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BBC

Some Palestinians only get 20 litres of water a day, Amnesty says

Israel is denying Palestinians access to even the basic minimum of clean, safe water, Amnesty International says.

In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

It says that in Gaza, Israel’s blockade has pushed the already ailing water and sewage system to “crisis point”.

Israel says the report is flawed and the Palestinians get more water than was agreed under the 1990s peace deal.

‘Basic need’

In the 112-page report, Amnesty says that on average Palestinian daily water consumption reaches 70 litres a day, compared with 300 litres for the Israelis.

Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians’ access to water Donatella Rovera Amnesty International Gaza thirsts as sewage crisis mounts Water shortages plague West Bank

It says that some Palestinians barely get 20 litres a day – the minimum recommended even in humanitarian emergencies.

While Israeli settlers in the West Bank enjoy lush gardens and swimming pools, Amnesty describes a series of Israeli measures it says are discriminating against Palestinians:

• Israel has “entirely appropriated the Palestinians’ share of the Jordan river” and uses 80% of a key shared aquifer
• West Bank Palestinians are not allowed to drill wells without Israeli permits, which are “often impossible” to obtain
• Rainwater harvesting cisterns are “often destroyed by the Israeli army”

Recommended for short-term survival: 20 litres For the medium term: 70 litres Recommended for the long term: 100 litres (Source: WHO)

Israeli soldiers confiscated a water tanker from villagers who were trying to remain in land Israel had declared a “closed military area” An unnamed Israeli soldier says rooftop Palestinian household water tanks are “good for target practice” Much of the land cut off by the West Bank barrier is land with good access to a major aquifer Israeli military operations have damaged Palestinian water infrastructure, including $6m worth during the Cast Lead operation in Gaza last winter The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza has “exacerbated what was already a dire situation” by denying many building materials needed for water and sewage projects. The report also noted that the Palestinian water authorities have been criticised for bad management, quoting one audit that described the sector as in “total chaos”. “Water is a basic need and a right, but for many Palestinians obtaining even poor-quality, subsistence-level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford,” Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera said. “Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians’ access to water.” ‘Fair share’ Ms Rovera also urged Israel to “take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources”. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said “the idea that we’re taking water away from someone else is simply preposterous”. He argued that Israeli fresh water use per capita had gone down since 1967 due to efficiency and new technologies, while the Palestinians’ use had increased and more than a third of their water was wasted. FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE More from BBC World Service If there were allegations of military wrongdoing, those would be investigated, he said. He also rejected the claim that Israel was preventing Palestinians from drilling for water, saying Israel had approved 82 such projects but the Palestinians had only implemented 26 of them. “They have received billions of dollars in international aid over the last decade and a half, why have they not invested that in their own water infrastructure>?” he asked. The report also criticised the Oslo Accords, which the Palestinians agreed to in 1993. It said that under them, the Palestinians gained the responsibility for managing an “insufficient” water supply and maintaining “long neglected” water infrastructure. Also, the deal left the Palestinians paying Israel for half of the domestic water used in the West Bank, despite the fact it is extracted from the shared aquifer. Mr Regev said Israel provides the Palestinians with more water than it was required to under the accord.

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(Photo by Robin Holland)

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with Justice Richard Goldstone, a respected figure in international law who headed the controversial UN Human Rights Council investigation into Israel and Hamas’ actions during military operations in Gaza that began last December.

While the resulting ‘Goldstone Report’ concluded that both sides had committed war crimes and, potentially, crimes against humanity, it was especially harsh in its condemnation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for their actions in Gaza, saying that they were “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to the UN in which he argued that the report was unfair and morally misguided. The released text of the speech says:

“For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars, and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing, absolutely nothing, from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if ever there was one… Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians, Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers. That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferrying explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas… Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy’s civilian population from harm’s way. Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself from terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth, what a perversion of justice.”

On the JOURNAL, Justice Goldstone addressed critics of the report and described his experience conducting the investigation in Gaza:

“I would like to see [critics’] response to the substance [of the report], particularly the attack on the infrastructure of Gaza, which seems to me to be absolutely unjustifiable… I saw the destruction of the only flour-producing factory in Gaza. I saw fields plowed up by Israeli tank bulldozers… I had to have the very emotional and difficult interviews with fathers whose little daughters were killed, whose families were killed… It was a very difficult investigation which will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.”

Bill Moyers then asked Goldstone why he considers Israel’s actions to have been war crimes. Goldstone said:

“[In] humanitarian law, really fundamental is what’s known as the principle of distinction. It requires commanders, troops, all people involved in war to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and then there’s a question of proportionality. One can, in war, target a military target, and there can be what’s euphemistically referred to as ‘collateral damage,’ but the collateral damage must be proportionate to the military aim. If you can take out a munitions factory in an urban area with a loss of 100 lives, or you can use a bomb twice at large and take out the same factory and kill 2000 people, the latter would be a war crime. The former wouldn’t… We found that [Hamas’] firing of many thousands of rockets and mortars at a civilian population to constitute a serious war crime, and we said possibly crimes against humanity… It’s difficult to deal equally with a state party with the sort of sophisticated army Israel has, with an air force and a navy and the most sophisticated weapons [and] with Hamas using really improvised, imprecise armaments. It’s difficult to equate their power.”

Click here to review the Goldstone report and some of the voices responding to it.

What do you think?

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U.S. Berated for Shielding Israel on Gaza Killings

By Thalif Deen

October 15, 2009 – -UNITED NATIONS, Oct 14 (IPS) – A U.S. decision to stall Security Council action against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas for war crimes during the 22-day conflict in Gaza last December has come under heavy fire both from inside and outside the United Nations.

Addressing the Security Council Wednesday, the chair of the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz of Egypt urged the powerful 15-member political body to “seriously consider and act upon the recommendations” of the U.N. Fact Finding Mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.

But the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama says the charges of war crimes in the Goldstone report, which was released last month, should be within the purview of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, not the Security Council in New York.

Despite reservations by Western nations, the Council agreed to hold a special meeting Wednesday on the Middle East: a meeting which provided member states with an opportunity to discuss the Goldstone report and focus on the serious violations of international human rights during the Gaza conflict, both by Israel and Hamas.

“That President Obama is receiving the Noble Peace prize after his failure to speak out during the Gaza war, and after his administration’s protection of a state that has committed war crimes, is an abomination,” Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, told IPS.

The number of Palestinians killed during the conflict is estimated at between 1,387 and 1,417, mostly civilians, compared with four Israeli fatal casualties in southern Israel and nine soldiers killed during fighting, four of whom died as a result of friendly fire.

Ratner said one would hope that the United States would not block the referral of both Israel and Hamas to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an investigation of war crimes committed in Gaza.

“Sadly, its conduct at the Human Rights Council [in Geneva] where it called the Goldstone report deeply flawed shows that it will again do all in its power to try and bury any investigation of Israel for war crimes,” he added.

By doing so, Washington is giving Israel a green light to continue to commit atrocities, said Ratner, who heads the non-profit human rights litigation organisation.

The failure to refer the Gaza matter to the ICC undercuts any claim that the law is applied equally to Israel and the Palestinians, he noted.

“That the United States attacked the report, authored by Judge Goldstone, one of the pre-eminent jurists in the world, demonstrates that it is willing to debase both the law and a respected jurist in its effort to protect a client state, despite its crimes,” Ratner declared.

The Goldstone report has recommended that the Security Council require Israel to report to it, within the next six months, on investigations and prosecutions it should carry out with regard to the violations cited in the report.

During the ruthless military operation, codenamed ‘Operation Cast Lead’, the Israelis destroyed houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings.

The report also recommended that the Security Council should set up its own body of independent experts to report to it on the progress of the Israeli investigations and prosecutions.

“If the expert’s reports do not indicate within six months that good faith, independent proceedings are taking place, the Security Council should refer the situation in Gaza to the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court (ICC),” the report recommended.

The report also recommended that the same expert body report to the Security Council on proceedings undertaken by the relevant Gaza authorities with regard to the crimes committed by the Palestinian side.

But the report’s strongest indictment is not against Hamas but against the state of Israel, which is accused of imposing a blockade on Gaza “amounting to collective punishment” carried out as part of a “systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation of the Gaza Strip”.

Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS the Obama administration and Congressional leaders of both parties appear to be continuing the policy of the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush in ignoring and denouncing those who have the temerity to report violations of international humanitarian law by the United States or its allies.

“They are particularly concerned about the matter going before the International Criminal Court where those Palestinians and Israelis guilty of war crimes might actually face justice,” he said.

The Obama administration appears determined that such war criminals be granted impunity, said Zunes, who is also chair of the Middle Eastern Studies Programme, and who has written extensively on the Security Council.

He said that although U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice had argued just a few months earlier during a U.N. debate on Darfur, Sudan that war crimes charges should never be sacrificed for political reasons, she is now claiming that similar action on the Gaza conflict could be an impediment to the peace process.

“It’s ironic that the Obama administration is insisting that the issue stay confined to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, which they have repeatedly labeled as anti-Israel,” Zunes said.

U.S. officials recognise, however, that if the matter is taken to the Security Council, as the Goldstone Commission recommended, it would place debate on violations of international humanitarian law by a key U.S. ally before a body that, unlike the Human Rights Council, has an enforcement mechanism.

“It would also allow far greater media exposure of Israeli war crimes, the bulk of which were implemented using U.S. weapons systems and ordnance,” he noted.

Yvonne Terlingen, Amnesty International representative at the United Nations, called for the prompt establishment of an independent committee of experts in international humanitarian law and human rights law to monitor and report.

Such a report, she said, should be within a strict time frame, to the Security Council and other U.N. bodies, on domestic legal and other measures taken by Israel and the authorities in Gaza to address accountability for violations of international humanitarian and human rights law during the Gaza conflict.

Last week, the Human Rights Council, prompted by the Palestinians, decided to defer a draft resolution that would have endorsed the recommendations in the Goldstone report.

That proposed draft resolution was expected to be taken up during the Council’s next session in March 2010.

But the deferment created such a political uproar that it forced the Palestinians to do a dramatic turnaround: to support a meeting of the Security Council Wednesday and also a special session of the Human Rights Council on Thursday to discuss the Goldstone report.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said the failure of the U.S. and European states to endorse the Goldstone report at the Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva “sent a terrible message that serious laws-of-war violations by allied states would be tolerated”.

Addressing the Security Council Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff made a predictable statement that the United States continues to “have serious concerns about the [Goldstone] report, its unbalanced focus on Israel, the overly broad scope of its recommendations, and its sweeping conclusions of law.”

Nevertheless, he said, “We take the allegations in the report seriously.”

“Israel has the institutions and the ability to carry out serious investigations of these allegations and we encourage it to do so,” Wolff said.

He also said that Hamas “is a terrorist organisation and has neither the ability nor the willingness to examine its violations of human rights”.

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The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to meet today to discuss Libya’s request for an emergency session on a report that accused Israel of committing war crimes during Israel’s aggression on Gaza.

Vietnam’s Ambassador Le Luong Minh, who holds the council presidency this month, said he set closed-door talks after receiving the request from Libya, the only Arab member on the 15-nation council. The Palestinian UN Mission issued a press release saying it affirmed full support for the Libyan request.

Despite recent efforts by the U.S. to prevent a UN resolution on the report, Libya was “waiting for a push” on the behalf of the Muslim nations or the Arab league to initiate a vote on the report’s findings, New York sources said Tuesday.

Libya holds two key positions in the UN which make it easier for the country to initiate a session on the report – it is a member of the Security Council, and one of its representatives is currently serving as the president of the General Assembly. Libya has the authority to convene the UN Security Council to vote on the Goldstone report in the name of the Muslim nations or the Arab League.

If the Security Council session on the Goldstone report ends without a resolution or an American veto, Libya could convene the General Assembly, whose vote cannot be vetoed.

It’s an another arena where the Goldstone report could come up for vote in the UN’s fourth committee, which deals with political issues and holds sessions within the framework of the General Assembly.

A senior Western diplomat told Haaretz that in principle, Libya could convene a General Assembly session on the Goldstone report, but that he thought that “Libya will hesitate to take such an initiative as long as the Palestinian Authority is not interested in such a UN session. Libya will appear ridiculous if the involved party doesn’t want a session, and it calls for one.”

Arab diplomats said the Security Council was to hold consultations Wednesday to decide whether or not to hold a formal meeting on the Goldstone report. “We are welcoming Libya’s step that they have asked the Security Council to meet tomorrow (Wednesday) to discuss the Goldstone report,” Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said in a telephone conversation from Rome. “Libya’s step is supporting the Palestinian people’s rights.”

Earlier in the day, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said that Abbas was “seriously studying” the possibility of asking that a UN Gaza war report be passed on to the Security Council. The move appeared to mark an about-turn as the Palestinian delegation last Friday backed a move at the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to defer a vote on whether the report should be passed on. Abbas was under pressure from all Palestinian factions and even from within his own movement to exploit Goldstone for all its worth.

[Sources for article include:Chempress]

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Nora Barrows-Friedman

The Electronic Intifada – October 6, 2009

Refuseniks Maya Wind and Netta Mishly. (whywerefuse.org)

As US-made Hellfire missiles and white phosphorus rained down on the entrapped people of the Gaza Strip earlier this year, a number of “refuseniks,” young Israeli men and women who refuse to serve mandatory military conscription after high school, along with anti-occupation activists attempted to shut down the Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv. It was from this base that airborne weapons of war, flown by their former classmates, took off to kill Palestinians just miles down the beach in Gaza.

From chronic checkpoint beatings, to the use of Palestinian children as human shields during invasions, to widespread use of torture and interrogation in detention camps, to the killing of unarmed civilians during incursions and wide-scale massacres that spur international condemnation, Israel’s soldiers are the face of the state’s expanding and illegal occupation and colonization of Palestine. And a new generation of conscripts have just finished boot camp, eager to carry on this vicious tradition of occupation.

Within mainstream Israeli Jewish society, mandatory conscription into the military is regarded as a rite of passage; a normalized violent adventure meant to codify nationalism and Zionist supremacy while carrying out Israel’s policies of aggression. (Paradoxically, a few thousand non-Jewish, “Arab-Israeli” citizens have also served in the army — see Jonathan Cook’s recent article “False promise of integration for Palestinian soldiers in Israel.”) Recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman repeated an oft-heard mantra as he attempted to defend the state’s criminal massacres in Gaza earlier this year. “Israel,” Lieberman claimed, “has the most moral army in the world.”

However, a growing number of Israeli Jewish youth facing mandatory military conscription — the Shministim — are breaking the chain of conventional cooperation with the occupation. Refusing to participate in a system they agree to be immoral as well as illegal, these young people exemplify complicity with their ethical values rather than their state’s colonialist policies.

The Shministim have also started linking up with American military resisters to strategize and build an international movement of opposition to the state-sponsored violence of occupation — from the West Bank and Gaza to Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, these young people are speaking directly to Jewish audiences across the US who may romanticize Israel’s perceived “need” for an aggressive military system, hoping to inspire critical thought centered on the actual reality for Palestinians affected by Israel’s actions.

Since 1970, groups of Shministim — Hebrew for 12th-graders — have emerged, turning against the overwhelming current of generational militarism. Writing public letters to Israeli heads of state, Shministim cohorts refuse to participate in the system of occupation, and, more broadly, vociferously challenge a national attitude of supremacy and racist entitlement over historic Palestine’s indigenous population.

Though personal stories of revelatory tenacity are wholly unique for each young person who stands up, the shock of collective reality and personal responsibility is a common theme. After witnessing brutal violence carried out by Israeli occupation soldiers against Palestinians in the West Bank village of Bilin, 19-year-old Shministim member Maya Wind says that “the only moral option for me was to refuse.”

Not surprisingly, the Israeli government does not concur with Wind’s revelation. Shministim refuseniks face draconian jail sentences in repeated cycles until they reach 21 years old or manage to secure a discharge on the basis of medical or mental health.

Israeli youth who refuse to cooperate with Israel’s military occupation are sent into a lengthy and relentless labyrinth of court martials and consecutive jail terms in what Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard, representing Shministim, calls a “price tag” meant to deter other young Israelis from non-participation. “Otherwise,” he says, “[the Israeli government's] argument says, everyone — of ideological or personal reasons — will refuse to serve.”

I recently interviewed Wind and her Shministim cohort, Netta Mishly, during their tour in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Wind says that the political and ultra-religious environment in her high school led her to question the reality behind the ideologies of her government and her fellow students. “A lot of my classmates were settlers, including extremists from [settlements in] the West Bank … there were a lot of questions that surfaced for me. I didn’t even use the word ‘occupation’ back then.” Through a discussion group with Palestinians in Jerusalem, Wind says that she awakened to a different reality than the one offered to her inside Israeli-Jewish society. “I figured I needed to learn more. Through a conversation with a Palestinian girl, I started to question more. I started going to the West Bank.”

Wind was sent to jail during the third week of the Gaza massacres, and spent several weeks behind bars. Sentenced four times, she spent a cumulative two months in detention and another 42 days in a military prison altogether. She was subjected to a “humiliating” array of psychiatrists and psychologists sent by the military to determine her mental fitness, required to serve in the army. Wind says that all of the Shministim were labeled mentally unfit by these health professionals, therefore giving Israel the excuse that the problem was not with the policies or the morality of the military, but with the Shministim themselves.

Netta Mishly, also 19 years old and from Tel Aviv, was active in several political groups from early adolescence and supported by parents who encouraged her to think critically. She said that her decision to refuse was made clear during her activity against Israel’s wall in the West Bank. “After I was there, and I saw how the soldiers attack civilians without any security justification, after I saw how the state steals land from [Palestinians] … For me, not going to the army was a decision I came to after visiting the West Bank for the first time.”

She says that her life changed completely after returning to school. “I kept hearing the same line [in class] — that we need to defend ourselves, and we need to go to the army. I couldn’t believe this anymore because I saw how the soldiers act on the ground. I connected with other activists and we started thinking about how we were going to take this difficult step, and we decided to keep working in the same tradition that started before us. We drafted a letter to the government, saying that we wouldn’t take part in the terrible crimes that Israel is doing in our name. After that, one by one, each one of us went to jail.”

Mishly was sentenced to a week in detention at the military base because there was “no room” in the regular prison (during the December-January attacks on Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel who participated in protests were rounded up and thrown into Israeli jails, on charges of treason and incitement). After the trial, one of the highest-ranking Israeli military justices decided they could re-try Mishly and she received another 20 days. “When you make the decision not to go to the army, you don’t know where [the punishment] is going to end,” she says.

Meanwhile, as US President Barack Obama readies another “troop surge” to entrench the interminable American occupation of Afghanistan, Wind and Mishly are meeting with US military resisters in order, Wind says, to expand international rejection of militarism. “I think that’s why Netta and I have come to the US. It’s not just about the Israeli occupation. It’s not just an Israeli thing. The US is occupying. And there are all forms of racism, prejudice and violence … these are not just phenomenons particular to the Middle East, you have this in the US as well. It’s towards immigrants, Mexicans, towards Iraq and Afghanistan. I think we’re trying to show that these are global phenomenons and we all have to create a broader justice movement.”

Sarah Lazare of the Bay Area-based GI Resistance support organization Courage to Resist is helping to organize an upcoming delegation of US war resisters to Palestine-Israel, she says, to connect with Israeli refuseniks. Calling itself Dialogue Against Militarism, the group intends to discuss similar experiences and learn from each other’s strategies for confronting war and occupation, while engaging with the effects of militarism in their respective societies.

“It is extremely powerful that war resisters in Israel are connecting with war resisters in the US,” says Lazare. “Given the close relationship between the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the Israeli occupation, it is vital for resisters in these two countries to join forces, in order to build a movement strong enough to take on the forces we’re up against. Israeli and US war resisters are having exciting discussions, sharing experiences, and showing direct solidarity with each other, and I think this is a powerful step towards stopping US and Israeli-led occupations.”

In January, upon her sentencing, Maya Wind offered her declaration of conscience to the military court. “We can no longer term our military a ‘Defense Force,’” she asserted.

“A defense force does not conquer lands of another people. A defense force does not assist in the building of settlements on those lands. A defense force does not permit settlers to throw stones at Palestinian civilians, nor does it deny them access to their lands and source of livelihood. None of these are acts of a defense force.”

“The occupation has no defensive advantages. On the contrary, the pointless occupation of millions of people only leads to radicalization of opinions, hatred and the escalation of violence. Violence is a cycle that feeds into itself. This cycle will not stop until someone stands up and refuses uncompromisingly to take part in it. This is what I am doing today.”

Several other Shministim are gearing up for a similar speaking tour in South Africa during October.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio and travels several times a year to occupied Palestine to document the situation. She is also a freelance reporter for Inter Press Service. She can be reached at norabf AT gmail DOT com. Her website is www.norabf.com

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Defence for Children International

October 6, 2009 [Ramallah, 6 October 2009] DCI – According to the latest figures compiled by DCI-Palestine from sources including the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) and temporary Israeli army detention facilities, the number of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons and detention centres inside Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory at the end of September, was 326. DCI-Palestine is pleased to report that following the recent release of 20 female Palestinian prisoners in exchange for video footage of Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, there are now currently no Palestinian females in Israeli detention under the age of 18. On Friday, 2 October 2009, the remaining three girls were released. Table 1 – Number of Palestinian girls in Israeli detention at the end of each month since January 2008 Year/Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2008 2 3 3 4 3 6 6 5 6 6 5 7 2009 5 7 6 6 6 5 4 3 3 0 - - (note: these figures are not cumulative) In September, the number of Palestinian children held in Israeli detention facilities fell to 326, the lowest figure this year, but which still represents a 7% increase compared with the corresponding period in 2008. The monthly average number of Palestinian children held in Israeli detention in 2009 still remains high, at 370 per month, compared with 319 in 2008. This represents an increase of 16%. Table 2 – Number of Palestinian children in Israeli detention at the end of each month since January 2008 Year/Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2008 327 307 325 327 337 323 324 293 304 297 327 342 2009 389 423 420 391 346 355 342 339 326 - - - (note: these figures are not cumulative) DCI-Palestine continues to be deeply concerned by the high number of young children between the ages of 12 and 15 being detained. At the end of September 2009, 40 children in this age category were being held in Israeli detention facilities, compared with 23 children in September 2008. This represents an increase of 74%. As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), Israel is legally bound to give effect to Article 37 which provides that ‘the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child … shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.’ If you wish to take action, then please consider lobbying your elected representatives and demand that pressure be applied on Israeli authorities to cease the practice of prosecuting Palestinian children as young as 12 in military courts, and detaining them inside Israel. For further information please see DCI-Palestine’s latest report on Palestinian child prisoners. B’Tselem: The Prisoners’ Children

:: Article nr. 58643 sent on 07-oct-2009 02:58 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=58643

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By Roane Carey, The Nation. Posted September 26, 2009.

The recently released UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission on the December-January Gaza conflict, released on the eve of Barack Obama’s attempt to jump-start comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, was but the latest in a series of investigations, most of them by human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Like its predecessors, the so-called Goldstone report, named after chief investigator Richard Goldstone, is devastating in its critique of Israeli actions: indiscriminate use of firepower; deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian structures, including hospitals, schools, mosques, water and sewage plants, and rescue vehicles; use of white phosphorus munitions in built-up areas; use of human shields; abusive treatment of detainees; imposition of a blockade on Gaza before and after the attack itself–the report concludes that Israel violated international humanitarian law, committed “grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons,” and war crimes, possibly even crimes against humanity. The courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy summed it up well in Haaretz: it was “an unrestrained assault on a besieged, totally unprotected civilian population which showed almost no signs of resistance during this operation.”

Perhaps most damning of all was the testimony of some thirty Israeli veterans of the operation gathered by the organization Breaking the Silence, published in a booklet in July and cited by the Goldstone report. According to the booklet’s introduction, “The majority of the soldiers who spoke with us are still serving in their regular military units and turned to us in deep distress at the moral deterioration of the IDF.… The stories of this publication prove that we are not dealing with the failures of individual soldiers, and attest instead to failures in the application of values primarily on a systemic level.” The testimony is chilling: “Fire power was insane”; “if you see any signs of movement at all, you shoot. These, essentially, were the rules of engagement. Shoot if you like”; “Houses were demolished everywhere.… We didn’t see a single house that was not hit”; “whole neighborhoods were simply razed because four houses in the area served to launch Qassam rockets”; “You know what? You feel like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants. Really. A 20-year-old kid should not be doing such things to people.”

Predictably, the Goldstone report was met by a wave of angry denunciations from the Israeli government — which had refused to cooperate with the investigators — and most of the Israeli media. The mainstream media here have downplayed the investigation’s significance; news coverage has been sparse, and not one major U.S. daily has seen fit to editorialize on it (unless you count a nasty little screed from the New York Daily News calling the report a “blood libel against Israel”). And U.S. pundits and politicians — including UN ambassador Susan Rice, who called it “unbalanced, one-sided and basically unacceptable” — have been overwhelmingly critical.

But it’s not so easy to dismiss these findings. For one thing, the nearly 600-page report is carefully documented and comprehensive, and is based on field visits, public hearings, almost 200 individual interviews, photos, videos, satellite imagery and a review of more than 300 other reports. For another, its head, Goldstone, is one of the most respected and experienced international jurists, having served as a justice on South Africa’s Constitutional Court and chief UN prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

And then there are Goldstone’s personal connections: he’s Jewish and, according to his daughter, herself an ardent Zionist who lived in Israel for six months, he’s “a Zionist and loves Israel.” Indeed, she said of her father, who serves on the Board of Governors of Hebrew University, “I know that if he thought what he did would not somehow be for the sake of peace for everyone in Israel or that it would have hindered such efforts, he would not have accepted the job.”

Before taking it on, Goldstone insisted on expanding the mission’s mandate so that it cover Palestinian acts; far from being one-sided, the report concluded that Hamas rocket and mortar barrages on southern Israel were “indiscriminate attacks upon the civilian population,” acts that “would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.” International law expert (and Nation editorial board member) Richard Falk has concluded that “no credible international commission could reach any set of conclusions other than those reached by the Goldstone Report on the central allegations.”

Falk points out that there are good reasons for Israel’s panicked reaction. In addition to the report’s balance and the credibility of its chief, Goldstone recommends that Israel and Hamas carry out serious, comprehensive investigations of their own into the alleged crimes, and that if they do not do so within six months, the UN Security Council should consider referring the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. That’s highly unlikely, given US veto power in the Security Council. But the report will further diminish Israel’s reputation and will probably strengthen the growing international boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. In his column on the report, Gideon Levy darkly concludes, “On the eve of the Jewish New Year, Israel, deservedly, is becoming an outcast and detested country. We must not forget it for a minute.”

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Image taken at Qalandiya checkpoint.September 27, 2009

This piece of video was filmed at the Qalandiya Israeli military checkpoint directly before the entrance of the a small ghetto where the so-called Palestinian Authority has their headquarters, where the house and the office of the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas are located.

Qalandiya is a Palestinian refugee camp located to the north of the city of Jerusalem, and about 1 Km south of the city of Ramallah.

In this of video, president Mahmoud Abbas, and his ministerial assistants, ministers, generals and security officers, the so called “very important people” whom Israel granted VIP cards, were not present. They are not interested in showing this kind of video, which is considered as a threat to their illusory power and what they call “national project”.

From this piece of video which was filmed at the Qalandiya check point, portions which show people collapsing unconscious were edited (censored), for “unknown reasons” – the “unknown reasons” likely being that the video was filmed by Israelis worried about the reputation of Israel.

Click on this link to see more photos.

The pictures in this article are of the censored incident, but from a Palestinian source, Mahmoud Al-Ayan for Al-Quds newspaper.

This video is credited to Mahsanmilim (original behind link)- All rights belong to them.

Link: www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/09/27/a-video-which-israel-does-not-want-you-to-see

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Source: Front Page Magazine

September 24, 2009

Time to end the fraud that the ball lies in Israel’s court.

One of the responses I sometimes receive after publishing articles and delivering speeches pouring cold water on the prospects of current diplomatic efforts to achieve an Arab-Israeli peace is: ‘What should Israel/the West be doing instead?’

As it happens, there is an alternative, but it will convince no one unless the prohibitive costs of the present policy of diplomatic engagement with and funding of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are understood – which, largely, they are not. For even among those not deluded about peace prospects, there are some who believe that diplomatic shadow-boxing brings benefits.

Accordingly, what are these alleged benefits?

• Politicians buy time claiming to be working for peace, even if it never arrives. Yet deception via dissemination of spurious good news simply lulls the public to sleep. That might suit incumbents, who often manage to leave office before the consequences of their temporizing boomerang on their countrymen: Britain’s Stanley Baldwin, retiring in 1937, two years before the consequences of his appeasement policy and lack of rearmament helped to produce a long and bitter World War Two; or Bill Clinton’s inertia in dealing with Al Qaeda, leading to 9/11 early on his successor’s watch, come to mind.

• Negotiations defuse tensions and prevent full-scale hostilities. The absence of hostilities is often meaningless if aggressors patiently utilize truces to prepare for war. Just consider Yasser Arafat’s resort to war in 2000, after seven years of diplomatic “progress”; or Hizballah using the illusory calm of 2000-06 to dig in and plot further aggressions from southern Lebanon, leading to a costly, inconclusive war for Israel.

• Negotiations benefit Israel by warding off even stronger pressures. The Oslo negotiations tell otherwise: where Palestinians prove unwilling, the only remaining room for maneuver lies in pressuring Israel, which Bill Clinton duly did. He even threatened Israel with negative UN votes if Israel didn’t deliver concessions. Under both Clinton and Bush, the State Department refused declaring Palestinian violations by promoting terrorism and incitement to hatred. Chief U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross told me personally that “we … became so preoccupied with this process that the process took on a life of its own …Every time there was a [Palestinian] behavior, or an incident or an event that was inconsistent with the process … the impulse was to rationalize it, finesse it, find a way around it and not allow it to break the process.”

Is anything different today?

Fatah, which controls the PA, can hold a conference reasserting its refusal to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state while glorifying terrorists and rejecting an end of claims in any future peace agreement with Israel and yet the Obama Administration acts as though the key to the problem is to stop Jews moving into eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. This is how shadow-boxing and process takes on a life of its own.

There is a better way, but it requires something politicians innately suspect: honesty with regard to unpleasant truths and a corresponding policy shift. Israeli and Western leaders would have to declare candidly that Palestinians do not accept Israel and support terrorism against her and that they will not deal with or support the PA under these conditions.

This option carries short-term costs, most likely manifested in even more anti-Western propaganda and even less co-operation against Islamist groups from Arab regimes.

In the longer term, however, the West would benefit from ending its participation in the self-defeating fraud that the ball lies in Israel’s court.

After all, why should Western governments stir up anti-Western sentiment among Arab publics by continually promising something that Arabs won’t deliver? Who exactly wins doing things this way, other than autocrats in Riyadh, fascists in Damascus and irredentists in Ramallah?

The onus would also be thereby placed on Palestinians to verifiably change their behavior. The present system of unconditional Palestinian entitlement to everyone else’s largesse ($900 million from the U.S. taxpayer this year alone) would be replaced by a requirement to earn financial and diplomatic support at each step of the way.

Thus, Western funding to the PA would continue, but only subject to the PA verifiably meeting its signed obligations to end terrorism and ghoulish incitement – sacking perfervid, hate-filled clerics; ending glorification of terror on its airwaves; renaming the streets and schools named in honor of suicide bombers; revising its irredentist, jihad-supporting curricula; and above all, jailing terrorists, dismantling their militias and confiscating their weapons.

Such change, in addition to furnishing the only feasible basis for peace, would disabuse people of the fallacy that peace depends upon unilateral Israeli concessions. It would also serve to lower the temperature of the Western lynch mob, which has fixated on Israel in proportion to the magnitude of its unreciprocated concessions.

But none of this can happen if we persist with shadow-boxing.

More information about Arafat, founder of the Palestinian Authority terrorist group in Kremlin puppets and how they work. The Illuminati has its claws in all of this mess, and Arafat was a puppet of the Illuminati, as are our world leaders. Here is an interesting read:

Illuminati Kings

Barb

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By Amira Hass

Palestinian boys kneel over the bodies of Issa, left, Ahmed, center, and Mohamed Samouni, right. September 24, 2009 The Samouni family of Gaza has, to its great misfortune, become one of the best-known families in the world, one that is identified more than any other with the January 2009 onslaught on Gaza. Twenty-nine members of the family were killed on January 4 and 5, the first two days of the ground assault. Two of them, about which this reporter wrote two weeks ago – Atiyeh and his 4-year-old son Ahmed – were killed in their home; 21 were killed in a single building at the same time, and another six were killed separately, in different circumstances. From eyewitness accounts submitted to human rights researchers and journalists, some in real time and others immediately after the forces left Gaza, suspicions arose that the IDF killed people in or near their homes even after it became fully aware that they were civilians; prevented the rescue of the wounded and the arrival of ambulances for several days; used civilians as human shields in a building seized for military purposes; and fired at a convoy of people escaping (and forbade evacuation of a wounded and handcuffed person, who bled to death). According to the IDF Spokesman’s Office, operational echelons within the IDF have been examining “for several months” allegations regarding the killing of the 29 members of the Samouni family. “It should be stressed that the event is divided into a long series of specific claims that relate to different times and places,” the IDF spokesman stated. “When the examination is completed, the findings will be presented to the Military Advocate General, who will decide on the need to take additional steps.” An anonymous military source told Haaretz that “whereas the early reports lacked many substantive details essential for a serious clarification of the allegations … subsequent petitions that were received were much more detailed.” The Samouni compound covers a predominantly agricultural area of 69 dunams (17 acres) in the Zeitoun neighborhood of southeastern Gaza City. About 34 of the buildings and huts there (most of which belong to the extended Samouni family, some to other families) were scattered between hothouses, orchards, chicken coops and a few workshops. Upon its departure, the IDF destroyed 24 buildings in the neighborhood, uprooted orchards and destroyed chicken coops and hothouses. The IDF had deployed on foot in the compound early in the morning on Sunday, January 4, after firing for several hours at the neighborhood’s buildings from all directions. Residents living on Salah a-Din Road testified that they noticed soldiers that night lowering themselves out of a helicopter onto the roof of a neighborhood building. Tanks did not enter the Samouni compound. The following is part of a reconstruction of events that Haaretz has passed on to the IDF Spokesman’s Office for its response. It is based on eyewitness accounts taken by Haaretz from survivors and on findings of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and of B’Tselem. 1. January 4, 2009, 5:30 A.M.: Nidal Samouni, 33, tries to offer aid and to rescue two injured persons in the field near his home on the eastern edge of the neighborhood. He is shot and killed. (Apparently the two were Palestinian fighters.) 2. As a result of the gunfire, a fire breaks out on the upper story of the tallest building in the neighborhood – the home of Talal Samouni (51) and his children and grandchildren. The fire is extinguished. Relatives who live in asbestos buildings nearby flee to Talal’s home. 3. 6 A.M.: Soldiers break into the home of Talal’s brother Atiyeh, 46. (This reporter wrote two weeks ago how he was killed with his young son.) 4. January 4, 6:30 A.M.: An IDF force takes control of the home of the Asa’ad Samouni family (a few hundred meters east of Atiyeh’s house) and turns it into an army position (one of six in the neighborhood). A few dozen civilians remain in the house. 5. The family of the slain Atiyeh Samouni flees to a nearby house. 6. January 4, 8 A.M.: Salah Samouni departs the home of his father Talal and brings his infant son to the home of Wael Samouni, which seems safer because it is not being fired upon. As he leaves, he discerns three soldiers about 40 meters from Wael’s house. They are wearing broad-brimmed hats with nets on them. At first, he thinks they are Palestinian fighters, as he did not expect to see Israeli soldiers walking in the neighborhood. He concludes that they feel safe because there are no armed Palestinians nearby. 7. The soldiers inspect him (pull up his shirt, pull down his pants). He speaks with an officer and tells him the shooting frightens the children. When one of the soldiers starts to act rudely, the officer hushes him. The officer assures Salah that there will be no gunfire. For an hour and a half, there is no gunfire at the house. Everyone is pleased that it is possible to speak with the soldiers and that they listen to civilians. 8. Approximately 10 A.M.: Soldiers lead the neighboring Rashad Samouni family to Talal’s house. 9. Walid, 17, the son of Rashad, descends to the ground floor, where the animal feed is kept. Upon seeing the soldiers, he panics and begins to flee. He is shot and killed. 10. 11 A.M. to noon: Soldiers demand that all the people gathered in Talal Samouni’s home evacuate it. The building becomes an outpost and firing position. The family is transferred a few dozen meters east, to the home of Wael Samouni – a one-story concrete building with one large room, still under construction. All told, there are 97 people. 11. January 4, 5:30 P.M.: At Wael’s house, some women want to bake bread; there is flour but not enough food for everyone and the children are crying from hunger. Several men leave the house, going two meters to collect wood and start a bonfire outside. Soldiers positioned in the high surrounding buildings look on as a young girl, Rizqa Samouni, 14, bakes pita. 12. January 5, approximately 6 A.M.: The children wake up crying, hungry and thirsty. All the water tanks have been punctured by bullets, nothing is left. A woman and child go to a nearby well and filled two jerricans with water as the soldiers watch. 13. January 5, 6:30 A.M.: The women and four or five of the men again leave the building to prepare a fire and bake pita. These persons shout in the direction of the home of Jalal – 100 meters away – where members of the family have been staying. Salah Samouni wanted them to join his group, as he feels that Wael’s house is safe because it was the soldiers who transferred them there. 14. Simultaneously, about four or five men begin collecting wood. They want to break apart a plywood board to burn. Everything is in plain view of the soldiers. All of a sudden something is fired at them – Salah Samouni guesses it’s a mortar shell or a missile from a helicopter or drone – and it kills Mohammed Ibrahim and wounds Salah (in his head), as well as Wael and Iyad. 15. The wounded men immediately reenter the building; the women begin dressing their wounds. A short time later, another shell or missile lands on the room – with its 96 inhabitants – and explodes. Twenty are killed, about 30 are injured. 16. Amid the confusion, smoke and dust, those who are able leave the building, after trying to determine who is alive. 17. A convoy of several dozen people leave Wael’s house, moving east toward Salah a-Din Road. They see a soldier in a position the IDF established in the Sawafiri home. The injured Salah shouts for an ambulance. He claims the soldier yells back in literary Arabic: “Go back to death.” 18. They nevertheless continue toward Salah a-Din Road; a helicopter hovers above them. The soldiers shout “Go back, go back,” and fire above their heads, but not at them. Shifa Ali Samouni, a 71-year-old widow who uses a walker, wandered from the home of one of her sons to Talal’s and then Wael’s house. “In the morning (on Monday),” she recalls, “I went to the bathroom and suddenly felt something falling, which pressed on my ear, and I am falling together with the house. When I came to, I realized blood was dripping from my hand and blood was flowing from my leg. I couldn’t see anything, my eye didn’t see a thing. After I saw my blood, I saw my son Talal, may God have mercy on him, on the chair. I called him and he did not say anything. Three of my sons were gone (Talal, Atiyeh and Rashad), and my sons’ wives, and our grandchildren. And we saw all of them dying, I couldn’t see who was who, my children, my grandchildren, I could not tell one from the other. My head is battered, my ears sealed.” The following are the names of the members of the Samouni family who were killed within minutes by an IDF shelling of the house in which soldiers had gathered them the previous day: Rizqa Mohammed, 55; Talal Hilmi, 51; Rahma Mohammed, 46; Layla Nabiyeh, 41; Rashad Hilmi, 41; Rabab Azzat, 37: Hannan Khamis, 35; Mohammad Ibrahim, 25; Hamdi Maher, 23; Safaa Subhi, 22; Tawfiq Rashad, 21; Maha Mohammed, 20; Huda Nael, 16; Isma’il Ibrahim, 15; Rizqa Wael, 14; Is’haq Ibrahim, 13; Fares Wael, 12; Nasser Ibrahim, 5; A’zza Salah, 2; Mu’atassem Mohammed, 1; Mohammad Hilmi, six months. Among the dead: a mother and her four sons (her husband and daughter survived); two parents and their two sons (their daughter is alive) and another couple and their two daughters. The soldiers left behind graffiti in the home of Rashad Samouni, which Haaretz saw and photographed: “1 down, 999,999 to go,” “The People of Israel lives,” “God is the king, there is nothing besides him,” “Almighty God, we love you,” “We have no one to rely on but our father in heaven,” “Arabs need to die,” “Less than 300 days left ’til I’m released,” “We haven’t drank our fill of blood.”

Link: www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1116912.html

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Ma’an News

September 19, 2009 – Ma’an To many longtime observers of the question of Palestine it is incredible that the United States continues to insert itself as the interlocutor between Palestinians and Israel. Even more incredible is that some Palestinians appear to accept this and to place their faith in the United States as a mediator that will help realize Palestinians’ dreams of self-determination. One must wonder if those who place such faith in the United States understand that this self-declared interlocutor is also the main source of finance to Israel through both trade and cash. Israel, a relatively rich country, receives more American money than any needy developing country in the world. Not only is the US the largest weapons dealer in the world, and it has been for the last sixty years, it is also the main source of the weapons Israel uses to continue to kill and maim Palestinians; it is with those weapons Israel continues to impose an inhumane and illegal occupation on the Palestinian people. But that is not all. As American Professors Mershiemer and Walt have pointed out with irrefutable argumentation, the United States’ foreign policy is significantly influenced by the pro-Israeli lobby. In other words, by accepting the United States s an interlocutor Palestine is in fact accepting an entity that is largely beholden to their enemy. Why else does Israel frequently commend the American efforts? Why do individuals such as American lobbyist and staunch supporter of Israel David Levy repeatedly express his satisfaction with the United States mediation, as he told Al-Jazeera International recently? Or perhaps, most tellingly, why has so little progress been made toward achieving the Palestinians right o self-determination during the past sixty-plus years. It would be naive to think that this situation is a fluke. But it is perhaps equally naive to put the blame only on external actors. Surely Israel wants an interlocutor that will enhance its position. Surely the United States, where at one time there were more Israelis living in New York than in Tel Aviv, will want to help a country with such strong influence on it. And surely other observers, who have much more to lose by angering the Americans then they do by confronting Palestine, will turn a blind eye to this patent injustice. Why, however, do Palestine’s own politicians fail to effectively object to this unjust situation? One reason might be they just don’t know how. Such ignorance is hard to sustain as Palestinian politicians and diplomats are constantly having the unfairness of this situation brought to their attention. It is done by Palestinian politicians from outside Fatah, for example by Hamas, for whose courage to speak truth to power was duly elected to govern Palestine, but prevented from doing so. Another reason might be that they are merely scared that if they reject the US as interlocutor they will lose some of their privileges and economic incentives that come with US investment in the area. Both Fatah and Egyptian officials have even admitted that negotiations continue in Egypt—of course, with support from American money—in part just because the delegates want free trips to Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world. While it is clear that Hamas is less swayed by American money, this might merely provide an incentive for Fatah not to reconcile with Hamas based on the fear that they will lose material perks. But should such concerns have any role in determining how hard the representatives of the Palestinian people work for their peoples’ self-determination? This leads into the third reason Palestinian leaders overlook the American bias: the suspicious alliance between Fatah and the United States. It is often openly acknowledged that individuals like General Keith Dayton, an American Security Advisor based in Palestine, and Mahmoud Dahlan, until recently without any official post but recently elected by Fatah to the PLO Governing Council, have more influence over Palestinian decision making then either the President or the Prime Minister of Palestine. One reason for this is that both receive significant contributions of American money. Together Dayton and Dahlan, working with other supporters of America’s unusual interlocutory position, have even managed to tame the criticism of the United Nations. They have done this in New York and Brussels, allegedly by letting their respective diplomats know that they will be replaced if they don’t tow the party line. At the UN in Geneva, they did replace an independent voice with their own man. As a consequence, when other states and the UN’s most senior official, the President of the 63rd General Assembly, sought to speak out against the bias of the United States, it was Palestinian diplomats who contained them, not Americans or Israelis. Most Palestinians do not even know this. They either believe that the UN decided itself to remain moderate in the face of continuing Israeli injustice, or merely that the weak resolutions that the UN has adopted is all that can be achieved. Perhaps most dangerously of all a growing number of young Palestinians do not seem to care. They have either resigned to their fate of a lifetime under occupation or they flee their country, which is what Israel would prefer. It is through a mix of ignorance and indifference that the United States has maintained the support of the Palestinian government for using it—a partial interlocutor—to negotiate with an enemy whose very existence is questionable under international law. This last fact is perhaps the reason why both external actors and Palestinian officials who support the US mediation, also object to the use of international law as the basis of an answer to the question of Palestine. It took almost a decade to convince the Palestinian government to allow a request for an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice by the UN General Assembly. When the opinion was finally asked, it was not about the settlements as was originally envisioned by the non-governmental proponents of the efforts, but about the wall Israel is building through Palestine. The Palestinian government based in Ramallah still objects to asking a second opinion about the settlements, despite the fact that in its ‘Wall Advisory Opinion’ the Court has already unambiguously stated that the settlements were illegal. The allegations of American partiality as an interlocutor are, of course, relevant to the recent American push to provide an answer to the Palestinian problem. It suggests that the only answer that can come through American intervention is an unjust one and that to rely on the United States as the interlocutor with Israel is at best fool-hearted and at worst extremely dangerous evidenced by the motives of Palestinian officials involved in this effort. Perhaps the saddest aspect of recent events is that there is still at least one alternative to the situation. We must challenge Obama to allow neutral mediation to arrive at an answer about the question of Palestine. If Obama is up to the integrity of his words, he will rise to this challenge. If he is not, he will likely oppose backing down from the American special relationship; either way the lines will then be clear. An appropriate neutral forum would be the UN General Assembly where virtually every independent people in the world are represented. While it is well known that Israel attacks this forum as biased, such arguments are hard to sustain given that it was the UN General Assembly—even in the face of international law forbidding it to do so—that recognized Israel. Thus Israel could be given the choice: either cooperate with the UN in a process of binding arbitration, or, have its recognition as a state withdrawn. Such an insensitive is greater than any other entity can offer, even the United States. It is also undoubtedly possible for the General Assembly to withdraw recognition of Israel as Israel has violated more UN resolutions than it has been alleged that Iran, Syria, North Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan combined have violated. The Quartet is not an adequate alternative to the UN because it is a body loaded with states that are partial and largely united in their opposition to Palestinian aspirations of self-determination; it cannot be an interlocutor that can come to a just solution. The idea of the UN being an appropriate interlocutor is not new. Indeed the UN was the main forum for dealing with the question of Palestine as it became an international issue after World War II. Before that it was the League of Nations, which naively entrusted the British government to look out for Palestinian interests. There are thus rational historical reasons why Palestine might not want the UN to be the impartial interlocutor between itself and the Israelis, but these reasons are no longer valid today. As more governments become Member States of the United Nations, the western European and North American strangle-hold on the world body has weakened. Today—as Israel’s criticisms mentioned above indicate—the UN is a body that has been willing to repeatedly condemn Israel’s violations of international law. It is exactly the past that makes the UN the ideal interlocutor that neither side can claim is biased—Israel and its allies because of the UNGA’s vital contribution to Israel’s very existence and Palestine because of the UNGA’s demonstrated willingness to condemn Israel’s violations of Palestinians human rights. The main burden for achieving the introduction of the UN as the interlocutor rests on the Palestinians. A decision needs to be made in Ramallah and Gaza City, and our president must find the courage to act. This will not be easy. After the decision to take the step is made, Palestinian leaders and diplomats will have to convince officials in New York and Geneva; this will take much skill, but it is possible. It will require that these diplomats are able to explain using the lowest common denominator of international law, the injustice of how Palestine has been treated and to sustain the argument that according to this law Palestinians have the right to exercise the right to self-determination in all of the territory that was mandated to Britain, with the exception of Jordan where the Hashimites were able to exercise their right to self-determination to form their own country. The arguments establishing the legal basis of Palestine’s claim are not as important for their theoretical expression of the rights of the Palestinian people as they are for setting the negotiating mark. Israel is currently infrequently and never in Quartet or US-led negotiations reminded that their very creation was an unambiguous and express violation of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. Regardless of where the negotiations end this should be the starting point. When it is understood that Palestine is willing to compromise a right bestowed on it by international law, the compromise that Israel might have to make concerning its de facto position of power is put in clearer perspective. Such perspective, however, cannot come from a process in which the interlocutor refuses to even recognize the legitimate starting point. Palestinian leaders and diplomats who fail to recognize this do their own people a serious disservice. They deny their own people the most fundamental right they have, which is to their own self-determination. When they do this they start the negotiations at a significant disadvantage. It is as if someone begins to bargain over the price of an item worth 100 Dinars, after having already paid the other party 80 Dinars towards the cost of the item. Unfortunately, it looks like this is how the new round of American or Quartet-led negotiations is going to start. ***Professor Curtis Doebbler, teaches in the Faculty of Law at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine

:: Article nr. 58093 sent on 19-sep-2009 15:48 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=58093

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Marcy Newman, body on the line

August 30, 2009 jordan flaherty, who is one of my favorite journalists has covered, and continues to cover, the man-made disaster that is new orleans after hurricane katrina has a new article marking the four year anniversary, which details the ongoing state of homelessness in new orleans in black agenda report: Crawling through a hole in a fence and walking through an open doorway, Shamus Rohn and Mike Miller lead the way into an abandoned Midcity hospital. They are outreach workers for the New Orleans organization UNITY for the Homeless, and they do this all day long; searching empty houses and buildings for people, so they can offer services and support. “We joke about having turned criminal trespass into a fulltime job,” says Rohn. Up a darkened stairway and through the detritus of a thoroughly scavenged building, Rohn and Miller enter a sundrenched room. Inside is Michael Palmer, a 57-year-old white former construction worker and merchant seaman who has made a home here. Palmer – his friends call him Mickey – is in some ways lucky. He found a room with a door that locks. He salvaged some furniture from other parts of the hospital, so he has a bed, a couch, and a rug. Best of all, he has a fourth-floor room with a balcony. “Of all the homeless,” he says, “I probably have the best view.” Mickey has lived here for six months. He’s been homeless since shortly after Katrina, and this is by far the best place he’s stayed in that time. “I’ve lived on the street,” he says. “I’ve slept in a cardboard box.” He is a proud man, thin and muscled with a fresh shave, clean clothes and a trim mustache. He credits a nearby church, which lets him shave and shower. But Palmer would like to be able to pay rent again. “My apartment was around $450. I could afford $450. I can’t afford $700 or $800 and that’s what the places have gone up to.” Keeping himself together, well-dressed and fresh, Mickey is trying to go back to the life he had. “I have never lived on the dole of the state,” he says proudly. “I’ve never been on welfare, never collected food stamps.” Palmer rented an apartment before Katrina. He did repairs and construction. “I had my own business,” he says. “I had a pickup truck with all my tools, and all that went under water.” Palmer is one of thousands of homeless people living in New Orleans’ storm damaged and abandoned homes and buildings. Four years after Katrina, recovery and rebuilding has come slow to this city, and there are many boarded-up homes to choose from. The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center counts 65,888 abandoned residential addresses in New Orleans, and this number doesn’t include any of the many non-residential buildings, like the hospital Mickey stays in. Overall, about a third of the addresses in the city are vacant or abandoned, the highest rate in the nation. UNITY for the Homeless is the only organization surveying these spaces, and Miller and Rohn are the only fulltime staff on the project. They have surveyed 1,330 buildings – a small fraction of the total number of empty structures. Of those, 564 were unsecured. Nearly 40% of them showed signs of use, including a total of 270 bedrolls or mattresses. Using conservative estimates, UNITY estimates at least 6,000 squatters, and a total of about 11,000 homeless individuals in the city. UNITY workers have also found that not all people living in New Orleans’ abandoned homes are squatters. In the last three months alone, they have found nine homeowners living in their own toxic, flood-damaged, often completely unrepaired homes. These are people living in buildings – identified as abandoned and not fit for human habitation – that they (or extended family members) actually own, but cannot afford to repair. The abandoned building dwellers they’ve found are generally older than the overall homeless population, with high rates of disability and illness. The average age of folks they have found is 45, and the oldest was 90. Over 70% report or show signs of psychiatric disorders, and 42% show signs of disabling medical illnesses and problems. Disabling means “people that are facing death if not treated properly,” clarifies Rohn. “We’re not talking about something like high blood pressure.” flaherty also recently traveled to gaza with a delegation from new orleans and here is one of their recent video documentaries about palestinian political prisoners from gaza (and who also imprisoned in gaza):

Link: bodyontheline.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/homeless-in-new-orleans-prisoners-in-gaza/

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• A Video Which Israel Does Not Want You See

Saed Bannoura – IMEMC

August 28, 2009 In an Interview with Haaretz newspaper, Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated that Israel must learn from the Holocaust that it cannot gain security thought fences, walls and guns. Archbishop Tutu was commenting of statement made by Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Germany, in which he said that “Israel should always defend itself”. Tutu said that “the regime in South Africa never managed to get security from the barrel of the gun, but got security after recognizing and respecting every person”. The Nobel Prize laureate made his statement to Haaretz in Jerusalem and “The Elders” concluded their tour in Israel and Palestine, except the Gaza Strip. The Elders are hoping to be able to visit Gaza in the future. Archbishop Tutu added that the west was consumed with the guilt for what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust, “and they should be, but the people who are paying the price for that are that Palestinians”. He also referred to a meeting he had in the past with a German ambassador who told him that Germany is guilty for two wrongs; what it did to the Jews, and the current suffering of the Palestinians. Archbishop Tutu criticized some Jewish groups in the United States who intimidate any person who criticizes the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and accused them of being anti-Semite. He said that such groups pressured many universities in the United States into cancelling his appearance on their campuses. Tutu added that this is a very unfortunate issue, and that his opinions are derived from the Torah. “God created us on his own image”, he said, “God is always in favor of the oppressed”. Commenting on the a statement made by Professor Neve Gordon, of the Ben-Gurion University, in which he said that selective sanctions should be imposed on Israel, archbishop Tutu stated that sanctions played an important role in fighting apartheid in South Africa. He added that sanctions are one of the most “psychologically powerful instruments”, and that sanctions “hit the pocket of the government in South Africa, when we had the arms, the embargo, and the economic boycott”. The Elders visited the West Bank village of Bil’in, near Ramallah, as dozens of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists were holding their weekly nonviolent protest against the Annexation. Archbishop Tutu said that the peace activists in Bil’in remind him of Ghandi, as he managed to overthrow the British rule in India by nonviolent means. Commenting on some Israeli schools refusing to receive Ethiopian Jews in their schools, Tutu stated that he hopes the Israeli society would evolve. During the live webcast on the Elders Website, Archbishop Tutu said that he hopes to see a free Palestine and a secure Israel and added that peace is possible. “We are with yes, and yes, don’t’ give up, don’t give up, peace is possible, and we will be coming to celebrate with you when Palestine is free, and when Israel is free and secure”

Link: www.imemc.org/article/61523

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