UN independent panel rules Israel blockade of Gaza illegal: Haaretz
Report to UN Human Rights Council by five independent UN rights experts contradicts findings of Palmer Report that Israel used ‘unreasonable force’ in 2010 raid on Gaza flotilla, but that naval-blockade of Gaza legal.
Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip violates international law, a panel of human rights experts reporting to a UN body said on Tuesday, disputing a conclusion reached by a separate UN probe into Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship.
The so-called Palmer Report on the Israeli raid of May 2010 that killed nine Turkish activists said earlier this month that Israel had used unreasonable force in last year’s raid, but its naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled strip was legal.
A panel of five independent UN rights experts reporting to the UN Human Rights Council rejected that conclusion, saying the blockade had subjected Gazans to collective punishment in “flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law.”
The four-year blockade deprived 1.6 million Palestinians living in the enclave of fundamental rights, they said.
“In pronouncing itself on the legality of the naval blockade, the Palmer Report does not recognize the naval blockade as an integral part of Israel’s closure policy towards Gaza which has a disproportionate impact on the human rights of civilians,” they said in a joint statement.
An earlier fact-finding mission named by the same UN forum to investigate the flotilla incident also found in a report last September that the blockade violated international law. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says the blockade violates the Geneva Conventions.
Israel says its Gaza blockade is a precaution against arms reaching Hamas and other Palestinian guerrillas by sea.
The four-man panel headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer found Israel had used unreasonable force in dealing with what it called “organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers.”
Turkey has downgraded ties with Israel over the incident.
Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and one of the five experts who issued Tuesday’s statement, said the Palmer report’s conclusions were influenced by a desire to salve Turkish-Israeli ties.
“The Palmer report was aimed at political reconciliation between Israel and Turkey. It is unfortunate that in the report politics should trump the law,” he said in the statement.
About one-third of Gaza’s arable land and 85 percent of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures, said Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, another of the five.
At least two-thirds of Gazan households lack secure access to food, he said. “People are forced to make unacceptable trade-offs, often having to choose between food or medicine or water for their families.”
The other three experts were the UN special rapporteurs on physical and mental health, extreme poverty and human rights, and access to water and sanitation.
U.S. envoys to visit region in last-ditch effort to avert Palestinian statehood bid: Haaretz
David Hale and Dennis Ross to try and revive peace talks between Israel and Palestinians; critics say move may be too late.
Senior U.S. envoys will visit the Middle East this week to try to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and avert a Palestinian bid for UN membership, he United States said on Tuesday.
The mission by U.S. Middle East peace envoy David Hale and senior White House aide Dennis Ross appears to be a last-ditch push to dissuade the Palestinians from seeking to upgrade their UN status this month, a step Israel strongly opposes.
The United States and Israel believe the Palestinians should try to establish a state through direct peace talk, which broke down nearly a year ago, and they that action at the United Nations will make it harder to resume negotiations.
“The only way of getting a lasting solution is through direct negotiations between the parties and the route to that lies in Jerusalem and in Ramallah, not in New York,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters.
“Our hope is that we get the parties back into a frame of mind and a process where they will actually begin negotiating again,” she added.
Her reference to Jerusalem, which Israel regards as its eternal and indivisible capital, may anger Palestinians, who want to establish a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with its capital in East Jerusalem. Ramallah is the West Bank city where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters.
Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital has not been recognized internationally and the United States has maintained its embassy in Tel Aviv for years to avoid appearing to prejudge the issue.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration is scrambling to head off a Palestinian plan to seek full United Nations membership during the UN General Assembly session that begins on Monday but critics argue that its push may come too late.
Hale and Ross held talks in the region with both sides last week and appear to make no headway to solve the dispute.
Middle East analysts say there is little chance of this any time soon and some administration critics argued that the United States had left it too late to find a diplomatic solution before the UN General Assembly.
“For all of these months there has been a leadership vacuum from the White House,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Florida Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and is a frequent critic of the administration.
The last round of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down nearly a year ago with the expiration of a 10-month partial Israeli moratorium on Jewish settlement construction on land the Palestinians want for their state.
Israel sees the Palestinian bid as an effort to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state and to extend the conflict into new arenas such as the International Criminal Court.
Speaking to Reuters after news of the U.S. mission broke, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Mohammed Shtayyeh, said the plan was still to seek full membership for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, lands that Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.
Earlier, Shtayyeh said the Palestinian leadership would listen to any proposals but suggested the current U.S. push had come too late.
“We are open-minded to any proposal. And we are ready to engage with any proposal. But this is not a step to really stop us from going to the United Nations,” he added. “If the whole idea of a proposal is to engage peacefully then you don’t really bring it in the last five minutes of the hour.”
The Palestinians are now UN observers without voting rights. To become a full member, their bid would have to be approved by the UN Security Council, where the United States has said it will veto it.
Diplomats have said it is not clear what the Palestinians will do when the UN General Assembly opens.
Rather than seeking full U.N. membership for a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, they could seek status as a “non-member state,” which would require a simple majority of the 193-nation assembly. The United States, however, said it would not favor this model either.
Another possibility would be to propose a resolution to the General Assembly that might give greater backing to their desire for a state but not actually call for upgrading the Palestinians status at the United Nations.
Britain should say yes to Palestinian statehood – and so should Israel: Guardian
A no vote at the UN will boost Netanyahu, wound Fatah and discredit the Europeans as useless hypocrites
Jonathan Freedland
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011
Britain doesn’t usually count for much in the Middle East, but this time it could make all the difference. As the Palestinians seek United Nations recognition as a state, a quirk of diplomatic algebra leaves Britain with a chance to play the decisive role – and to complete some unfinished business dating back more than 60 years.
Barack Obama has already said the US will vote against any Palestinian move towards statehood at the UN general assembly now gathering in New York. Large swaths of Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East plan to vote for it. Which leaves Europe as the diplomatic battleground. If the leading European powers side with the US, the Palestinian initiative will be seen as a failure. If an EU majority backs recognition in some form, the Palestinians can claim symbolic victory.
Already negotiations are under way, both among the European nations and between the EU and the Palestinians, aimed at reaching a common, compromise position. France and Spain want to say yes, Germany and Italy are wary. Which leaves Britain with something akin to a casting vote in the “quintet” of leading European nations. How David Cameron jumps will be crucial in determining Europe’s stance, and therefore the fate of the Palestinian effort itself. For decades Britain has talked about punching above its weight. Now its weight really counts.
The backroom haggling concentrates on which UN body will make the decision – the general assembly or the security council – and what exactly they’ll be voting on. If the Palestinians aim high, they’ll apply to the security council for full UN membership, where Obama has promised they will be greeted by a US veto. Or they could go before the general assembly, where 140-odd countries are ready to grant the lesser prize of an upgrade in UN status, from observer to “non-member state”, with access to some of the major international institutions. Devil’s in the details and all that, but Britain’s attitude should be clear: we should say yes.
That’s because UN recognition of a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 will breathe fresh life into the ailing idea which, despite everything, remains the last best hope of Israeli-Palestinian peace – a two-state solution. By recognising a state of Palestine alongside Israel, the UN will entrench the notion that the only way to resolve this most stubborn of conflicts is for these two nations to divide the land between them into two states. In so doing it will halt the steady drift, born of despair more than enthusiasm, towards the so-called one-state solution – so-called because while it would bring one state, it offers no solution, just a single entity that would frustrate the yearning for self-determination of both sides.
The two-state solution has been on life support for years now, its health deteriorating since Binyamin Netanyahu returned to the prime minister’s office. Officially he subscribes to two states, yet his every policy action, typified by unceasing settlement building in the West Bank, puts that goal further out of reach. A loud yes vote at the UN would reverse that trend, renewing what has long been the global consensus: that the land of historic Palestine has to be shared between the two peoples who live there.
Here’s where Britain and Europe can give a little extra help. A new and insightful policy document by the European Council on Foreign Relations – titled Why Europeans Should Vote Yes – suggests the new UN resolution could explicitly support the idea of “Israel alongside a Palestinian state, thereby entrenching Israel’s legitimacy and its permanence”. Having the general assembly, including its Arab and Muslim member states, vote for such a resolution would amount to de facto recognition of Israel – and reassure those who fear the country’s “delegitimisation”. The text might even reconfirm UN resolution 181, the original 1947 partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. Renewing 181 would complete two items of unfinished business. First, that Palestinian state promised 64 years ago never materialised: its land was gobbled up, the West Bank taken by Jordan, Gaza by Egypt and much of the rest by Israel. A yes vote next week would finally acknowledge the Palestinian right to lands they were meant to govern decades ago. Second, Britain abstained in 1947; now it has a chance to say yes to the partition of the land it once ruled.
Still, it’s the future we should be imagining, specifically the day after a US- and Europe-led no vote. Palestinian public opinion would surely conclude that the path of nonviolence and diplomacy had failed, shunned by the very countries who had repeatedly urged them to take it. In the ongoing argument within Palestinian society, the advocates of armed resistance would appear vindicated, their opponents humiliated.
Imagine the contrasting scene in Israel, where Netanyahu would be doing a victory dance. As Daniel Levy, co-author of that ECFR paper, told me, a European no vote would reward the Israeli PM’s stubbornness: “He will respect the EU even less, and it would entrench his rejectionism even more.” Bibi would taunt those who had warned of a September diplomatic tsunami as “liberal crybabies”, unable to see that tough intransigence always wins the day. A prime minister who should be on the ropes – assailed for watching as two former allies, Egypt and Turkey, make common cause against Israel – would instead be hailed as a maestro of international power politics.
If the prospect of boosting Bibi and discrediting Fatah does not deter European governments contemplating a no vote, perhaps they should think on their reputations in the region if the Palestinians are thwarted. Having praised those peoples who seized their own destiny through the Arab revolutions, they would have denied, however symbolically, that same path to the Palestinians. Obama is already fated to be condemned as a hypocrite by the Arab world, thanks to his promised veto. If the Europeans make the same mistake, they will lose whatever influence they retain in the Middle East. No one will listen to a word they say.
There are misgivings among Palestinians and their supporters, of course. Some worry that recognition of the Palestinian Authority would diminish the PLO, which represents the wider Palestinian diaspora. The glib answer is that the Palestinians of the occupied territories have been dominant since at least the Oslo accords, signed 18 years ago today, and that a UN vote will only formalise what is already true. More subtly, such a usurping of the PLO would only be in prospect if the Palestinians started implementing practical statehood, declaring interim borders on the West Bank and the like. And no one believes that is likely.
The truth is that, by itself, a positive UN vote will not change the lives of too many Palestinians. But a negative response would be a disaster, boosting Israeli hardliners, weakening Palestinian peacemakers and choking the near-dead two-state solution. All three of those arguments should resonate in European capitals, but the last two should hit home in Israel itself. That is why a wise Britain would vote yes at the UN – and why a shrewd Israeli government, one that understood the best form of security is peace, would vote exactly the same way.
Erdogan: Israel’s mentality is a barrier to Mideast peace: Haaretz
Turkish PM, speaking before Arab League meeting in Cairo, attacks Israeli government’s policies, says recognition of Palestinian state is ‘an obligation.’
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Tuesday that the mentality of the Israeli government serves as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East, and stressed the need for recognition of a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a tour on the Egyptian border that “eventually common sense and logic prevail, both on our side and on the other side.”
“The barrier to peace in the region is the mentality of the Israeli government,” Erdogan said. “The people in Israel are under a blockade (by its government).”
He insisted that Turkey will not return to normal relations with Israel until it apologizes for the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, compensates the families of the victims, and lifts the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Without directly mentioning Israel, Erdogan added that “every country must pay for the terror acts it carries out.”
Erdogan also stressed that Turkey believes no country is above international law. “Turkey will take every possible step to ensure the freedom of movement in the eastern Mediterranean.”
Moreover, the Turkish premier emphasized that the recognition of a Palestinian state was “not an option but an obligation.”
The Turkish prime minister was visiting Egypt at the start of a North African tour aimed at cementing Turkey’s standing in the region following the “Arab Spring” uprisings.
Death and the salesmen: London hosts arms fair: Guardian
Forty-six countries arrive to show off latest weapons as Bahrain attends ExCel despite protesters’ deaths
Richard Norton-Taylor
Sharp-suited men and women from more than 1,000 weapons manufacturers are showing off their weapons in London’s docklands this week. Their displays range from guns that can fire shells more than 30 miles within an accuracy, it is said, of three metres, to small, innocent-looking switches designed to make the life of a fighter easier and safer.
Lethal objects were laid out in glass cases, polished and shining under the lights of the ExCel Centre as though they were delicate ornaments, never to be soiled by blood let alone kill anyone. The 46 countries advertising their wares alongside the US giants Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics included Israel, which had a big stand this year.
It advertised an anti-tank weapon described as good for “wall-breaching” but also “highly accurate” and therefore involving “low collateral damage”. Tucked in behind the Israeli pavilion were the Russians, with the latest Kalashnikov assault rifle. The AK104 is several models up from, and much more expensive than, the ubiquitous AK47, the favoured weapon of insurgents and guerrillas around the world.
Pakistan advertised an “arms for peace” exhibition in Karachi next year and showed “gold-plated” submachine guns – “for collectors”, inquirers were told.
Yet, making the point that life in Pakistan is less than safe at the moment, an enterprising salesman was offering “fashion body armour”: leather jackets and waistcoats with reinforced linings.
Some small exhibitors were there to help save lives. Weatherhaven was launching an “expanding container capability” or “hospitals in a box”: units that fit inside a Chinook to deal with medical emergencies. The Medical Warehouse produces bespoke emergency medical bags and pouches. And it is clear that supplying clean water for troops is a fast-developing growth industry. A German company is supplying British and US troops in Afghanistan with bottled water purified by a small filter system, a less burdensome, and much cheaper, alternative to bringing bottled water by convoy hundreds of miles across the desert.
But Defence and Security Equipment International, as the two-yearly fair is called, is dominated by companies designing weapons that can defeat an enemy as quickly and as efficiently as possible while protecting its own troops. They included MBDA, makers of the Brimstone “precision” missile and Storm Shadow air-to-ground cruise missile, dropped by RAF Tornados throughout the Libyan conflict. Executives on the company stand said they were not allowed to say how many had landed on Libyan targets, but it is likely that more than 100 were dropped, at a cost yet to be revealed. According to some reports, some Nato countries nearly ran out of bombs.
Liam Fox, the defence secretary, praised the role of UK arms firms in Libya. In a speech promoting the cause of weapons exports, he said: “For too long, export potential has been ignored when initiating projects for the UK’s own use. That needs to change … Defence and security exports play a key role in promoting our foreign policy objectives: building relationships and trust, sharing information and spreading values.”
Stung perhaps by criticism, not least by MPs of all parties, that Britain has sold arms to countries with poor human rights records that have used them against their own citizens, Fox said: “Margin, profit, market share – these are not dirty words. But the language of multinational business can sometimes appear values-free.”
He went on: “Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are mandatory considerations for all export licence applications, which we consider on a case-by-case basis.”
In April, MPs accused ministers of misjudging the risk that British arms exports would be used for repression. The government had approved licences to sell equipment – from small arms to armoured personnel carriers – to states such as Bahrain, which was invited to the fair despite its security forces having killed unarmed protesters during recent demonstrations.
Fox noted that Britain was the second largest exporter of arms-related equipment. But his speech contained a stick as well as a carrot: “Industry does not need handouts – nor will it get them.” The government would be a “tougher, more intelligent customer” in future, he said.
Ten reasons Palestine is right to bring its case to the UN: Haaretz
Supporters of the Palestinian cause have warned that the UN move could spur a devastating backlash of retaliation, yet there are reason why they may succeed after all.
By Bradley Burston
There’s a certain implied danger in the idea of playing darts in the dark. Particularly when there are numerous players in a crowded room, and not one has a well-defined target.
For Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine, for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, and no less, for the Obama administration, the effort to bring Palestinian statehood to the United Nations for endorsement has raised profound fears, prompting internal debates fully as bitter as they have been largely fruitless, with no dependably favorable outcome in sight – for anyone.
Committed supporters of the Palestinian cause have warned that the UN move could spur a devastating backlash of retaliation, whether by an irate, isolated Israeli government or by an election-minded, Republican dominated U.S. Congress.
Palestinian moderates fear that the statehood move, if mishandled or misapprehended, could set into motion a chain of violent events ultimately spelling the demise of the Palestinian Authority, and dealing a telling blow to any timetable for an independent Palestine.
Abbas has pressed ahead nonetheless, in what may be the last great wager of his career. In the past, as in his 2004 go-it-alone public statements condemning armed Palestinian attacks on Israelis, Abbas has shown himself both a man unafraid to gamble, and, against all odds, one who knows how to turn a crapshoot to advantage. Here are ten reasons that Abu Mazen’s
Hail Mary route at the UN may succeed after all:
1. It restores the issue of Palestine from the back-burner to the world’s biggest stage, without resort to violence.
The UN move has already compelled all relevant parties to the conflict to re-examine long-accustomed and long-stymied tactics and mindsets. From Netanyahu to Khaled Meshal, from the Quartet (the U.S., Russia, the UN and the European Union) to the Palestinian rank and file, from the settlements to Peace Now and J Street,
alternatives to paralysis and permanent conflict are newly under study.
2. It conveys the concept of Palestine as a nation, living alongside Israel as a member of the community of nations, acknowledging the primacy of the UN as a forum for state-to-state airing of disputes.
This stands in stark contrast to the loose-cannon guerrilla band image cultivated by Yasser Arafat in his 1974 address to the General Assembly (“Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat …”), which gave no quarter to the existence of an independent Israel.
3. The timing underscores and leverages Israel’s perfect storm of diplomatic isolation.
It turns the Netanyahu government’s digging in of heels to Palestinian advantage, casting the Palestinian Authority as the side taking diplomatic initiative.
In ruling out a Yes vote from the get-go, Israel conceded immediate defeat in the world body, in the process forgoing a range of tactical advantages it could have gained by signaling qualified support for a resolution and then negotiating to help shape its wording to a text Israel could have profited by backing.
Also, if peace talks do eventually resume, the PA’s position could be strengthened by a state-to-state position vis-a-vis Israel.
4. The UN drive may confer international imprimatur to and raise the profile of Palestinian state-building efforts.
As Mideast scholar Hussein Ibish has
noted, “Palestinians had hoped that a convergence of bottom-up state-building and top-down diplomacy, led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, would be the key to independence. Left on its own, the state-building plan has been little more than a development project under occupation. This has given the leadership a sense of urgency that has impelled its turn towards possible statehood initiatives at the UN.”
5. If successful, it can lend Abbas and the PA much-needed strength in its withering rivalry with Hamas.
Hamas, betting on Abu Mazen to lose, has disassociated itself from the UN push. If the Palestinian public perceives the UN vote as a success, criticism over repression in Hamas rule in Gaza would be likely to mount.
6. It may prompt and encourage non-violent Palestinian protest in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The prospect of non-violent protest is one that Israeli officials have acknowledged that they are ill-prepared to confront. As a recently released wikileaks cable revealed, “Less violent demonstrations are likely to stymie the IDF. As MOD [Ministry of Defense] Pol-Mil [Political-Military] chief Amos Gilad told USG [U.S. Government] rinterlocutors recently, “we don’t do Gandhi very well.”
This, in turn, coupled with rising Israeli tensions with Egypt, Turkey, and the U.S., could at some point force Netanyahu to consider dropping Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu in favor of Kadima, in order to resume peace talks.
7. The PA could also regain a measure of popular support in Gaza, if as a consequence of the UN move, Israel’s military latitude for enforcing the siege and pursuing attacks in the Strip were limited.
Even if the Palestinians refrain from executing the threat, the shadows of the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and other world bodies will at once loom large over Israeli military decisions.
8. The Palestinians’ secret weapon I: Avigdor Lieberman.
Thus far, the foreign minister is the only senior official scheduled to represent Israel in New York during the deliberations next week. A year ago, in his last appearance before the United Nations, Lieberman effectively contradicted the Israeli line that Israel was ready for peace and that the process had been impeded solely by the Palestinians. Neither side was ready for peace, he told the General Assembly, declaring that an agreement was something that could take “a few decades.”
9. The Palestinians’ secret weapon II: The Settlers.
If any single element is likely to win sympathy for the Palestinian cause, it will be radical settlers, who have vowed to mark the UN resolution with widespread violence. A recent arson attack against a West Bank mosque has sharpened the concerns of both Israeli and PA security authorities.
Any such action may, in turn, restrict the Israeli government’s freedom of action in retaliating against a UN move.
10. The Palestinians’ secret weapon III: Benjamin Netanyahu.
As the UN deliberations near, the prime minister’s statements have grown more defiant. His protestations that Israel’s worsening relations with Egypt and Turkey have nothing to do with the Palestinian issue, have ensured that tensions with all three have become increasingly interrelated, both at home and abroad.
“There are those who think that everything would have been different, if we had only given in to the Palestinians,” Netanyahu told the cabinet this week.
“Enough with the self-flagellation,” he continued. Inverting the liturgy of confession on the imminent Jewish High Holidays, he declared “We have not become guilty, neither have we transgressed.”