Category: In the Media

ICC may try IDF officer in wake of Goldstone Gaza report

Yotam Feldman | Ha’aretz

24 September 2009

A senior prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said Monday that he is considering opening an investigation into whether Lt. Col. David Benjamin, an Israel Defense Forces reserve officer, allowed war crimes to be committed during the IDF’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip this winter.

The officer – a dual citizen of Israel and South Africa, where he was born – served in the Military Advocate General’s international law department, which authorized which targets troops would strike before and during the operation.

Newsweek magazine released an interview Monday with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina in which he said he is convinced his office has the authority to launch an investigation into Benjamin’s actions.

The ICC has until now refrained from trying IDF officers, as it lacks authority to do so, since Israel is not a signatory to the 2002 Rome Treaty that founded the court. South Africa, however, did sign the treaty, so the ICC is authorized to indict its citizens.

Moreno-Ocampo’s remarks are in line with the recommendations of a UN fact-finding commission on the Gaza war headed by South African justice Richard Goldstone. Last week, that panel urged the UN Security Council to refer both Israel and the Hamas leadership in Gaza for prosecution in the ICC unless both launched fully independent investigations into alleged war crimes by the end of this year.

The ICC began looking into Benjamin’s case after receiving material from pro-Palestinian organizations in South Africa. The material included a transcript of an interview Benjamin gave to the web site Bloomberg.com, in which the officer recounted his involvement in legal consultations with the IDF ahead of army operations.

“We were intimately involved in planning,” Benjamin said, including “authorizing the targets that could be struck, war materiel – everything passed by us.”

Benjamin served for many years as legal adviser to the GOC Southern Command, and later headed the Military Advocate General’s department on international law.

In August, he visited South Africa to attend a conference organized by the local Jewish community on international law during wartime, with special reference to the Gaza war. Benjamin later described the trip as a “personal hasbara [public diplomacy] trip.”

The pro-Palestinian organizations promptly asked South African state prosecutors to open an investigation into suspicions that Benjamin had committed war crimes in Gaza. To avoid a potential confrontation with local authorities, Benjamin left South Africa several days earlier than he had planned.

At the conference, Benjamin rejected claims that the IDF committed war crimes in Gaza, as well as demands that Israel’s wartime conduct be subject to an external investigation.

Dennis Davis – a South African district court judge and international law lecturer at the University of Cape Town, who directed the conference – said he firmly opposed the remarks delivered by Benjamin, who was once his law student. Davis added that were Benjamin still his student, he would “fail him.”

Benjamin resigned from the IDF in late January of this year, though his official retirement vacation began in November 2008. When the Gaza operation began, however, he returned to his former position in the Military Advocate General’s office.

But Benjamin says he was not directly involved in planning operations during the war. He told Haaretz yesterday that during the Bloomberg interview, he was speaking not of himself personally, but of the army, and the Military Advocate General’s office, as a whole.

“I spoke in the name of the army, and of the Military Advocate General, so I told them what we’re like in the collective sense,” he said. “We authorized and we carried out, but I wasn’t [directly] involved in Gaza.”

“What’s important is that the State of Israel doesn’t need Goldstone to tell it what needs to be done,” he added. “There is a human rights agenda in the world, but those who work with this agenda have the luxury of not needing to balance human rights needs and security needs, and we do need to have that balance.”

“Presumably the military advocate general, who personally authorized the IDF’s actions, will himself be investigated?” he continued. “There is a supervisory mechanism – the attorney general is above the military advocate general, and he can intervene. The High Court of Justice can also intervene.”

The IDF Spokesman’s Office said yesterday that “Lt. Col. David Benjamin is a respected officer who served for many years in legal positions in the IDF, and assisted the military in managing its activities in accordance with the rules of international law.”

“Although during Operation Cast Lead, Lt. Col. Benjamin was on retirement vacation abroad, he returned to Israel on his own initiative in order to aid the military in its public diplomacy efforts,” it continued. “Any attempt to initiate legal proceedings, as described in the article, is perverse and driven by political motives, and ultimately [the allegations] will be revealed as baseless.”

Col. (Res.) Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, who headed the Military Advocate General’s international law department during the Gaza War, refused to comment on Moreno-Ocampo’s remarks.

The ICC Office of the Prosecutor said officials had examined the material the court received as part of a preliminary investigation intended to determine whether it has the authority to hear cases on war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza.

Widows and Children Begin to Beg

Eva Bartlett | Inter Press Service

21 September 2009

There are few parks and green spaces in Gaza, and those that exist are crowded with people hungry for nature. Day and night, people of all ages flock to the Joondi, or the park of the Unknown Soldier, in central Gaza City.

Vendors set up, selling roasted nuts, falafels, cold drinks, tea and coffee. Further east, Gaza’s main garden park, charging one shekel (25 cents) admission, hosts some groomed shrubbery, decorative trees and flowers. It pales in comparison to arboretums elsewhere, but it is a bit of green in an otherwise grey Strip.

On Gaza’s main east-west street Omar Mukthar, the more upscale shopping area of Rimal attracts clothing, perfume, electronics and souvenir shoppers. The inventory is a sad collection of cheap fabrics and highly expensive electronics. Gazans have no other choice, save the tunnel markets in Rafah. But in the end, the majority of goods come via the same tunnels, and end up all being overly expensive.

Those with shekels to spend go to the few trendy coffee shops in Rimal or the Shifa hospital district. But the choices are basically the same: Arabic coffee, cappuccino, juices, light meals. And the entertainment is limited to use of the wireless internet, Arabic music played over the café’s loudspeakers, and chatting with friends, perhaps while smoking a water pipe.

Some choose these cafés to hold birthday celebrations to an Arabic rendition of the ‘Happy Birthday’ song. A cake costing on average 70 shekels is the highlight of the celebration.

But all this too is for the privileged few. Most of Gaza’s 1.5 million cannot afford frivolities like these, let alone consistent meals, diapers, baby milk, and school clothing and books.

For most Palestinians in Gaza, there is no escaping the constraints of a suffocating Israeli-imposed siege that, with the complicity of the Egyptian government and the international community, has tightened since June 2007 when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip. The siege goes further back from that time two years ago to shortly after Hamas was elected in early 2006. Since then, Palestinians have lived under increasingly choking restrictions on what can enter and leave Gaza.

In the Rimal shopping area, a growing number of Palestinians have resorted to begging. Among them are widows trying to provide for their children, and children themselves begging to contribute to family income.

An increasing presence of children selling one-shekel items dominates most Gaza city streets. The children, as young as seven or eight years old, spend their days enticing pedestrians or drivers at stoplights to buy their trinkets.

There are few recreation options for youths. No cinema, no concerts, no nightclubs, none of the pastimes that youths around the world enjoy. Partly this is due to the conservative culture in Gaza, but mostly it is the siege, and the many Israeli military attacks on Gaza. A venue for theatre, a wood- panelled stage at the Al-Quds hospital complex, was destroyed by fire from Israeli shelling during the three-week winter war on Gaza.

The primary obstacle in any case is financial: with extreme poverty levels among 90 percent of the population according to the September 2009 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCATD) report, the majority of Palestinians in Gaza depend on food aid, and scrape by on inadequate high-carbohydrate diets, with no extra money for luxuries like school clothes and books.

Ibrahim, Mahmoud and Mahdi, teenagers from Beit Hanoun, are still finishing their final year of high school, and have not reached the state of frustration many recent university graduates feel at the scarcity of work in Gaza. For them full-time employment worries are still some years off.

They spend their free time in a few simple ways: “We play football four or five times a week,” says Mahdi. “I go swimming nearly every day,” says Mahmoud, “but I’m always afraid because of the Israeli gunboats. They have shelled the beach before.”

Ibrahim points to a motorcycle parked nearby. “If we had money for one of those, we’d cruise the coastal road,” he says.

Otherwise, men (and some women) young and old indulge in water pipes and coffee, tea, or juice in the evenings, some choosing the relatively trendy cafes in Gaza city, others favouring a local coffee shop. Yet others flock to the sea, to enjoy night air and the breeze while smoking shisha.

Despite the dangers from Israeli gunboats and the severe contamination of Gaza’s sea – with upwards of 80 million litres of sewage dumped daily into the sea for want of adequate wastewater treatment plants – many choose to swim nonetheless. They have few other options for cooling off and for recreation.

“We installed a sort of diving board off the edge of the pier,” says a coastguard. “Every day we go swimming there.” Gaza port is one of the more polluted areas, with a combination of sewage and the usual boat oils and wastes found in marinas.

Gaza’s economy is decimated – 95 percent of industries have shut down. Fishers constantly face the threat of Israeli gunboats, and struggle to provide for their families. Merchants cannot import goods via Israel as they had done for years prior, instead bringing smuggled goods in via the tunnels.

Hamsa Al-Bateran, 22, presents the face of Gaza’s extreme poverty. Living in a single room with an asbestos ceiling with his wife Iman and their three- month-old son, he is now desperate.

Before his son was born, Al-Bateran scoured the streets of Gaza for recyclable plastics, loading his findings onto a horse cart. Sometimes people would hire his horse and cart to move large items.

“My son got ill. I had to sell the horse and cart so I could pay his hospital bills. Now I have no way of earning money.”

Al-Bateran is forever thinking of finding ways to survive. Recreation is a concept he doesn’t even consider.

“I even thought of working in the tunnels. I’ll do any job, I just need to earn money to feed my wife and baby, buy milk for him,” he said. He does not hold a Palestinian refugee card, and so is not eligible for the dry food aid that most refugees in Gaza receive. Without this and with no source of income, he depends on aid from his impoverished relatives.

For a recent university graduate, prospects are not good. Ahmed works in a small convenience shop in Beit Hanoun. “I work every day, from 8 am to 6 pm,” he says. “I get about 20 shekels a day.” This is the same amount most farm labourers receive, although some working in and near the buffer zone are paid more. But they face mortal danger under Israeli soldiers’ shoot-to- kill policy.

Mahfouz Kabariti, 51, has a decorations shop in Gaza city. “I used to import from China. My business is failing because of the restrictions on imports. Now I buy poor quality, expensive items brought through the tunnels.”

Like many, he feels there is little point opening early. “I used to open my shop at 8 am. But now, I open around 11 am and close early. It’s just my son and I working in the shop now. We had to let our employees go, there was no work for them.”

Said Al-Saedi, 50, has fished for over 30 years. “In the 1980s, we used to take the boat out for six or seven days before returning. We’d sail near Libya, to Port Said in Egypt. We could easily earn 20,000 per month,” he says. “Today, I don’t fish, I can’t fish.”

Spain excludes settlement university from academic competition

Global BDS Movement

20 September 2009

The “University Center of Ariel in Samaria” (AUCS) has been excluded from a prestigious university competition about sustainable architecture in Spain. With this move, Spain joins the growing number of European governments taking effective, even though preliminary, steps to uphold international law by boycotting or divesting from institutions and corporations involved in or profiting from Israel’s illegal Wall and colonial settlements built on occupied Palestinian land..

“Ariel University Centre of Samaria” was one out of 21 teams selected last April to compete for the Solar Decathlon-Madrid 2010, the most prestigious competition for sustainable architecture in the world, organized by the Spanish Ministry of Housing together with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid .[1]

Selected teams, formed by architects and engineering students are asked to design and build a real house entirely driven by solar energy. Every house should be built in one of the 20 sites in the “Solar Villa” planned in Madrid to host them. To facilitate participation of the various teams, the Spanish Ministry of Housing allocated a sum of 100,000 Euros to every project.

Last Wednesday,September 16th, Sergio Vega, General Director of Solar Decathlon Europe addressed all participant teams to inform them of the exclusion of AUCS:”The decision has been taken by the Government of Spain based upon the fact that the University is located in the [occupied] West Bank. The Government of Spain is obliged to respect the international agreements under the framework of the European Union and the United Nations regarding this geographical area.” It represents the first case of sanctions against an Israeli academic institution in Spain and one of the very first such actions in the West.

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) in Palestine has taken up the campaign against official Spanish support of the illegal Israeli university in occupied Palestinian territory following an initiative of the UK based professional association, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP). The support of many individuals and organizations in Spain for the cancellation of AUCS’s participation in the Solar Decathlon had culminated in a parliamentary question in the Spanish Parliament [2] and the eventual exclusion of the illegal settlement academic institution from the competition.

This move of the government of Spain follows the decision of the UK government not to rent offices from Israeli settlement builder Lev Leviev and the divestment of the Norwegian Pension Fund from Elbit Systems, an Israeli company providing surveillance equipment to the Wall.

The BNC congratulates the Spanish university teachers, parliamentarians and organizations for this principled stand with the Palestinian people and international law and calls for sustained support of the Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions(BDS) against Israel and all its complicit institutions, including universities, until it fully complies with its obligations under international law and respects universal human rights, specifically by ending the occupation, facilitating the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin and ensuring equal rights for all Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Israel’s Gaza blockade crippling reconstruction

Rory McCarthy | The Guardian

18 September 2009

A leaked UN report has warned that Israel’s continued economic blockade of Gaza and lengthy delays in delivering humanitarian aid are “devastating livelihoods” and causing gradual “de-development”.

For more than two years, Gaza has been under severe Israeli restrictions, preventing all exports and confining imports to a limited supply of humanitarian goods.

Now, eight months after the end of the Gaza war, much reconstruction work is still to be done because materials are either delayed or banned from entering the strip.

The UN report, obtained by the Guardian, reveals the delays facing the delivery of even the most basic aid. On average, it takes 85 days to get shelter kits into Gaza, 68 days to deliver health and paediatric hygiene kits, and 39 days for household items such as bedding and kitchen utensils.

Among the many items delayed are notebooks and textbooks for children returning to school. As many as 120 truckloads of stationery were “stranded” in the West Bank and Israel due to “ongoing delays in approval”.

There were “continued difficulties” in importing English textbooks for grades four to nine – affecting 130,000 children – and material used to print textbooks for several subjects in grades one to nine.

Government schools were reported to lack paper and chalk, while the UN Relief and Works Agency, which supports Palestinian refugees and runs many schools in Gaza, was still waiting to import 4,000 desks and 5,000 chairs.

The UN says the current situation “contravenes” a UN security council resolution passed during the war in January, which called for “unimpeded provision and distribution” of humanitarian aid for Gaza.

“The result is a gradual process of de-development across all sectors, devastating livelihoods, increasing unemployment and resulting in increased aid dependency amongst the population,” says the report from the UN Office of the Humanitarian Co-ordinator.

According to UN statistics, around 70% of Gazans live on less than a dollar a day, 75% rely on food aid and 60% have no daily access to water. As many as 20,000 Palestinians are still displaced after the war, most living with relatives or renting apartments.

Among the most urgent needs is glass to repair shattered windows before the winter rains. Glass, along with other construction materials, is one of the many items banned by Israel from entering the strip. The UN also wanted to deliver agricultural products to reach farmers in time for their main planting season over the next few months. Industrial fuel was required for the power plant, along with bank notes for aid projects and salaries.

In June and July, there was a slight relaxation of the restrictions, allowing in small amounts of agricultural fertilizers, glass, aluminium, cattle and tools for repairing houses. Plastic pipes have been allowed in but only 69% of the water network that was damaged during the war has so far been repaired.

The UN said that, despite this “ad hoc” easing of the blockade, it found “no significant improvement in the quantity and scope of goods allowed into Gaza”. Imports are 80% down on the period before the blockade, and most of what does enter Gaza is from a narrow range of food and hygiene items.

Israel began putting restrictions on Gaza after Hamas won the Palestinian elections in early 2006, and imposed the blockade in June 2007 after the party seized control of the strip.

Egypt has also kept its border with Gaza largely closed, though growing quantities of goods, including fridges and even small cars, are smuggled in from Egypt through tunnels. The UN said the high cost of these goods meant that only wealthier Gazans benefitted, with “little trickle-down effect for the vast majority of the population”.

A spokesman for Israel’s co-ordinator of government activities in the territories did not respond to calls for comment yesterday. The Israeli military sends journalists near-daily text messages noting the number of delivery trucks scheduled to enter Gaza.

On most working days, between 70 and 100 trucks are due to cross – a number which aid agencies say is still well short of that required. The average flow of 9,500 trucks a month entering Gaza in late 2005 was also considered insufficient.

In July this year, only 2,231 trucks crossed the blockade.

Britain’s unions commit to a mass boycott movement of Israeli goods

Global BDS Movement

17 September 2009

In a landmark decision, Britain’s trade unions have voted overwhelmingly to commit to build a mass boycott movement, disinvestment and sanctions on Israel for a negotiated settlement based on justice for Palestinians.

The motion was passed at the 2009 TUC Annual Congress in Liverpool today (17 September), by unions representing 6.5 million workers across the UK.

Hugh Lanning, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: ‘This motion is the culmination of a wave of motions passed at union conferences this year, following outrage at Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, and reflects the massive growth in support for Palestinian rights. We will be working with the TUC to develop a mass campaign to boycott Israeli goods, especially agricultural products that have been produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.’

The motion additionally called for the TUC General Council to put pressure on the British government to end all arms trading with Israel and support moves to suspend the EU-Israel trade agreement. Unions are also encouraged to disinvest from companies which profit from Israel’s illegal 42-year occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

The motion was tabled by the Fire Brigades Union. The biggest unions in the UK, including Unite, the public sector union, and UNISON, which represents health service workers, voted in favour of the motion.

The motion also condemned the Israeli trade union Histadrut’s statement supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, which killed 1,450 Palestinians in three weeks, and called for a review of the TUC’s relationship with Histadrut.

Britain’s trade unions join those of South Africa and Ireland in voting to use a mass boycott campaign as a tool to bring Israel into line with international law, and pressure it to comply with UN resolutions that encourage justice and equality for the Palestinian people..