Tag: United Nations

Gazan human rights organizations hold press conference

ISM Gaza

3 October 2009

Following the Palestinian Authority decision on 2 October to defer the draft proposal endorsing the UN “Goldstone Report”, nearly twenty different human rights organizations issued a statement and held a press conference condemning the Palestinian Authority’s decision. Among the groups were the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Badil, Adalah, Defense for Children (DCI)-Palestine, and other women’s, prisoners’ and children’s rights groups from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

PCHR, Al Mezan, Addameer and the Commission for Human Rights representatives spoke at a press conference in front of the bombed Ministry complex, targeted repeatedly by F-16 attacks during the winter Israeli massacre of Gaza.

Following the 23 day massacre of Gaza, Justice Richard Goldstone and a team of investigators conducted two visits to Gaza, during which they heard nearly 200 interviews, and reviewed thousands of documents, photos, and videos, reported the UK’s Guardian.

The report, 575 pages, found evidence of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity during their massacre of Gaza. Nearly 1500 Palestinians have died, during and following the massacre, as a result of injuries sustained during the attacks.

As Palestinian human rights organizations and international NGOs contended, the majority of those killed civilians.

While the United States accused the report of being biased (without clarifying exactly how, Goldstone pointed out), Israeli authorities did not cooperate with the UN investigation. Nonetheless, the UN report looked at what it called crimes committed by Palestinian resistance during the Israeli attacks.

“Justice delayed is justice denied. All victims have a legitimate right to an effective judicial remedy, and the equal protection of the law.”

This is the most important message from the human rights groups protesting the PA’s deferral.

“The crimes documented in the report of the UN Fact Finding Mission represent the most serious violations of international law,” the statement said. “Justice Goldstone concluded that there was evidence to indicate that crimes against humanity may have been committed in the Gaza Strip.”

The statement also notes that with the continued imposition of an all-encompassing siege on the population of Gaza, Israel’s violations of international law continue.

Aside from recognizing the validity of the UN report’s findings, the human rights groups point out that “International human rights and humanitarian law are not subject to discrimination, they are not dependent on nationality, religion, or political affiliation.
International human rights and humanitarian law apply universally to all human beings.”

And while NGOs from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, legal groups from the US and politicians from Europe have all concluded that Israel committed the cited violations, since the end of the Israeli attacks, “no effective judicial investigations have been conducted into the conflict. Impunity prevails,” say the human rights groups.

The PA, which initially supported the findings of the “Goldstone report”, changed its mind after what is believed to have been intense pressure from the United States, as well as Israel, citing the peace process negotiations as a reason to postpone endorsing the report.

The day before the PA back-tracked, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened that the endorsement of the UN report would hinder the ‘peace process’.

But the human rights groups disagree. “The belief that accountability and the rule of law can be brushed aside in the pursuit of peace is misguided. In such situations, international law demands recourse to international judicial mechanisms. Victims’ rights must be upheld. Those responsible must be held to account.”

Various Palestinian factions, including Hamas and the PFLP, have likewise strongly condemned the PA’s turn-around, calling it a ‘betrayal of the Palestinian cause’ and a confirmation of the ‘extent of the collaboration between and his aides with the Zionist enemy, against the Palestinian people’.

Al Jazeera reports that Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said the PA decision was ‘totally unacceptable, unjustified and the public here is very angry at it’.

The article continues, “Regardless of the position of the PA, I think the civil society and different political and human rights organisation are going to proceed in demanding sanctions, actions against the Israeli apartheid system and the war criminals that committed these crimes,” said Barghouti.

Just days earlier, Abbas had further backed down on the issue of Israeli illegal settlement expansion, retreating from the Palestinian call to stop settlement construction. This about-face is also believed to be due to US pressure.

The PA reversals clearly seem to be serving their own interest and that of Israel and the US. Ma’an news reported Badil’s statement that “this deferral of the UN report “is against the interests of Palestinian victims and against the higher Palestinian interest as well as efforts to incriminate Israel for its illegal actions.”

Richard Goldstone, a Jewish South African with a long history of involvement in justice, according an IPS report said, “Without some form of truth-telling, there cannot be an enduring peace. Truth-telling and acknowledgement to victims can be a very important assistance to peace.”

Israel demands PA drop war crimes suit at The Hague

Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff | Ha’aretz

27 September 2009

Tensions are mounting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority following Ramallah’s call on the International Court at The Hague to examine claims of “war crimes” that the IDF allegedly committed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. The issue is already weighing in on the relations between the leadership of Israel’s defense and security establishment with their counterparts in the West Bank, and is part of a growing list of Israeli complaints about the behavior of PA officials.

Meanwhile, Israel has warned the Palestinian Authority that it would condition permission for a second cellular telephone provider to operate in the West Bank – an economic issue of critical importance to the PA leadership – on the Palestinians withdrawing their request at the International Court.

The issue of a second cellular provider is at the center of talks between the PA, the international Quartet, and Israel, and has been ongoing for some months. Currently the sole provider is Pal-Tel, and the PA prime minister, Salam Fayyad, considers the introduction of another carrier as an important step in improving the civilian infrastructure in the West Bank. The project is central to Watanya, the company that is set to serve as the second provider, and profits are expected to be substantial.

However, if the project is not approved by October 15, the PA will be forced to pay a penalty estimated at $300 million, the sum that has already been invested in licensing and infrastructure.

Western diplomats, including the Quartet’s envoy to the region, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, have made it clear to senior Israeli officials that time is running out, and have urged them to allow for the establishment of a second provider to go forward.

Israel’s objections begin with the issue of transmission frequencies. The frequencies that the Palestinians want the new company to use are very close to ones used by the Israel Defense Forces in some of its most sensitive activities.

“Israel is making it difficult for us on many levels,” complains Mohammed Mustafa, economic adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. “They now want us to pressure Pal-Tel to release some of its frequencies, so that they can be used by Watanya.”

However, another, more substantive issue was recently added, when the Palestinian Authority appealed to the International Criminal Court. Security sources told Haaretz that this move, which was authorized by Fayyad and Abbas, incensed senior officials of the defense establishment, especially army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

Ashkenazi has been kept busy by involvement in a holding action against the threat that Israeli officers would be brought before the court as a result of charges that the IDF committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Concern has intensified following the grave report that the Goldstone Commission released two weeks ago on behalf of the United Nations.

In Israel the argument is that the PA is being unfair, and that at the time of the operation in the Gaza Strip, last winter, its senior officials encouraged their Israeli counterparts to step up the pressure on Hamas, and even to attempt to bring its rule in the territory to the point of collapse. However, at a latter stage they joined those decrying Israel and its alleged actions in the Strip.

In light of this tension, the chief of staff conditioned his approval of a second cellular provider to the Palestinians’ withdrawing their appeal to the court.

“The PA has reached the point where it has to decide whether it is working with us or against us,” senior figures in the defense establishment have said. At the PA it is being said, in response to the Israeli demands, that Abbas and Fayyad will water down their appeal to the ICJ, though they will refuse to promise that it will rescinded entirely.

During the past year Israel defense officials have often praised the Palestinians on improving their contribution to securing the West Bank, and of the decisive character of the leadership under Fayyad. However, in recent weeks there have been increasing claims that even as the Authority is being praised by Israel and the international community, it is behaving irresponsibly by violating agreements between the two sides.

The Israeli claims focus on the growing presence of Palestinian security personnel in civilian clothing in East Jerusalem, contrary to the obligations of the PA. The security personnel participate in prayers at Al-Aqsa mosque, and at other sites in the city, and have stepped up their presence in the Jerusalem’s medical and educational facilities. Moreover, they have also been involved in the abduction of Palestinians suspected of selling property to Jews.

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.

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.

UN says Israel should face war-crimes trial over Gaza

Donald Macintyre | The Independent

16 September 2009

Israel targeted “the people of Gaza as a whole” in the three-week military operation which is estimated to have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians at the beginning of this year, according to a UN-commissioned report published yesterday.

A UN fact-finding mission led by the Jewish South African former Supreme Court Judge Richard Goldstone said Israel should face prosecution by the International Criminal Court, unless it opened fully independent investigations of what the report said were repeated violations of international law, “possible war crimes and crimes against humanity” during the operation.

Using by far the strongest language of any of the numerous reports criticising Operation Cast Lead, the UN mission, which interviewed victims, witnesses and others in Gaza and Geneva this summer, says that while Israel had portrayed the war as self-defence in response to Hamas rocket attacks, it “considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole”.

“In this respect the operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas, and possibly with the intent of forcing a change in such support,” the report said. It added that some Israelis should carry “individual criminal responsibility.”

The 575-page document presented to yesterday’s session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva was swiftly denounced by Israel. The foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the UN mission had “dealt a huge blow to governments seeking to defend their citizens from terror”, and that its conclusions were “so disconnected with realities on the ground that one cannot but wonder on which planet was the Gaza Strip they visited”.

The Gaza war began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009.

The UN report found that the statements of military and political leaders in Israel before and during the operation indicated the use of “disproportionate force”, aimed not only at the enemy but also at the “supporting infrastructure”. The mission adds: “In practice this appears to have meant the civilian population.”

The mission also had harsh conclusions about Hamas and other armed groups, acknowledging that rocket and mortar attacks have caused terror in southern Israel, and saying that where launched into civilians areas, they would “constitute war crimes” and “may amount to crimes against humanity”.

It also condemned the extrajudicial killings, detention and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees by the Hamas regime in Gaza – as well as by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank – and called for the release on humanitarian grounds of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal abducted by Gaza militants in June 2006.

While the Israeli government refused to co-operate with the inquiry – or allow the UN team into Israel – on the ground that the team would be “one-sided”, Cpl Shalit’s father, Noam, was among those Israeli citizens who flew to Geneva to give evidence.

That said, the much greater part of the report – and its strongest language – is reserved for Israel’s conduct during the operation. Apart from the unprecedented death toll, the report says that “the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces”. The purpose was “to make the daily process of living and dignified living more difficult for the civilian population”.

The report also says that vandalism of houses by some soldiers and “the graffiti on the walls, the obscenities and often racist slogans constituted an overall image of humiliation and dehumanisation of the Palestinian population”. Hospitals and ambulances were “targeted by Israeli attacks.”

Amid a detailed examination of most of the major incidents of the war – albeit an examinations carried out five months after the incidents took place – it says that:

* The first bombing attack on Day One of the operation when children were going home from school “appears to have been calculated to cause the greatest disruption and widespread panic”.

* The deaths of 22 members of the Samouni family sheltering in a warehouse were among ones “owing to Israeli fire intentionally directed at them”, in clear breach of the Geneva Convention.

* The firing of white phosphorus shells at the UN Relief and Works Agency compound was “compounded by reckless regard of the consequences”, and the use of high explosive artillery at the al-Quds hospitals were violations of Articles 18 and 19 of the Geneva Convention. It says that warnings issued by Israel to the civilian population “cannot be considered as sufficiently effective” under the Convention.

* On the attack in the vicinity of the al-Fakhoura school, where at least 35 Palestinians were killed, Israeli forces launched an attack where a “reasonable commander” would have considered military advantage was outweighed by the risk to civilian life. The civilians had their right to life violated as under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). And while some of the 99 policemen killed in incidents surveyed by the team may have been members of armed groups, others who were not also had their right to life violated.

* The inquiry team also says that a number of Palestinians were used as human shields – itself a violation of the ICCPR – including Majdi Abed Rabbo, whose complaints about being so used were first aired in The Independent. The report asserts that the use of human shields constitutes a “war crime under the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court.”