli control of West Bank settlements, adjacent land, and the territory’s eastern Jordan Valley border. Clinton reaffirmed in Cairo on Wednesday that Washington does not accept the legitimacy of the Israeli settlements. But she added, in another nudge to Palestinians to talk with Israel: “Getting into final status negotiations will allow us to bring an end to settlement activity.” Erekat said Palestinians had “made a mistake” in the past by agreeing to negotiate with Israel without insisting on a settlement halt, and they were not about to repeat that error. Clinton had earlier attempted to clarify her remarks on Washington’s view of Netanyahu’s plan. “It is not what we would want and it is nowhere near enough – but I think that when you keep your eye on what we want to achieve, it is a better place to be than the alternative, which is unrestrained,” she told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. Israel’s settlement building programme is illegal under international law and several United Nations Security Council resolutions have called for it to stop. But Israel has repeatedly ignored all international calls for it to halt the construction. |
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| Al Jazeera, Nov 4, 2009 | |||
The US House of Representatives has rejected as “irredeemably biased” the findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip. The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge. The report accused Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group, which has de facto control of Gaza, of war crimes during the 22-day conflict in December and January. |
Middle East Online, Nov. 3, 2009
Severely humiliated by hardline Netanyahu
Analysts: Obama needs fresh plan to restart Arab-Israeli peace talks after humiliating failure.
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration must devise a fresh plan to restart Arab-Israeli peace talks after losing face with a backtracking on its demands for a full Jewish settlement freeze, analysts said Monday.
President Barack Obama’s team has disappointed many Palestinians and other Arabs who long for it to fulfill both its initial tough stance on settlements and a broader pledge to improve ties with the Muslim world, they said.
During a Middle East tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought Monday to reassure Arabs after angering them with her weekend praise of hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to restrict illegal settlements as “unprecedented.”
The chief US diplomat insisted her administration still opposed settlements as strongly as before.
Disputing her claim is Aaron David Miller, who served as adviser on Middle East peacemaking in previous US administrations.
“Netanyahu … outmaneuvered us,” Miller said.
The “paradox,” he argued, is that an administration which began with a tough policy toward the Israelis and a “sensitive” one toward the Palestinians has now shifted the onus to the Palestinians.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel.
Around illegal 200,000 Jewish settlers are estimated to have moved into the dozen or so Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
There are about 300,000 more illegal Jewish settlers currently living in settlements the Palestinian West Bank.
The settlers adhere to radical ideologies and are extremely violent to almost-defenceless Palestinians.
Unlike settlements, Miller said, borders, the status of the disputed holy city of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and security for Israel are the core issues.
“They (the Obama team) need to do some fundamental rethinking about what their overall objective is and how they are going to achieve it,” Miller said.
Amjad Atallah, a former legal adviser to the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, said the US shift on settlements has only weakened Abbas further and made him more reluctant than ever to enter peace talks with Israel.
“They (Palestinians) argue that if the United States was not prepared to back up what it said on settlements, why would it be prepared to back up what it might say on borders?” Atallah said.
The members of the US administration, believing in their powers of “moral persuasion,” were caught off guard, said the analyst with the New America Foundation.
“They thought once it got into permanent status negotiations, things would go relatively quickly. What they didn’t count on was the Israeli government’s intransigence,” he added.
Now that that has happened, “how do we go about re-establishing our street cred and what’s our strategy going forward?” he asked.
The administration now needs, Atallah said, to devise a diplomatic strategy that matches the “high-minded principled recognition” that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a central threat to US national security interests.
Instead, the United States is pursuing “a business-as-usual negotiating strategy” that can only ultimately lead to a worsening situation and even violence, he warned.
Obama, in failing to deliver on settlements, seems to have reinforced the Arab narrative that the “Americans are all in the pockets of the Zionists,” according to Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“It’s not going to be easy, but we need to find some way to change topic,” Clawson said when asked about how the US can revive talks.
By Bouthaina Shaaban, Counterpunch, Nov 2, 2009
When you read a news story saying that “the United Nations called on Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes and put an end to the policy of forced evictions in East Jerusalem, warning that there are 60,000 Palestinians threatened of becoming homeless,” you cannot but wonder about the role of the international organization today and about the goal for which it was created on the eve of the victory of the forces of freedom against Nazism and Fascism and whether it is the same organization authorized by history and the world’s peoples to guarantee the right to ‘self determination’? Is it the same organization charged with “putting an end to colonialism”? Is it the same organization which believes in the right of all peoples to freedom without discrimination in terms of race or religion? If it is the same organization, why does it allow Palestinian civilians suffer from the brutality of armed settlers?
Signalling an end to the brief flirtation with the Palestinian cause, the US secretary of state flew to Jerusalem to voice full American support for Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
In an effort to repair badly strained US-Israeli relations, she heaped praise on Mr Netanyahu, lauding his offer to limit settlement construction – even though it falls well short of President Obama’s original demands.
by Yesh Prabhu, A Sane Voice for Peace in the Middle East, Oct 20, 2009
Look around you, or peep into the world’s window. Do you notice that the world has changed? Yes, it has. The unthinkable has happened. In fact, a series of events unimaginable only a year ago have occurred. Even though one of these astonishing events occurred in far away Geneva, the show and its entourage will take the center stage right here in New York, at the UN quarters, in a few weeks.
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Friday, October 16, 2009, with a majority vote, passed a resolution in Geneva that endorsed the Goldstone Report. Out of the 47- nation Council, 25 voted in favor of the report. They included China, Russia, Egypt, India, Jordan, Pakistan, South Africa, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ghana, Indonesia, Djibouti, Liberia, Qatar, Senegal, Brazil, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and four other nations. These six countries opposed the resolution: the U.S., Italy, Holland, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine. Eleven countries abstained: Bosnia, Burkina-Faso, Cameron, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Belgium, South Korea, Slovenia and Uruguay. And five countries did not vote at all. Madagascar and Kyrgyzstan were not present during the vote; and Britain and France behaved as if they were not present in Geneva at all, but were instead partying elsewhere, and did not vote.
Peace and Justice Post 
President Obama’s Peace Mask Has Cracked
November 6, 2009Yesh Prabhu, A Sane Voice For Peace In The Middle East, Nov 4, 2009
On the political stage, a short period of five months might as well be an eternity. As the world turns on its axis, events least expected can and often do happen, and spin out of control; and carefully laid out plans go awry.
On Thursday June 4, 2009, President Obama spoke to the world from the august Major Reception Hall at Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt. Appropriately titled “A New Beginning”, the speech was grand and impressive. He described Palestinians’ statelessness as “intolerable”, and recognized their aspirations for statehood and dignity as legitimate, just as legitimate as Israel’s desire for a Jewish homeland. And, of course, he reaffirmed, as he had done several times before, America’s alliance with Israel, calling their mutual bond “unbreakable”. He was wearing his peace mask. That was only five months ago, and already it seems so very long ago.
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