Tag: International law - Page 92 - International Solidarity Movement

Israel snubs UN Gaza war inquiry

16 April 2009

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson has confirmed to Al Jazeera that it will not co-operate with a United Nations investigation into alleged war crimes during the 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip.

Up to 1,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed before Israel ended the offensive in January.

Thirteen Israelis, 10 of them soldiers, were killed during the same period.

The UN Human Rights Council has appointed Richard Goldstone, a South African judge and former UN war crimes prosecutor, to examine claims of human rights violations by both Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters during the conflict.

Israel has previously complained that the UN body is biased against it.

“The investigation has no moral ground since it decided even before it started who is guilty and of what,” Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman, said earlier this month.

Imprecise artillery

Human rights groups have called for the UN investigation to look into allegations that the Israeli fired imprecise artillery and controversial white phosphorus shells in built-up neighbourhoods.

It is also expected to examine the indiscriminate firing of rocket into southern Israel by Palestinian fighters, Israel’s stated reason for launching the offensive last December.

Sporadic rocket fire into Israel has continued since the war, and on Thursday Israel bombed a house in a Gaza refugee camp. No casualties were reported.

Goldstone’s four-member team is expected to travel to the region in a few weeks’ time and will issue a report to the council in July.

But Israel’s refusal to work with the investigators raises questions about whether an adequate investigation can be completed.

However, Israel said that Goldstone, who is Jewish and has close ties to Israel, is not the problem.

“[It’s] not about Justice Goldstone,” Aharon Leshno Yaar, the Israeli ambassador to UN organisations in Geneva, said on Tuesday.

“It’s clear to everybody who follows this council and the way that it treats Israel that justice cannot be the outcome of this mission.”

‘Imaprtiality’

In New York, a leading human rights group urged both sides to co-operate.

Human Rights Watch, noted that it has criticised the UN rights council in the past “for its exclusive focus on Israeli rights violations”.

However, Goldstone has the “experience and proven commitment to ensure that this inquiry will demonstrate the highest standards of impartiality,” the group wrote in a letter to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and 27 European foreign ministers.

Hamas has already welcomed the investigation.

The investigators “will find full co-operation of the Palestinian government and Palestinian people because the crimes of the occupation are clear and no one can underestimate them”, Yousef Rizka, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, the de facto prime minister in Gaza, said.

Israel is co-operating with a separate investigation into several attacks on UN facilities during the conflict, including one which destroyed a warehouse belonging to the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides food aid for the Gazans.

Amnesty International urges Obama to halt further exports to Israel

Ma’an News Agency

11 April 2009

The United States sent a massive new shipment of arms to Israel despite evidence that US weapons were misused against civilians in the Gaza attacks, Amnesty International revealed on 1 April.

The human rights organization said about 14,000 tons worth of arms and munitions sent to Israel on the Wher Elbe, a German cargo ship chartered and controlled by the US Military Sealift Command, docked and unloaded its cargo on 22 March at the Israeli port of Ashdod, about 25 miles north of Gaza.

Amnesty called on US President Obama to suspend future arms shipments to Israel until there is no longer substantial risk of human rights violations.

The Pentagon confirmed the successful unloading of the ship, which left the United States for Israel on 20 December, a week before the start of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

According to the Amnesty report, the ship carried 989 containers of munitions, each of them 20 feet long with a total estimated net weight of 14,000 tons.

“Legally and morally, this US arms shipment should have been halted by the Obama administration given the evidence of war crimes resulting from military equipment and munitions of this kind used by the Israeli forces,” said Brian Wood, arms control campaign manager for Amnesty International. “Arms supplies in these circumstances are contrary to provisions in US law.”

Amnesty International has issued documented evidence that white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the United States were used to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes in Gaza. The human rights organization provided comprehensive details on munitions used in the fighting in a 37-page briefing paper, Fueling Conflict: Foreign Arms Supplies to Israel/Gaza, in February.

Asked about the Wehr Elbe shipment, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to Amnesty International that “the unloading of the entire US munitions shipment was successfully completed at Ashdod [Israel] on 22 March.” The spokesperson said that the shipment was destined for a US “pre-positioned ammunition stockpile” in Israel.

Under a US-Israel agreement, munitions from this stockpile may be transferred to the Israeli military if necessary. A State Department official told Amnesty that Israel’s use of US weapons during the Gaza conflict is under review and efforts are being made to ensure that Israel complied with US law. A conclusion has not yet been reached.

“There is a great risk that the new munitions may be used by the Israeli military to commit further violations of international law, like the ones committed during the war in Gaza,” said Wood. “We are urging all governments to impose an immediate and comprehensive suspension of arms to Israel, and to all Palestinian armed groups, until there is no longer a substantial risk of serious human rights violations.”

“The United States government now has ample evidence from the Gaza attacks indicating that the arms it is sending to Israel have been misused to kill and injure men, women and children and to destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of property. It can no longer send weapons to Israel while ignoring these facts,” said Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director, Amnesty International USA, who was in the region during the Gaza crisis.

The United States was by far the largest supplier of weapons to Israel between 2004 and 2008. The US government is also due to provide 30 billion US dollars in military aid to Israel, despite the alleged misuse of weaponry and munitions in Gaza and Lebanon by the Israeli military. President Obama, according to published reports, has no plans to cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel under a new 10-year contract agreed in 2007 by the Bush administration. This new contract is a 25 percent increase, compared to the last contract agreed by the previous US administration.

Amnesty International has documented suspected war crimes committed by the Israeli military and by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. On 15 January, Amnesty International called on all governments to immediately suspend arms transfers to all parties to the Gaza conflict to prevent further violations being committed using munitions and other military equipment.

Al-Fakhouri home demolished in East Jerusalem

6 April 2009

On the morning of 6 April, about 150 Israeli soldiers, police & border police came and woke up the 22 members of the Al-Fakhouri family in the Burj Al-Laqlaq neighborhood. The Israeli forces blocked all the entrance roads to the house and occupied three rooftops threatening to arrest anyone who got near the house being demolished.

Around 30 workers destroyed the house in a process taking about 5 hours. The workers left concrete rubble and other debris in the surrounding street. The family was told that for everyday the rubble was left in the streets, the family would be charged 600 shekels on top of paying for the demolition itself.

The family found a demolition order on their door only 2 days prior to the demolition, on Thursday 2nd of April. On the 5th of April, Israeli police showed up at the house around 3PM with another demotion order and told the family to contact a lawyer.

The house was demolished three years ago and the family started rebuilding one and half years before the latest demolition. Due to the limited amount of space and crowded conditions one father in the family had to move with his children because they got sick.

The land and house has been in possession of the Al-Fakhouri family for over 100 years.

The demolition of the Al-Fakhouri home is part of the Israeli ethnic cleansing of occupied East Jerusalem. Over 100 other homes are slated for demolition, which will leave thousands homeless.

Support the Gaza 6; citizens decommission weapons for Israeli use in attacks on Gaza

Support the EDO Decommissioners

6 April 2009

On Jan 17th, while Israeli bombs were still raining down on the people of Gaza, six people gained entry to EDO MBM/ITT, a factory in Brighton manufacturing military equipment being used by the Israeli air force, and smashed machinery and computers causing at least 300 000 pounds worth of damage and closing the factory for nearly a week.

According to one witness computers and filing cabinets were hurled out of top floor windows the protesters broke in to the factory in the early hours staging a “citizen’s decommissioning” of the EDO-MBM/ITT arms factory in direct response to the killings of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military.

Elijah Smith, one of the protesters that broke into the factory, said before the action, “I’m looking at the world scene and I’m getting more and more horrified. I’ve been looking at the law and I don’t feel I’m going to do anything illegal tonight, but I’m going to go into an arms factory and smash it up to the best of my ability so that it cannot actually work or produce munitions and these very dirty bombs that have been provided to the Israeli army so that they can kill children. The time for talking has gone too far. I’m not a writer, I’m just a person from the community and I’m deeply disgusted.”

Several activists recorded messages prior to breaking in to the factory. These messages, as well as a video of the break in were posted on the internet shortly after.

The 6 people surrendered to the police when they arrived and have been charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage along with three others arrested nearby. Two people, Elijah Smith and Robert Alford, have been remanded in custody since January. The 6 will argue in their defence that they had a lawful excuse to cause the damage because they believed that EDO’s equipment was being used in the commission of war crimes by the Israeli military.

Israel’s bombing of Gaza killed 1400 people including at least 400 children. There is incontrovertible evidence that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. These crimes would not have been possible without weapons supplied by companies like EDO MBM.

The trial of the Gaza 6 may last several months and hinge on whether the jury accepts that crimes were committed by Israel.

Please sign the online petition in support of the EDO decommissioners.

If you hear the sound of a child being brutalised in the house next door and you rush in to smash the door down and save the child, should you be charged with breaking and entering? Obviously not.
– Eamonn McCann of the Raytheon 9

Make a donation to the defendants (to cover tobacco, etc for those in prison and defendants travel to court).

A harsh reality for Palestinians

Ahmad Tibi | The New York Times

6 April 2009

JERUSALEM — The right-wing coalition of the new Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, does not bode well for Palestinians in Israel. With the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister, the extremists are going after the indigenous population and threatening us with loyalty tests and the possibility of “transfer” into an area nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu’s intransigence vis-à-vis Palestinians in the occupied territories is certainly cause for concern. No less concerning is what the Netanyahu-Lieberman combination may mean to Palestinian citizens of Israel.

This government, particularly with Lieberman as foreign minister, should be boycotted by the international community, just as it once boycotted Jörg Haider, the late Austrian far-right politician who won global notoriety for his anti-immigrant views.

Lieberman, in one of many outrageous comments, declared in May 2004 that 90 percent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens “have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.”

But my family and I were on this land centuries before Lieberman arrived here in 1978 from Moldova. We are among the minority who managed to remain when some 700,000 Palestinians were forced out by Israel in 1948.

Today, Lieberman stokes anti-Palestinian sentiment with his threat of “transfer” — a euphemism for renewed ethnic cleansing. Henry Kissinger, too, has called for a territorial swap, and Lieberman cites Kissinger to give his noxious idea a more sophisticated sheen. Lieberman and Kissinger envision exchanging a portion of Israel for a portion of the occupied West Bank seized illegally by Jewish settlers.

But Israel has no legal right to any of the occupied Palestinian territories. And Lieberman has no right to offer the land my home is on in exchange for incorporating Jewish settlers into newly defined Israeli state borders. We are citizens of the state of Israel and do not want to exchange our second-class citizenship in our homeland — subject as we are to numerous laws that discriminate against us — for life in a Palestinian Bantustan.

We take our citizenship seriously and struggle daily to improve our lot and overcome discriminatory laws and practices.

We face discrimination in all fields of life. Arab citizens are 20 percent of the population, but only 6 percent of the employees in the public sector. Not one Arab employee is working in the central bank of Israel. Imagine if there was not one African-American citizen employed in the central bank of the United States.

Israel is simultaneously running three systems of government. The first is full democracy toward its Jewish citizens — ethnocracy. The second is racial discrimination toward the Palestinian minority — creeping Jim Crowism. And the third is occupation of the Palestinian territories with one set of laws for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers — apartheid.

A few weeks ago, Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party led the charge in the Israeli Knesset to ban my party — the Arab Movement for Renewal — from participating in the elections. Netanyahu’s Likud also supported the action. The Supreme Court overturned the maneuvers of the politicians. But their attempt to ban our participation should expose Israel’s democracy to the world as fraudulent.

Lieberman’s inveighing against Palestinian citizens of Israel is not new. Less than three years ago, he called for my death and the death of some of my Palestinian Knesset colleagues for daring to meet with democratically elected Palestinian leaders. Speaking before the Knesset plenum, Lieberman stated: “World War II ended with the Nuremberg trials. The heads of the Nazi regime, along with their collaborators, were executed. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in this house.” Lieberman now has the power to put his vile views into practice.

We call for more attention from the Obama administration toward the Palestinian minority in Israel. It is a repressed minority suffering from inadequately shared state resources. The enormous annual American aid package to Israel fails almost entirely to reach our community.

Between Netanyahu and Lieberman, the Obama administration will have its hands full. Make no mistake that Netanyahu and Lieberman will press the new administration hard to accept Israeli actions in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — as well as discriminatory anti-Palestinian actions in Israel itself. Settlements will grow and discrimination deepen. American backbone will be crucial in the months ahead.

Ahmad Tibi is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a member of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.