Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Amnesty International Report: “Wanton Destruction” by Israel in Gaza

March 7, 2009
author Saturday March 07, 2009 04:32author by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News Report this post to the editors

Amnesty International has released a report saying that Israel engaged in “wanton destruction” of Palestinian homes during its recent invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Amnesty International logo
Amnesty International logo

An estimated 14,000 homes, 219 factories, and 240 schools were destroyed in the three-week long Israeli attack in January.

The Amnesty report to say that this ‘wanton destruction’ would qualify as a war crime, as there was no military objective in most cases.

A group of Israeli soldiers have echoed the findings of the Amnesty report.  ‘Breaking the Silence’ is an organization made up of Israeli soldiers who have served in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The group’s president, Yehuda Shaul, said that the group has gathered testimonies from soldiers who were part of the Gaza invasion, and the testimonies indicate that most of the demolition was done after an area was under Israeli control.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians were rendered homeless during the Israeli invasion of Gaza, and fourteen hundred were killed.  Of those, one thousand were civilians.  Fourteen Israelis were killed during the same time period, nine of whom were soldiers.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Human rights, Palestine, Peace Movement, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Gaza donor conference: conspiracy wrapped up as compassion

March 6, 2009
By Jean Shaoul | WSWS,  5 March 2009

The donor conference Monday at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt had nothing to do with alleviating the appalling humanitarian crisis in Gaza and rebuilding the homes, factories, infrastructure and schools destroyed by Israel—its ostensible purpose. This stated goal was a cover for furthering Washington’s geopolitical interests in the oil-rich Middle East, by overthrowing Hamas and restoring the discredited Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas to power in Gaza so as to help police the region in American and Israel’s interests.

The meeting followed Israel’s US-backed 22-day war against Gaza at the end of last year, an assault that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, wounded many thousands more and drove 400,000 people from their homes. Attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the donor conference is part of an attempt by the Obama administration to portray itself as more even-handed in its approach to the Middle East in general and the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular. This is vital in order to provide cover for the Arab regimes’ collusion with the US in the occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and any offensive against Iran.

The essential purpose of the gathering was to demand that the Palestinians “break the cycle of rejection and resistance” and submit to Israeli demands. This means accepting a bifurcated state made up of Gaza and several non-contiguous enclaves in the West Bank, ruled by the Fatah-dominated PA. This entity would be dominated by Israel with the help of Egypt and Jordan, while Israel continues to expand its settlements in the West Bank. Just last week, the Israeli PeaceNow movement announced that Israel had drawn up plans to build 70,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

The conference was attended by diplomats from 45 countries, but not by Israel. Hamas, despite being the elected government, was not invited, as Israel, the US and European Union regard it as a terrorist organisation. Instead the Palestinians were represented by Washington’s puppet PA regime, headed by Abbas, even though his term of office expired last January.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit announced that international donors had pledged $5.2 billion from 68 countries for rebuilding Gaza. He said that the total was “beyond our expectations.” The Palestinian Authority had requested only $2.8 billion for reconstruction, to be channelled through its government in the West Bank. The Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, pledged $1.65 billion, the US $900 million, and the European powers $554 million.

Clinton made clear that Washington’s $900 million contribution is conditional on the Palestinians accepting its dictates. She said, “[The aid package] will only be spent if we determine that our goals can be furthered rather than undermined or subverted. We want to show we care about their plight [the Palestinians] and that we obviously don’t want civilians to suffer any more than they have. But we want to make clear that any contributions we make will not go to Hamas.”

Clinton added, “Our response to today’s crisis in Gaza cannot be separated from our broader efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace.” The aim of the aid was to “foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realised.”

Her spokesman, Robert A. Wood, said that $600 million was for the PA, based in the West Bank, with only $300 million for humanitarian aid for Gaza. This is a drop in the ocean compared with both Gaza’s needs and the support Washington has lavished on Israel for more than 40 years. Clinton insisted that iron-clad safeguards would be put in place to ensure none of the $300 million went to Hamas.

The European powers fully support this agenda, although they tried to appear more even handed. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that “visible signs of progress” in the West Bank and Gaza were vital. He added, however, that Palestinians needed “a single government across the occupied territories.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy took a somewhat different approach, urging Hamas “to engage resolutely in searching for a political solution and engage in a dialogue with Israel.”

Little of the monies promised are new. Most was pledged at the Paris conference in December 2007 and never delivered due to Israel’s refusal to lift the then 500-plus roadblocks in the West Bank and allow Gaza to open its borders, making any investment impossible and pointless. There are now more than 600 roadblocks.

Fully $1.5 billion was specifically earmarked for the Palestinian Authority’s budget deficit, economic “reforms” and private sector projects.

Only $1.33 billion was budgeted for reconstruction in Gaza. This is far less than the $2.4 billion the United Nations estimated is necessary to make good the destruction wrought by Israel. And even this pittance would not be disbursed until Hamas is no longer a force in Gaza.

The Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, said that the $1.6 billion they had pledged would bypass both Hamas and the PA. Not wanting to be seen to be favouring Abbas directly, they said they would set up an office in Gaza to carry out their own reconstruction. But since all reconstruction materials, such as cement, pumps and generators, must pass through Israel, and an Israeli Defence Ministry spokesman has stressed that Israel wanted “each and every pipe accounted for” by a project-by-project approvals process, it will be impossible to get even the most modest reconstruction programme off the ground.

The money for humanitarian purposes would bypass Hamas and be channelled through UN agencies and international aid groups. But since Israel controls Gaza’s borders, coastal waters and airspace, and allows only some food, medical supplies and fuel to enter Gaza, this has little substantive meaning. According to the UN, Gaza needs a minimum of 500 truckloads of humanitarian aid and commercial goods a day. While the Israeli authorities have told humanitarian agencies that they will allow up to 200 truckloads a day, the actual number has never exceeded 120 since the blockade began in June 2007. The average in February was between 88 and 104, including the grain shipped by conveyor belt at the Karni crossing. New security procedures since the January war make it almost impossible for aid agencies to plan deliveries more than 24 hours in advance. Israel’s latest condition for any easing of the restrictions is the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who has been held in Gaza since June 2006.

According to Human Rights Watch, the New York based group, aid workers said that on several occasions the Israeli authorities refused to allow the shipment of pre-scheduled aid just hours before they were supposed to arrive. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that Israel has arbitrarily refused entry of even basic items like chickpeas, macaroni, and wheat-flour, notebooks for students, freezer appliances, generators, water pumps and cooking gas.

Israel insists that all trucks enter Gaza via Kerem Shalom near the south of Gaza, where every item on the trucks must be unloaded, inspected, repackaged and reloaded with a “handling fee” of $1,000, even though there are other crossings with more sophisticated security screening equipment. It is clear that Israel’s actions are aimed less at preventing arms from getting through into Gaza than intimidating and punishing the Gazan population, destroying whatever remains of the Gazan economy and forcing Gazans into exile.

Egypt, which controls Gaza’s southern border, says it can only fully open Rafah, its crossing with Gaza, under the previous arrangements requiring that the PA, not Hamas, controls the terminal. Egypt is continuing to broker talks between Hamas and Fatah, aimed at restoring Fatah to power.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Palestine, US policy, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Columbia demands justice for Palestine

March 6, 2009

By David Judd | Socialist  Worker, March 3, 2009

NEW YORK–Students at Columbia University are taking up the fight for Palestinian rights and have begun organizing around a set of demands for the university’s divestment from Israel.

The students’ demands, released on March 2, include full disclosure of Columbia’s budget and endowment, a public forum on divestment, partnership with a Palestinian university, scholarships for Palestinian students and statements of support for Palestinian academic freedom and self-determination.

Students plan to host a forum on March 4, on “Columbia University’s Relationship to Palestinian rights.” A rally in front of the administration building is planned for the next day.

This comes just two weeks after more than a hundred Columbia University faculty members signed a letter demanding that the university’s president take a stand for academic freedom in Palestine.

The faculty letter, now signed by 132 professors, points out that Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, has frequently “expressed [his] views in public on questions of academic freedom in the Middle East. Yet [he has] remained silent on the actions by Israel that deny that freedom to Palestinians.” In 2005, Bollinger helped organize a group of university presidents across the U.S. to denounce a British professors’ union that had voted to consider a boycott of Israel.

Bollinger came to Columbia with a reputation as a liberal, after his defense of affirmative action as the president of the University of Michigan. But he has alienated progressives on campus over a number of issues. He angered many faculty members by launching an investigation of Middle Eastern Studies professors who were attacked in a film by an off-campus group, the David Project, for their pro-Palestinian views.

A final straw for some came when Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited campus in 2007, and Bollinger–who has treated visiting U.S.-friendly dictators like Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf with kid gloves–denounced the Iranian leader with an introduction that repeated discredited neoconservative talking points blaming Iran for the U.S. failure in Iraq.

Soon afterward, more than a hundred professors signed a letter criticizing Bollinger for refusing to defend the independence of Columbia’s tenure process, failing to consult with faculty and having effectively “allied the university with the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.” Many of the same professors have signed on to the more recent letter around Gaza.

In the past, Columbia has hosted pro-Palestine scholars like Edward Said, Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi as well as pro-Israel forces. In recent years, pro-Palestine activists on campus have often been on the defensive–in the face of the David Project’s campaign and a more recent attempt to deny tenure to Nadia Abu El Haj–but that period may be ending.

According to Rahel Aima, a member of Students for a Democratic Society, “Recent events in Gaza have changed the campus climate…despite Israel’s attempt to keep its actions out of the sight of the media, the Internet has brought war crimes in Gaza into homes in the U.S., as television did for Vietnam.”

If students, faculty and workers who want justice in the Middle East can take advantage of this new atmosphere, substantive change may be coming.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Human rights, Palestine, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

The Israel donors conference

March 5, 2009

Amira Haas | Haaretz, Israel, March 4, 2009

The extent of the funding pledged to the Palestinian Authority by donor countries reflects the extent of their support for Israel and its policies. The American taxpayers’ contribution to the Ramallah government’s bank account is dwarfed by the large sums the U.S. government donates to Israel every year. It’s impossible to get excited over the American pledge of $900 million (two-thirds of it for strengthening Salam Fayyad’s government and the rest for Gaza’s recovery) and forget the $30 billion the United States has promised Israel in defense aid by the end of 2017, as last week’s Amnesty International report noted.

The $900 million pledged to the Palestinians in Sharm el-Sheikh should be seen as part of the regular American aid to Israel. As an occupying power, Israel is obligated to assure the well-being of the population under its control. But Israel is harming it instead, after which the United States (like other countries) rushes to compensate for the damage.

The Clinton and Bush administrations – and Barack Obama appears to be following in their footsteps – erased the phrase “Israeli occupation” from their dictionaries and collaborated with Israel in ignoring its commitments as enshrined in international law. The billions of dollars that Israel receives from the United States for weapons and defense development – which played a significant role in the destruction in the Gaza Strip – are part of Israel’s successful propaganda, which presents the Rafah tunnels and Grad rockets as a strategic threat and part of the Islamic terror offensive against enlightened countries.

The West has blown the Hamas movement out of proportion, exaggerating its military might to the point of mendacity; this allowed for an extended siege and three weeks of Israeli military intractability. In the Palestinian and larger Arab world, this embellishment helps Hamas depict itself as the real patriotic force.

The hundreds of millions of euros that have been donated or pledged to help Gaza, as though it were beset by natural disasters, are overshadowing the trade ties between Europe and Israel. The Western countries concerned about humanitarian aid for the Palestinians also buy from Israel arms and defense knowledge developed under the laboratory conditions of the occupation, that serial creator of humanitarian crises.

And the 1 billion petrodollars? First of all, they were generated from a natural resource that logic dictates should benefit the Arab peoples. Second, they were pledged at a conference that boycotted Gaza (neither Hamas nor business people or social activists from the Strip participated in the donors conference). This is how Saudi Arabia lends its hand to the American and Israeli veto of inter-Palestinian reconciliation.

Every cent paid to the Palestinians – whether for the Ramallah government’s budget or medical treatment of children wounded by Israeli pilots or soldiers – lets Israel know that it can continue its efforts to force a capitulation deal on the Palestinian elite. Only by recognizing that surrender is the goal can one understand that 16 years after Oslo, no Palestinian state was established. When did Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon and Tzipi Livni begin talking about two states? Only after their bulldozers and military bureaucrats crushed the realistic physical basis of a Palestinian state. And this basis is: June 4, 1967 land (including East Jerusalem), Gaza – an inseparable part of the state – and zero settlements (and that applies to Gilo and Ma’aleh Adumim).

During the 1990s it was still possible to describe donations to the Palestinians as an expression of confidence and hope in Israel’s readiness to free itself of the occupation regime it had created. But not in 2009. Support for Israeli policy – this is the only way to understand the fact that other countries keep pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars meant to put out the fires set by this policy, without extinguishing the source of the blaze.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Palestine, Peace Movement, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

The Israel Lobby’s Power Comes from The American Ruling Class

March 4, 2009
by John Spritzler | newdemocracyworld.org, March 4, 2009

Among those who, like myself, oppose Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, there is an important debate about a fundamental question. The debate is about how to explain the fact that the American government supports Israel virtually unconditionally with more economic, military and diplomatic aid than it gives to any other country.

One commonly believed explanation is that the “Israel Lobby”–consisting of organizations like AIPAC and a host of other pro-Israel Jewish organizations in the United States–has hijacked U.S. foreign policy by using its wealth and control of the mass media to buy or intimidate Congressmen. According to this view, the American government’s pro-Israel foreign policy is harmful to the interests of the non-Jewish American corporate upper class, and were it not for the power of the Israel Lobby American foreign policy, reflecting as it does the interests of the American upper class, would not be as pro-Israel as it is today.

I call this the “The Lobby Makes Them Do It” view. I think it is just plain factually wrong. The alternative view that I hold is that the Israel Lobby’s power comes from the (mostly non-Jewish) American ruling class.

The leading advocate of the “The Lobby Makes Them Do It” view is James Petras. Petras asserts that the Israel Lobby prevailed over America’s Big Oil elite to get the U.S. to invade Iraq for the benefit of Israel:

“The principal governmental architects of the war, the intellectual promoters of the war, their publicly enunciated published strategies for the war were all deeply attached to the Israel lobby and worked for the Israeli state. Wolfowitz, number 2 in the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, number 3 in the Pentagon, Richard Perle, head of the Defense Board, Elliot Abrams in charge of Middle East affairs for the National Security Council, and dozens of other key operatives in the government and ideologues in the mass media were life-long fanatical activists in favor of Israel, some of whom had lost security clearances in previous administrations for handing over documents to the Israeli government…

“In fact the US-Middle East wars prejudice the oil interests in several strategic senses. The wars generate generalized hostility to oil companies with long-term relations with Arab countries. The wars result in undermining new contracts opening in Arab countries for US oil investments. US oil companies have been much friendlier to peacefully resolving conflicts than Israel and especially its Lobbyists as any reading of the specialized oil industry journals and spokespeople emphasize. “

Just on the facts, Petras is wrong. Far from opposing the Israel Lobby, Big Oil uses that lobby. As Juan Cole writes:

“Neoconservative Jews in the US like Richard Perle, Frederick Kagan and Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute who vocally support the Iraq War (and have gotten rich off it) are a minority of a minority, and even are at odds with the Israeli security establishment! Moreover, the American Enterprise Institute, which crafted the Iraq War, gets funding from Exxon Mobil, and last I checked it was run by white Protestants. The vice chair of AEI is Lee Raymond, former CEO of Exxon Mobil and surely Dick Cheney’s old golf partner in the Dallas years. That is, the Kagans and the Rubins, who identify with the Revisionist Zionist movement on the Israeli Right, are useful idiots for Big Oil, not movers and shakers in their own right.”

The American corporate upper class, the American ruling class, is pro-Israel because they (or at least their sophisticated advisors, like Henry Kissinger, Condoleeza Rice, General James Jones, etc.) know that Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians performs a strategically crucial service for the American ruling class. The ethnic cleansing polarizes the Middle East along non-class lines, fomenting an ethnic war pitting Jews against non-Jews. The American ruling class uses this ethnic war to strengthen its domestic control over ordinary Americans, and to strengthen the control of Middle Eastern ruling elites (kings, mullahs, dictators) over ordinary people in their respective nations. These are the most important strategic objectives of the American ruling class: social control to prevent the spread of pro-democratic, pro-working class, pro-solidarity movements from overthrowing elite rule anywhere in the world.

Regarding domestic control of the American population, the key strategy of elite social control has for many decades been to rely on Orwellian wars of social control. The particular “foreign enemy” has changed over time, from Teddy Roosevelt’s Spain to Woodrow Wilson’s “Huns” to FDR’s Fascists to Truman’s Communists to Bush’s and Obama’s Terrorists. By ensuring that the American mass media refrain from telling Americans the true reason (Israel’s ethnic cleansing) why Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims take up arms against Israel, the American ruling class ensures that Americans will believe the lie that Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims are hateful, irrational, anti-semitic terrorists who kill decent Israelis “just like us” and would likewise kill Americans if we fail to obey our upper class rulers who protect us from terrorism.

Similarly, the oil-rich Middle East ruling classes, in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, use their people’s anger at Israel to strengthen their power over them, as I discuss in some detail in
How Israel Helps Saudi Arabia’s Rulers Control their Working Class and How Israel Helps the Islamic Republic of Iran Control the Iranian Working Class. James Petras is naive to think that Big Oil’s interests are prejudiced by the pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy. If the Saudi royal family, for example, were really opposed to U.S. support for Israel, then it would use its vast wealth to support pro-Palestinian forces inside the United States, to counter the Israel Lobby; but it doesn’t.

By the same token, if any members of the American mostly non-Jewish ruling class, with billions of dollars to throw around (Buffet gave away $40 billion alone!), wanted to tell Americans the truth about Zionism (the movement to create and protect a Jewish state), they could do so. They could tell Americans how Zionism is all about ethnic cleansing, how Albert Einstein (whom the Israeli government asked to be the President of Israel, and declined) always opposed the Jewish state idea because it was morally wrong, and how the Zionists betrayed European Jews during World War II by opposing rescue efforts (so there would be more dead Jews to give them greater standing at the post-war negotiations over who would “get” Palestine)–they could do so; but they don’t. If they did, they could turn the American public against Zionism and against the Israel Lobby as quickly as they turn it against a politician soliciting sex in a toilet stall.

So why don’t they do it? It is not because Zionists control the mass media. Sure, pro-Zionists do control the mass media, but billionaires could create their own anti-Zionist media if they wanted to. After all, Rupert Murdoch owns a large enough media network to do the job and at the time of his divorce in 1998 his personal fortune was only 3.3 billion pounds (less than $5 billion I imagine.) The American ruling class chooses not to oppose the Israel Lobby because they have no reason to. The Israel Lobby is an instrument (“useful idiots” as Juan Cole puts it) of the American ruling class. The Lobby spreads the lies that the pro-Israel foreign policy requires, and it keeps politicians in line who might otherwise stray from the path. The Lobby is powerful because it does the bidding of the powerful.

Very different organizing strategies against Zionism are appropriate, depending on whether one agrees with “The Lobby Makes Them Do It” view of James Petras or the view I advocate. If Petras is correct, then the natural strategy to turn U.S. foreign policy around would be to side with the likes of Big Oil against the Israel Lobby. But since Big Oil and the Israel Lobby are in fact on the same team, this is a ridiculous strategy. Instead, the strategy that makes sense is to mobilize the general public against the American ruling class around not only opposition to Israeli ethnic cleansing but also opposition to the entire anti-democratic, anti-equality agenda of the ruling class. This is a revolutionary pro-working class strategy, and only it can win.

Other articles about Palestine/Israel by John Spritzler

John Spritzler is the author of The People As Enemy: The Leaders’ Hidden Agenda In World War II, and a Research Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Palestine, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Obama Follows Bush Line on Aid to Gaza

March 3, 2009

by Glenn Kessler | The Age (Australia), March 3, 2009

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt – The US was last night expected to pledge $US300 million ($A470 million) in humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip after the 22-day Israeli offensive but will maintain restrictions to stop any of the money getting to Hamas.

[In this photo released by the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, meets with Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa on the sidelines of the Egypt-hosted international conference on rebuilding Gaza, in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt Monday, March 2, 2009. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first foray into Middle East diplomacy, declared the Obama administration committed to pushing intensively to find a way for Israelis and Palestinians to exist peacefully in separate states. (AP Photo/U.S. Embassy in Egypt, Sameh Refaat)]In this photo released by the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, meets with Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa on the sidelines of the Egypt-hosted international conference on rebuilding Gaza, in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt Monday, March 2, 2009. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first foray into Middle East diplomacy, declared the Obama administration committed to pushing intensively to find a way for Israelis and Palestinians to exist peacefully in separate states. (AP Photo/U.S. Embassy in Egypt, Sameh Refaat)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who arrived in Egypt on Sunday to take part in a donors’ conference for the reconstruction of Gaza, was also expected to announce $US600 million in help to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority is controlled by Hamas’ main rival, Fatah, which is ruling by emergency decree in the occupied West Bank.

The extra money not aimed at Gaza includes $US200 million to pay Palestinian Authority wages – much of which was previously announced – and $US400 million to support development in the West Bank. The full package awaits congressional approval.

Taken together, the announcements underscore how little the Obama Administration’s policy towards the Palestinian issue has so far differed from the Bush administration’s.

Although Mr Obama has named a Middle East envoy, a step George Bush resisted, the policy to be outlined at the conference indicates that the Administration will maintain a tough stance on Hamas, seeking to bolster the Islamist movement’s rivals and keeping its distance from Palestinian efforts to create a unity government.

Mrs Clinton, making her first visit to the Middle East as chief US diplomat, did not speak to reporters on her arrival in Egypt.

Although the international quartet – the US, European Union, United Nations and Russia – has set conditions for dealings with Hamas, the EU has been looking for some sign of greater flexibility from the US on helping Gaza.

The question of engagement with Hamas will become more acute if negotiations between it and Fatah on a unity government are successful. The Bush administration shunned the previous unity government between March and June 2007.

“We’re talking about an administration that is only one month in,” US State Department spokesman Robert Wood said, when asked why Mr Obama appeared to be keeping to Mr Bush’s path.

Gaza, where unemployment tops 40 per cent and 80 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, was devastated by the recent offensive, which Israel launched after a ceasefire broke down and Hamas rockets rained down on Israeli towns.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair, a special envoy of the quartet, visited a UN school in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun on Sunday and later told al-Jazeera TV the devastation was “very shocking”.

Mr Blair, accompanied by the UN Relief and Works Agency’s head in Gaza, John Ging, said Israel should immediately lift its economic blockade of the strip.

“I think there is a recognition that we have got to change our strategy towards Gaza,” he said.

“I don’t think anybody can come here and not be appalled by what is happening.”

Mr Blair also visited Sderot, an Israeli town that has been frequently struck by Palestinian rockets in recent years.

Palestinian officials hope to raise as much as $US2.8 billion in humanitarian relief and reconstruction aid for Gaza. But Israel maintains tight control of crossings into Gaza and will not allow entry of any items that it says could be used by Hamas to re-arm. It bans or restricts the importing of cement, steel rods and other material necessary for construction.

International aid groups and Hamas have called for the crossings to be opened, saying the closures unfairly punish civilians.

The US position on humanitarian aid has been similar to Israel’s stance, although on a recent visit by US politicians Massachusetts senator John Kerry complained to Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak about Israel’s refusal to allow pasta through the crossing.

Israel insists that any humanitarian aid should pass through established agencies such as the UN, said Jonathan Peled, spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Mrs Clinton is expected to hold talks today with Israeli officials, including Mr Olmert and Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Palestine, Uncategorized, US policy, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Israel may face war crimes trials over Gaza

March 2, 2009

• International pressure grows over conflict

• Court looks at whether Palestinians can bring case

An injured Palestinian boy

A Palestinian man carries an injured boy into Shifa hospital in Gaza City during an Israeli attack on Gaza in January. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP

The international criminal court is considering whether the Palestinian Authority is “enough like a state” for it to bring a case alleging that Israeli troops committed war crimes in the recent assault on Gaza.

The deliberations would potentially open the way to putting Israeli military commanders in the dock at The Hague over the campaign, which claimed more than 1,300 lives, and set an important precedent for the court over what cases it can hear.

As part of the process the court’s head of jurisdictions, part of the office of the prosecutor, is examining every international agreement signed by the PA to decide whether it behaves – and is regarded by others – as operating like a state.

Following talks with the Arab League’s head, Amr Moussa, and senior PA officials, moves have accelerated inside the court to deliver a ruling on whether it may be able to insist on jurisdiction over alleged war crimes perpetrated in Gaza, with a decision from the prosecutor’s office expected within “months, not years”.

The issue arises because although the ICC potentially has “global jurisdiction” to investigate crimes which fall into its remit no matter where they were committed, Israel – despite having signed the Rome statute that founded the court and having expressed “deep sympathy” with the court’s goals – is not a party.

The ICC, which has 108 member states, has not so far recognised Palestine as a sovereign state or as a member.

The latest moves in The Hague come amid mounting international pressure on Israel and a growing recognition in Israeli government circles that it may eventually have to defend itself against war crimes allegations. The Guardian has also learned that a confidential inquiry by the International Committee of the Red Cross into the actions of Israel and Hamas during the recent conflict in Gaza is expected to accuse Israel of using “excessive force” – prohibited under the fourth Geneva convention.

The Red Cross has been collecting information for two parallel inquiries, one into the conduct of Israel and a second into Hamas, both of which will be presented in private to the parties involved.

In the case of Israel, the Red Cross is expected to highlight three areas of concern: the Israeli Defence Forces’ “use and choice of weapons in a complex and densely populated environment”; the issue of “proportionality”; and concerns over the IDF’s lack of distinction between combatants and non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead. Hamas is likely to be challenged over its use of civilian facilities as cover for its fighters; its summary executions and kneecappings of Palestinians during the campaign; and its indiscriminate firing of rockets into civilian areas.

Meanwhile, sources at the ICC say it is considering two potential tracks that would permit it to investigate what happened in Gaza. As well as determining whether the PA is recognised internationally as a sufficiently state-like entity, the head of jurisdictions in the office of the international criminal court’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is looking at whether the court can consider war crimes allegations on the basis of the dual nationality of either victims or alleged perpetrators whose second passport is with a country party to the court.

The court’s deliberations follow more than 220 complaints about Israel’s actions in Gaza. “It does not matter necessarily whether the Palestinian National Authority is in charge of its own borders,” said a source at the court. “Right now the court is looking at everything from agreements it has signed on education to the constitution of its legal system.”

Yesterday, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, warned Palestinian militants their continuing rocket attacks on Israel would not go unpunished. He said further strikes would “be answered with a painful, harsh, strong and uncompromising response from the security forces”. More than 100 rockets and mortars have exploded in Israel in the six weeks since it ended its air and ground assault on Gaza, to which the government has responded with airstrikes.

Olmert’s warning came as Israel’s attorney general notified the prime minister that he was considering indicting him on charges of allegedly taking cash-stuffed envelopes from a Jewish-American businessman. Five corruption cases are pending against Olmert, although he has denied all wrongdoing. His spokesman said yesterday the charges against the prime minister would “disappear in the end”.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Palestine, Uncategorized, War Criminals, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Settlement expansion plans

February 28, 2009

B’Tselem.org, Feb 27, 2009

Following the Oslo agreement, Israel made a commitment to the United States that it would not build new settlements or expand existing ones, except to meet “natural growth.” This narrow allowance, never defined, was utilized by Israel to greatly expand settlements and build new settlements, such as Modi’in Ilit.

In April 2003, Israel for the first time undertook to freeze settlement activity, including natural growth. The commitment was made in the framework of the “road map” agreed to by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the Quartet (the US, the European Union, the UN, and Russia), which provides an outline for achieving a two-state permanent resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In November 2007, at the joint declaration made at the Annapolis Conference, in which Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the Quartet, and Arab League states took part, Israel confirmed its commitment to the road map’s principles.

Despite its commitment to freeze building in settlements, protocols of the Supreme Planning Committee, in the Civil Administration, reveal plans for substantial expansion of settlements. The relevant protocols, of the Supreme Planning Committee’s Environment Subcommittee, were made in 2007 and 2008 and dealt with the treatment of sewage of settlements. B’Tselem received these protocols under the Freedom of Information Act. The plans uncovered also relate to anticipated expansion of settlements lying east of the route of the Separation Barrier, which some, most Israeli politicians present as Israel’s future border. These plans are in their initial planning stage, and none have been approved by the political echelon. However, the fact that the primary planning body in the West Bank considered plans to build thousands of housing units in settlements indicates that the West Bank’s planning bodies flout the official Israeli commitment not to expand settlements in the coming years.

The settlement of Gevaot. Photo: Eyal Reuveni, B'Tselem.
The settlement of Gevaot. Photo: Eyal Reuveni, B’Tselem.

Examples of settlement-expansion planning follow.

  • In the Eztion Bloc, a neighborhood, containing 550 apartments, is planned for the Gevaot area of the Alon Shvut settlement. Plans for building in this area, which currently is home to only twelve families, call for the building of 4,450 apartments. The construction has not yet been approved by the Defense Ministry, but the Environmental Subcommittee approved construction of a sewage-treatment facility, intended for 800 to 1,000 apartments, for the new neighborhood. At the hearing, it was also decided that the facility would treat the sewage from the adjacent Beit Ayin settlement. According to the protocol, 2,000 new apartments are planned for construction in Beit Ayin, which currently has some 120 families.
  • In the RimonimandEinav settlements, which lie east of the Separation Barrier, sewage treatment has been arranged as a first stage in advancing building plans. In Rimonim, 254 new apartments are planned, and in Einav, two plans for additional construction The jurisdiction area of the settlement Mevo Dotan which is also east of the barrier, is expected to expand.
  • The Ma’aleh Adumim municipality prepared a sewage-treatment plan for the settlement, including the planned construction of 3,500 apartments in E-1, in the framework of treatment of the sewage from SHAI [Samaria and Judea] Police Headquarters, which was moved to E-1.
  • In Kfar Adumim, the Subcommittee approved a sewage-treatment plan based on a projected doubling in size of the settlement, to 5,600 residents, in “the coming years.”
  • The Civil Administration’s planning office instructed the Eshkolot settlement to treat its sewage in accordance with the “full occupancy” plans of the settlement, which are expected to quintuple the settlement’s population.

Building of settlements breaches international humanitarian law, which prohibits the occupying power to transfer its population to occupied territory and to make permanent changes there.

Establishment and expansion of the settlements result in continuous and extensive infringement of Palestinian rights, among them the right to self-determination, the right to equality, the right of property, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to water, the right to sanitation and the right to freedom of movement.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Palestine, Uncategorized, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

Return of the War Party

February 28, 2009
Patrick J. Buchanan
by  Patrick J. Buchanan
Human Events.com, Feb 27, 2009

“Real men go to Tehran!” brayed the neoconservatives, after the success of their propaganda campaign to have America march on Baghdad and into an unnecessary war that has forfeited all the fruits of our Cold War victory.

Now they are back, in pursuit of what has always been their great goal: an American war on Iran. It would be a mistake to believe they and their collaborators cannot succeed a second time. Consider:

On being chosen by Israel’s President Shimon Peres to form the new regime, Likud’s “Bibi” Netanyahu declared, “Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence.”

Echoing Netanyahu, headlines last week screamed of a startling new nuclear breakthrough by the mullahs. “Iran ready to build nuclear weapon, analysts say,” said CNN. “Iran has enough uranium to make a bomb,” said the Los Angeles Times. Armageddon appeared imminent.

Asked about Iran’s nukes in his confirmation testimony, CIA Director Leon Panetta blurted, “From all the information I’ve seen, I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”

Tuesday, Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a front spawned by the Israeli lobby AIPAC, was given the Iranian portfolio. AIPAC’s top agenda item? A U.S. collision with Iran.

In the neocon Weekly Standard, Elliot Abrams of the Bush White House parrots Netanyahu, urging Obama to put any land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians on a back burner. Why?

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now part of a broader struggle in the region over Iranian extremism and power. Israeli withdrawals now risk opening the door not only to Palestinian terrorists but to Iranian proxies.”

The campaign to conflate Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria as a new axis of evil, a terrorist cartel led by Iranian mullahs hell-bent on building a nuclear bomb and using it on Israel and America, has begun. The full-page ads and syndicated columns calling on Obama to eradicate this mortal peril before it destroys us all cannot be far off.

But before we let ourselves be stampeded into another unnecessary war, let us review a few facts that seem to contradict the war propaganda.

First, last week’s acknowledgement that Iran has enough enriched uranium for one atom bomb does not mean Iran is building an atom bomb.

To construct a nuclear device, the ton of low-enriched uranium at Natanz would have to be run through a second cascade of high-speed centrifuges to produce 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HUE).

There is no evidence Iran has either created the cascade of high-speed centrifuges necessary to produce HUE or that Iran has diverted any of the low-enriched uranium from Natanz. And the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors retain full access to Natanz.

And rather than accelerating production of low-enriched uranium, only 4,000 of the Natanz centrifuges are operating. Some 1,000 are idle. Why?

Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, believes this is a signal that Tehran wishes to negotiate with the United States, but without yielding any of its rights to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants.

For, unlike Israel, Pakistan and India, none of which signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all of which ran clandestine programs and built atom bombs, Iran signed the NPT and has abided by its Safeguards Agreement. What it refuses to accept are the broader demands of the U.N. Security Council because these go beyond the NPT and sanction Iran for doing what it has a legal right to do.

Moreover, Adm. Dennis Blair, who heads U.S. intelligence, has just restated the consensus of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran does not now possess and is not now pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Bottom line: Neither the United States nor the IAEA has conclusive evidence that Iran either has the fissile material for a bomb or an active program to build a bomb. It has never tested a nuclear device and has never demonstrated a capacity to weaponize a nuclear device, if it had one.

Why, then, the hype, the hysteria, the clamor for “Action This Day!”? It is to divert America from her true national interests and stampede her into embracing as her own the alien agenda of a renascent War Party.

None of this is to suggest the Iranians are saintly souls seeking only peace and progress. Like South Korea, Japan and other nations with nuclear power plants, they may well want the ability to break out of the NPT, should it be necessary to deter, defend against or defeat enemies.

But that is no threat to us to justify war. For decades, we lived under the threat that hundreds of Russian warheads could rain down upon us in hours, ending our national existence. If deterrence worked with Stalin and Mao, it can work with an Iran that has not launched an offensive war against any nation within the memory of any living American.

Can we Americans say the same?

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, “The Death of the West,”, “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Iran, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

A people abandoned

February 27, 2009
Serge Halimi

Axis of Logic
Feb 27, 2009, 04:07

By 14 January Israeli troops had killed more than a thousand Palestinians confined to a narrow strip of land and subjected to land, sea and air bombardment by one of the most formidable armies in the world. A Palestinian school converted into a United Nations refuge had been bombed (1), a resolution – issued by the only organisation that really represents the “international community” people are so fond of talking about – had called in vain for a halt to the military operations in Gaza. So, on 14 January, the European Union showed just how firmly it was prepared to react to this mixed display of violence and arrogance. It decided to suspend the process of rapprochement with Israel! But to lessen the impact of what might, even so, have been seen as gentle reproach to Tel Aviv, it explained that this was a “technical”measure, not a “political”one. And that the decision was taken by “both parties”.

Israel is free to do as it likes. Its army had already destroyed most of the Palestinian infrastructure funded by the EU and there had been little or no reaction, no legal action, no call for reparations (2). It then imposed a blockade on people already living in poverty, with no water, food or medical supplies. Still no response, only endless admonitions and a general refusal to become involved in the argument, on the pretext that violence of the strong is not always accompanied by submission of the weak. So why should Israel suppose that it cannot continue to act with impunity?

Twenty years ago, the Jewish state took the precaution of encouraging the rise of Hamas against the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Hamas was a dream adversary, with a medieval charter, doubtful military potential and no inclination to “communicate” with western public opinion. Having no “partner for peace”is a perfect excuse to bomb and colonise ad lib. But even now, there are still newspaper editors in Europe complaining that Israel one day lose the moral high ground” (3).

The United States too has nothing against the Tel Aviv government’s plans. On 9 January, the House of Representatives passed a resolution recognising Israel’s “right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza”. A few hours earlier the Senate had “reaffirmed the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas”. Perhaps with the idea of striking some sort of “balance”, the House of Representatives resolution also expresses to innocent Israeli and Palestinian victims and their families”. That resolution was adopted by 390 votes to five. The Senate resolution was adopted unanimously. The US executive also held firm: a few hours after announcing a unilateral ceasefire, Ehud Olmert rang the US president to thank him for his support. Support also includes non-refundable aid amounting to $3 billion a year, which no-one including Obama has thought of questioning.

With this sort of backing, the main Israeli parties’ aim seems to be clear: to destroy any prospect of achieving the internationally recognised aim of establishing a genuine Palestinian state. The West Bank will continue to be an amorphous collection of homelands, criss-crossed with walls and roadblocks, dotted with settlements, and drip-fed by the European Union. And Gaza will be bombed whenever its neighbour has a mind to unleash a disproportionate “response” to rocket or other attacks. In fact, after 60 years of defeat, humiliation, exile, violation of signed agreements, colonisation and internecine feuding, after governments all over the world have abandoned them to their fate and allowed international law, including settlements, to be ridden over roughshod, it is nothing short of a miracle that the Palestinians are still determined to assert their national identity in real terms.

If they succeed, it will not be thanks to the Europeans, or to the Americans or to most Arab states. In Gaza, these powers have all conspired once again in the interminable spoliation of a nation.

http://mondediplo.com/2009/02/01abandoned

Tags:, , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Palestine, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »