| Al Jazeera, March 25, 2009 |
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Israel’s centre-left Labor party has voted at a conference to join a coalition government led by Benyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister-designate and Likud leader. The move provides the parliamentary majority necessary for government, which will include the nationalist Yisrael Beitenu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister-designate, and the orthodox Jewish Shas party. Ehud Barak, the Labor leader, says that his party will provide balance to a right-wing government, while others argue that Labor itself is moving to the right. Al Jazeera spoke to three political analysts to get their view on the new coalition and the prospects for the region.
“The Labor party are really tearing themselves apart right now. I saw some broadcasts earlier and they really had some harsh things to say against each other. This is usual stuff for the Labor party conference, but tonight went a little bit further. Nevertheless, Barak has got exactly what he wants. “About seven or eight members of the Knesset [the Israeli parliament] have said they will not co-operate with Ehud Barak – does that mean he is only taking seven seats or is he taking all 13 [parliamentary seats Labor won in the elections]? “Labor has been given five ministries, which is quite a lot for a party that has 13 seats, which they may not even bring into the party. “Netanyahu has said that this is the most dangerous time in Israel’s modern history, since the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948. They are facing battles from Hizbollah [in Lebanon], from Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and of course Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [Iran’s president]. If the government stays for its full four years, very tough decisions are going to have to be made on the situation with Iran.”
“Since the results of the last Israeli elections were declared, the Palestinians concluded that Israel as a state and in its public opinion has shifted dramatically further to the right. And that was not good at all as far as the peace process is concerned and as far as future relations with Israel is concerned. “The addition of the Labor party to this right-wing government is not going to make any significant difference in this regard. First, because the Labor party is a very small and tiny minority within this government. And second, because Barak himself is a politician with proven right-wing tendencies, especially as far as the peace process is concerned. “First, he was active in approving further orders to expand illegal Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. Second, he was instrumental in the last, unnecessary aggressive war against the Palestinians in Gaza [in 2009]. “When he was prime minister in previous government he also failed in promoting the peace process and allowing progress to the peace process. “Benyamin Netanyahu is going to further continue in the expansion of the Israeli Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Netanyahu will continue the attitude of refusing the principle of a Palestinian state and consequently will be preventing the resumption of any meaningful political process. “I see that the next Israeli government is going to take the relations with the Palestinians towards more and more tension. The little chances of peace between the two sides are going to be reduced probably to zero. “This dramatic and alarming situation will require stronger attention by the international community, especially the United States, otherwise dramatic deterioration might be expected.”
“Since the elections there is a sense among the Palestinians, but also among the Arabs in general, that Israel has significantly moved to the right. “If you look at the number of parliament members that are within the right spectrum you come up to about 90 out of 120, which means around three quarters of the Israeli representatives. “What happened [at the Labor conference] is that the leader that is most on the right, so much on the right that within Labor itself they call him the neo-fascist in Israel – Avigdor Lieberman – he has been baptised today by the very traditional Zionist movement called the Labor party, that’s going to enter into coalition with him. “Lieberman was voted in by a number of Russians, recent immigrants into Israel, who feel left out and the best way to bring them into the process was to hate the Palestinian Arabs of Israel. So there is that racist approach in his programme. “But now he is incorporated into a coalition government where Labor sits, and that for many in Labor – maybe more than one third – is considered a betrayal of Labor Zionism and that is again a testimony that the Israeli electorate is moving to the right. “And the leader of the neo-fascist party in Israel is now a credible, legitimate member of the leadership in Israel.” |
Posts Tagged ‘Israel’
Analysis: Israel’s new coalition
March 25, 2009
Israeli commander confirms Netanyahu war plans
March 24, 2009
The last Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip claimed the lives of at least 1,350 Palestinians.
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Israel is preparing for all-out war on multiple fronts that include Iran, Syria and Lebanon, a senior military commander claims.
Israeli army Home Front Command Major General Yair Golan said Sunday that Tel Aviv is preparing for “all possible scenarios”, indicating that one such scenario would be to fight a simultaneous war against Iran, Syria and Lebanon.
The confirmation comes as US President Barack Obama seeks “new beginnings” with its arch-rival Iran. The US offer has been met with world praise but with fury in Tel Aviv.
Israeli media outlets late on Sunday began propagating wild scenarios that Iran is using the Lebanese Hezbollah to recruit Palestinian fighters to carry out terror attacks on Israel.
Citing anonymous sources, the reports began to surface after Tel Aviv countered an alleged bombing attempt outside a shopping mall in the northern city of Haifa.
“We are treating the attempted attack in Haifa with great gravity. A huge disaster was prevented by a miracle,” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a weekly cabinet meeting after the bomb was defused on Sunday.
Israel has long accused Iran of arming Hezbollah and Palestinian groups via Syria, in an attempt to demonize the two Muslim countries.
Tel Aviv also accuses Tehran of developing nuclear weaponry — a charge denied by the UN nuclear watchdog.
At a conference held in Tel Aviv, Golan also confirmed the likeliness of Israel staging another military confrontation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Although Israel does not consider rocket attacks from Gaza as a serious threat, there is the possibility of “dangerous” missile attacks by other countries, he said.
He failed to elaborate how such missile attacks would relate to Gaza.
His remarks came as reports claim that the soon-to-be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has plans for “a major military conflict in the coming months.”
The commander also revealed that Tel Aviv will install new warning systems across Israel in preparation for its war plans.
The last Israeli-waged war on the Gaza Strip, which began on December 27, killed at least 1,350 Palestinians and wounded more than 5,450 others in the densely-populated sliver.
The aggression was the last in a series of operations carried out by the Israeli forces against the natives of the land since occupying Palestine in 1948.
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)
Israel has a case to answer
March 24, 2009The 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.
Questioning U.S. aid to Israel
March 23, 2009Socialist 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
The Forked-Tongue Eunuchs and Israel
March 22, 2009By 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.
Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques – IDF fashion 2009
March 21, 2009
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| By Uri Blau | Haaretz, Israel, March 20, 2009 | |||||
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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.
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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
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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 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 The imprisonment of Sa’adat, facing a 30 year sentence for his powerful and Freedom for Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners now! The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat |
Falk: Gaza offensive possible ‘war crime’
March 20, 2009| Al Jazeera, March 20, 2009 |
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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.
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.
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 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. |
Peace and Justice Post 
Istanbul statement backs Hamas and sets out ‘obligations’ to the people of Gaza
March 25, 2009The 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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Tags:crimes and brutality, foreign warships, Gaza, Gazans, Hamas, Israel, Palestinian people, Zionist aggression
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