Israeli War Criminals – to the International Criminal Court, NOW!

Make Zionism History!

The anniversary of the Gaza Carnage by Israel’s murderers is in TWO days! We shall not forget!

Palestinian state proposal, by Latuff

The first Anniversary of the Gaza Massacres – Gaza Freedom March

You must all be aware of the large peace march from Egypt towards Gaza, with thousands of people arriving today and tomorrow, trying to join a large aid convoy organised by Viva Palestina and including over 230 large trucks with food supplies. The Egyptians have now banned all meetings, marches, and any crossings into Gaza. It also seems from emails we are now getting, that they plan mass arrests of the incoming activists, and not just preventing their entry into Gaza. The UK and international media have been totally silent about this. If you can spread this – do what you can, write to your national media outlets, and try to spread the news on this awful and dispiriting behaviour by the Egyptian authorities! I am copying below some email from our one of our BRICUP members, who is in Cairo, and will continue to publish anything which he or anyone else is sending out of Cairo/Sinai/Gaza about this latest atrocity against the people of Gaza.

Where further information on the march can be found:

Gaza Freedom March

Codepink

Viva Palestina

PSC

and the most up to date news are on the convoy link:

Convoy link

Emails from Gaza/Cairo

25th December, 15:03

I am in Cairo

All Gaza marches and so on have been banned. Viva Palestina cannot get across from Aquba and are being denied entry. Code Pink and all the other delegations are not allowed to meet in public in groups of more than 6 otherwise we can be arrested. Most of the delegates do not start arriving until tomorrow. But we cannot use travel facilities. We cannot meet and it is getting very difficult. Hedi Epstein is threatening to begin a hunger strike tomorrow. We need appeals \going to the Egyptians, the Arab League in London and any organisation that might make statements and give help. Do what you can signed

25th December, 14:54

I am in Cairo

Things are very difficult. Code Pink and other groups have been banned from meeting in public places in groups of more than six. Viva Palestinia have been denied entry at Aquba. Heidi Epstein is threatening to go on hunger strike tomorrow … We are not all owed to travel … My fear is that there is going to now be lots of arrests and a lot of horrid violence against us … Can you get representation to the media. To the Egyptian authorities and Arab League? We need a lot of publicity at your end because it is only now that the delegates on the march are statring to arrive. Do what you can …. signed You may also wish to write to the UK Foreign Secretary, Mr. David Miliband, as I have just done: Dear David Miliband MP I am sorry to have to disturb you on Xmas Day. I have just received a large number of emails from various contacts in Cairo, all reporting that the Egyptian government has stopped the large Viva Palestina food supply convoy to Gaza, as well as forbade the large number of people arriving for the Gaza Freedom March, to use transport, on the first anniversary of the Gaza Carnage a year ago. I am aware that you have proven time and again that your position towards the crisis is far from objective, and have supported Israel unconditionally, including your recent call for special new measures in the UK which will make it impossible to prosecute Israelis for war crimes committed in Gaza. Do you do not have enough respect for the UK legal system to operate under the law in the matter of war crimes? Could this be because the government your are a member of is finding itself facing accusations of war crimes in Iraq? I wonder if your unconditional support for Israel also excludes any action in support of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, or the supporting the right of UK and other citizens to do what they legally can and assist the Gaza citizens, who have been illegally blockaded by Israel for almost three years now, with little action from yourself and HM Government against this breach of international Law, not to mention basic human rights. Would you now prove that you are not a racist, and join our urgent call for the illegal and immoral Israeli blockade to end NOW?. Would you join the call for the Egyptian government to allow the food convoy of Viva Palestina into Gaza? Or will you indeed continue to ignore the human and political rights of the Palestinians? Prof. Haim Bresheeth University of east London His email at Westminster is: milibandd@parliament.uk You may wish to be nicer to him than I was, but I cannot see what this might achieve, or why it is justified…

Gaza Freedom Marchers face Egyptian u-turn: Examiner.com

An unconfirmed report is that at at 8:30pm tonight, December 24, 2009, the Egyptian Foreign Minister said on Egyptian TV Channel 2, that neither the Gaza Freedom March nor persons accompanying the Viva Palestina convoy would be allowed to enter Gaza. The Foreign Minister’s comments confirmed statements made to Ann Wright and Tighe Barry of the Gaza Freedom March steering committee during their meeting this afternoon with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director of the Office of Palestinian Affairs Hisham Seif-Eldin and officer Ahmed Azzam. Barry and Wright went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss the December 20 disapproval of the entry into Gaza by the Gaza Freedom March. Mr. Sief-Eldin said that Egyptian embassies in Europe and North America had received a large number emails and phone calls since the announcement of the disapproval. He was visibly upset by what he described as the “tone” of some of the emails received and forwarded to him by Egyptian embassies in Europe and North America and said that emails contained threats to Egyptian interests by tourist boycotts and personal attacks and derogatory language toward staff members. He said the position of the security and intelligence services of Egypt in disapproving transiting the Rafah border crossing had “hardened.” Sief-Eldin said that the permit we had requested to hold an orientation meeting on December 27 at 7pm at the Holy Family complex was cancelled and that the permit for a press conference at the Pyramisa Hotel on December 27 would not be approved. “At the meeting we presented a written request to hold a conference on Gaza for delegates only on December 28 and 29 either at the American University Cairo or at hotel. Mr. Azzad said the Foreign Ministry would forward the request to the security agency but did not believe it would be acted on in a timely manner.” The conference would be considered a “political” conference and would have to be approved by the Office of the Prime Minister. Sief-Eldin in the strongest terms said security services would not permit gatherings with signs or banners. He said that no group would be permitted to travel to al Arish or Rafah. He said we should tell the 1360 delegates to “not come to Egypt” unless they were going to do only tourist things. He said that in a change from yesterday, the Viva Palestina convoy has not heeded the Government of Egypt’s decision on where the convoy should enter Egypt and none of their delegates will be allow to enter Gaza, but the vehicles will enter eventually through a checkpoint in Israel. We asked again why the Government of Egypt did not make its refusal decision early in the five months process that the Gaza Freedom March has been coordinating with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a decision that would have notified delegates not to spend thousands of dollars on airfare to get to Egypt. Seif-Eldin responded that the government makes its decision on its own time schedule, not on the time schedule of others. He ended by saying that in Egypt, things are not done in the same manner as in the United States or Europe. The security services will not permit demonstrations or protests and will deal with them quickly. (See MoreCODEPINK:Gaza Freedom March http://www.facebook.com/l/971af;www.gazafreedommarch.org) Ottawa Canadian coordinators for the historic Gaza Freedom March were joined by Members of Parliament Libby Davies and Irene Mathyssen for a press conference to kick off a month of events in Canada and around the world, demanding that Israel lift its illegal siege of the Gaza strip.

Palestinian officials confiscate merchandise produced in settlements: Ha’aretz

By Amira Hass Palestinian officials are confiscating merchandise produced in West Bank settlements as part of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s plan to remove all goods made in the settlements from Palestinian markets by the end of next year. Although the government banned goods from settlements some time ago, it only launched a concerted effort to enforce the ban a few months ago. Sources in the National Economy Ministry said that NIS 651,982 worth of goods were confiscated and disposed of in the second week of December alone. The goods included Ahava cosmetics and toiletries, plastic products, long-life milk made in the Golan, Mei Eden mineral water and pastries from the Atarot industrial park. The campaign kicked off five weeks ago with the confiscation of merchandise on four trucks that had left the Barkan industrial zone near Ariel carrying metal products and raw material for diapers. A committee consisting of officials from several ministries was set up to supervise the process. Economy Ministry officials and customs agents are seizing merchandise directly from the distributors rather than trawling shops and marketplaces for forbidden goods. The ministry first warned merchants via regional chambers of commerce that dealing in goods from the settlements was prohibited and such merchandise would be seized. A ministry official said he realized, after a recent meeting with a British minister, that “we can’t demand that others do what we’re not doing ourselves.” Products from the settlements are widespread in the West Bank, making it difficult for the authorities to remove them, officials said. For example, the offices of many Palestinian ministries have doors made by Mul-T-Lock in its plant near Barkan. But according to the Israeli web site whoprofits.org, Mul-T-Lock’s owner, the Swedish corporation Assa Abloy, has promised to relocate the plant inside the Green Line. In violation of both the Oslo accords and Israel’s “economic peace” policy, Israel makes it almost impossible to market Palestinian merchandise, a ministry official said – not only in Israel, but even in the Palestinian Authority. And trade between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is all but nonexistent. However, said National Economy Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh, the PA is not taking steps against Israeli-made goods, only against products made in the settlements – “which are in violation of international law, steal our land and natural resources and damage our industry and produce.”

Palestinians celebrate Arab film at Gaza festival: The Electronic Intifada

Rami Almeghari, 23 December 2009 Last Thursday marked the end of a one-week film festival in Gaza City. The Palestinian Film Forum, an independent Palestinian community organization, sponsored the event with 33 films produced in six Arab Gulf states. Ranging from documentaries to educational and short films, this is the first film festival in Gaza since Israel placed the territory under a tight blockade more than 30 months ago. Held at Gaza City’s al-Meshal Cultural Center, the films were attended by scores of Palestinians from across the tiny coastal territory. Rajab Abu Seriya, a Gaza-based filmmaker and chairman of the forum, explained that the purpose of the festival was for Gaza to participate in the celebration of Jerusalem as capital of Arab culture for 2009. He added that it was also to introduce “the people of Gaza to other forms of cinema.” Abu Seriya explained that the greatest difficulty was bringing the films into Gaza. “We spent about one month and a half trying to bring [the films] here. Finally we asked an independent Palestinian dignitary to bring them from Cairo.” He added that officials with the Hamas party currently in control of Gaza did not object to the festival and it was coordinated with the Ministry of Information. Both the festival and the films shown were well received by Gazans in attendance at the festival. “I am a resident of Rafah, 18 miles away from Gaza City, however I wanted to attend the festival. This is a unique event, especially here in the Gaza Strip, where I have been raised without observing cinema or theater,” said Ismail Matter, a 20-year-old university student. Sahar Yaghi, a media and Arabic language student, echoed these sentiments. “I think the shows are very interesting. Unfortunately, we don’t have cinemas in Gaza so it has been a very good opportunity for me and others to attend such shows.” Gaza’s cinemas have been closed since the first Palestinian intifada in 1987. They remained shuttered after the Oslo accords were signed in 1993 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization and were never reopened by the Palestinian Authority. Instead, many of the cinemas were either abandoned or have been turned into public libraries. Director Ashraf al-Hawari, who has been working on documentary films for several Arab TV stations for 16 years and attended the festival, explained that there is no independent cinema production in Gaza and most of the related work in the territory is usually for local TV channels. “Gaza-based film production is going in the right direction. For the past three years, there has been development in terms of documentary films, but there needs to be some sort of progress technically. Also, young filmmakers are in need of a specialized body that supervises such productions. I remain pessimistic toward better filmmaking in Gaza unless an official body takes care of the arts,” al-Hawari added. Atemad Abu Tahoun, another local filmmaker, added, “I have been working in the field of filmmaking since 2007, and I have found that there are a growing number of women filmmakers. Yet Gaza has only a few actresses and if we want to have successful filmmaking, there should be more actresses.” The festival also served to demonstrate the possibilities for Palestinian filmmaking based on the example of the Arab Gulf films. Fayeq Jarrada, a Gaza director who works with the Media Group production company, explained that “Gulf-based cinema production reflects real progress. Despite the fact that Gulf-based cinema is recent, it is quickly developing technically and artistically. Directors from the Gulf states are young people who have studied cinema in well-known international schools.” Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.

Gaza march puts spotlight on ongoing siege: The Electronic Intifada

Andrea Borde, 23 December 2009 UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – More than 50,000 people are expected to take to the streets of Gaza on 31 December for a mass march designed to send a message to the United States, a key supporter of Israel’s army, that the situation in Gaza violates international human rights laws. The idea behind the “Gaza Freedom March” comes from CODEPINK, a women’s peace group committed to drawing attention to the humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, among other campaigns Organizers say the main catalyst for the mobilization was the Goldstone Report, commissioned by the United Nations and written by renowned South African jurist Richard Goldstone. The 575-page report, released in September, detailed gross human rights violations and war crimes committed by both Israel and Hamas in Gaza during the 27 December, 2008 to 18 January, 2009 conflict. However, it was particularly critical of Israel, calling the military campaign “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” It also described Israel’s longstanding economic blockade of Gaza a form of “collective punishment” against the population and cited a number of attacks on civilian targets during the operation for which there was “no justifiable military objective.” “I think we have to recognize that the importance of the Gaza Freedom March as a way of drawing attention to the blockade is crucial,” said Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, at a news conference to announce the march last week “But what really changed here is the world’s understanding of what’s really happening in the occupied territories in the West Bank, and Gaza, and in East Jerusalem,” he said. The three-mile march from Gaza to the Erez Crossing in Israel intends to bring together 51,350 people from 43 nations, of whom 50,000 are Palestinians. Each participant has signed a code of conduct committing to non-violence during the march. Ratner said he plans to attend with his family, who he said want to show solidarity as Jewish Americans with the people of Gaza. “I want to break the blockade, I want to see the damage done by the weapons from my tax dollars, and I want it understood: Israel does not kill in my name. I want to follow words with action, and that’s why me and my family are going to Gaza,” he said. Currently, the US gives about three billion dollars per year in military aid to Israel, he added. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK and also a Jewish American, has visited Washington numerous times to lobby for a reduction in aid. She hopes the march will influence the way the international community had responded to the attacks on Palestinian civilians. “I think it’s a recognition that Israel can no longer hide under the idea that it somehow is exceptional, that it can create and engage in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, and do so with impunity. It can’t continue to impose collective punishment on the people of Gaza. It can’t deliberately attack civilians,” said Benjamin. “The fact that so many people around the world are coming really gives heart and inspiration to the people in Gaza that shows that they have not been forgotten,” she said. Benjamin said that the participants come from diverse backgrounds, including civil society activists, students, university professors, members of trade unions, business people, people from refugee communities, women’s organizations and journalists, among many others. “We [even] have people in their seventies and eighties. Quite a large portion of the people are of Jewish decent. One is an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor,” said Benjamin. Benjamin equated the situation in Gaza to historical struggles for human rights throughout the past century. “We are doing this in the spirit of Martin Luther King, of Mohandas Gandhi, of Nelson Mandela, of non-violent resistance worldwide,” she said. Abdeen Jabara, a member of the Steering Committee for the Gaza Freedom March, also compared the struggles of African Americans for civil rights during the 1950s to Palestinians today, emphasizing the importance of non-violent, peaceful resistance. “For centuries, black people in America suffered from segregation, but it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding,” said Jabar. “We fervently hope that this effort in some small way could break the siege, [and] will register in [Washington,] DC, and the other capitals of the world.” The Goldstone report has been affirmed by both the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. However, Israel dismissed it as biased, and US Ambassador to the UN Alejandro Wolff also rejected the report as “deeply flawed” and “unbalanced.” The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly last month to condemn the report, as well. According to statistics compiled in 2008 by the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), there are 1,059,584 refugees in living in impoverished conditions in Gaza. The blockade has created a situation where often even basic supplies of medicine and food cannot pass through Israeli checkpoints. The hope of CODEPINK is that the Gaza Freedom March will create vibrations throughout the world, and especially in the US, to stop these gross human rights violations from occurring and to end its aid to Israel once and for all. “Israel has no place to hide,” said Jabara. All rights reserved, IPS — Inter Press Service (2009). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

‘Our kids can’t live with Arabs’: Ynet

Dozens of parents protest plan to move hostel for disabled children to Arab neighborhood Yael Branovsky Published: 12.24.09, 20:00 / Israel News Dozens of parents and their disabled children protested Thursday opposite the Welfare Ministry in Jerusalem over plans to house their children in a hostel located in an Arab neighborhood. The parents say the Beit Tsafafa neighborhood is incommensurate with their children’s needs. They point to the fact that the area does not have a YMCA that offers Hebrew-language courses, that there is no synagogue in the neighborhood, and that public transportation is poor. “Even people without disabilities would have trouble truly integrating into a neighborhood that is so different from their way of life,” the campaign headquarters said in a statement. Hani Levi, a mother of two mentally disabled girls, told Ynet that her qualms have nothing to do with bias or racism. “My daughters have trouble integrating into any society because of their retardation – it makes it difficult for them to communicate in Hebrew, and now the Welfare Ministry wants to place them within Arab society?” she said. However, welfare officials have dismissed the parents, claiming that their argument is racist. The Welfare Ministry issued the following statement: “The tender was won by an experienced candidate that offered a proper building in a mixed neighborhood that constitutes a part of Jerusalem. All its residents are citizens of the state and speak Hebrew….We fail to understand how a movement committed to equality acts in such racist manner.”

Palestinian refugees in Jordan stuck in a no man’s land: The Electronic Intifada

Mona Alami, 22 December 2009 AMMAN (IPS) – Music enlivens the yellow taxi as it traverses the Jordanian capital. A small Palestinian flag hangs from the rearview mirror. Jihad, the cab driver, says his father fled here from the Palestinian West Bank in 1948, later occupied by Israel in 1967. “Thank God almighty, life is good for me here and I can offer my family a decent life,” he says. “While my father was Palestinian, I feel today Jordanian and I hold the Jordanian nationality. No distinction is made in this country between Jordanian nationals and those of Palestinian descent.” According to the records of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), Jordan is home to 1.9 million displaced Palestinians. “Jordan hosts about 42 percent of the total refugee population,” says Mattar Sakr, director of public relations for UNRWA in Jordan. Sakr adds that most refugees reside in 13 camps, three of them considered unofficial dwellings because they were not assigned by the government. Not everyone in Jordan is as lucky as Jihad the taxi driver, however. Some 140,000 Palestinian refugees from Gaza do not have the right to permanent citizenship because UNRWA considers Palestinian refugees as people whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948. Some 4.5 million of the displaced worldwide fit this description while the rest are often left in limbo with regards to obtaining internationally recognized passports. The disparity between West Bank and Gaza refugees in Jordan began after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, when Transjordan (which is now the West Bank and parts of Jordan) became part of the Hashemite Kingdom and Gaza became part of Egypt. Palestinians residing in the kingdom up until 1954 were granted Jordanian citizenship. However, after the 1967 war, Israel occupied territories in Egypt, Jordan and Syria, forcing a new wave of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to seek asylum in Jordan. “Most refugees originated from Gaza, which was at the time under Egyptian authority,” explains Sakr. Unlike the Palestinians who came from the West Bank, Gaza residents did not have Jordanian citizenship and many of them moved into temporary residences, mainly in the Jarash camp. They were instead granted temporary passports that were renewable every two years. Hamed (his name has been changed for the purpose of anonymity) is one of Jordan’s “temporary citizens,” whose house is located in the warrens of the al-Wahdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman. Like many other urban camps, al-Wahdat is a typically impoverished concrete city. “I came to Amman after the 1967 war with my wife. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, but I have been living here ever since with my four children and 20 grandchildren,” recalls Hamed. Sakr acknowledges that unlike other Jordanians, temporary residents do not have access to the full array of governmental services because of their special status. “As Gaza Palestinians, we do not benefit from public schooling,” explains Hamed, who adds that his grandchildren attend UNRWA schools. “It is also very difficult for us to send our children to university because they are considered Arab students and, therefore, pay higher fees than Jordanian nationals. We’re very poor as you can see,” Hamed says, pointing to the rundown six-room house where his whole family resides. Asma, his neighbor and a mother of five, explains that holders of temporary passports are not eligible for social security services or government funded healthcare. “My husband, a holder of the temporary nationality, does not have access to any public programs and has to seek employment in the private sector. He earns about 150 dinars [$210 dollars] a month, which is the minimum wage. His job is also unstable: sometimes, he’s out of a job for two weeks out of the month.” Sakr explains that although not entitled to government funded medical services, refugees can use UNRWA medical centers, 174 of which are located throughout Jordan. Other restrictions of temporary passport holders include not having the right to vote or own property, except if they have a local Jordanian partner. “The house where I live, with my children and grandchildren, is owned by the government and we can be evicted at any time,” says Hamed. Hamed and Asma also complain about travel restrictions, saying that it is difficult for them to leave Jordan, especially to visit family members in Palestine. “I was never provided with the proper Israeli authorization that would allow me to visit my family,” says Asma. Sakr, however, denies that there is any travel ban against holders of temporary nationalities. “Many of them have left Jordan to establish themselves in the Gulf area to work,” he replies. Although travel should not be a problem for Gaza refugees for the most part, Sakr admits that they are confronted with more difficult living conditions than other socioeconomic classes and are more vulnerable to the incumbent economic crisis as well as high unemployment and dropout levels. “All of this has resulted in their marginalization,” he says. In a speech to army commanders in August 2009, King Abdullah II — ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom — vowed to uphold the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in compliance with UN resolutions, saying, “This attitude will not change and no power can force on Jordan an attitude that runs counter to its interest.” While the pledge is praiseworthy, it may be a long time before the fate of Palestinian refugees is settled considering the apparent indifference of Arab countries and Western powers. Emergency camps have become permanent places of residence, and Gaza refugees remain on the outer fringes of citizenship, stuck in a no man’s land. All rights reserved, IPS — Inter Press Service (2009). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

Rabbi’s son plans to sue Israel in ICC: Ynet

VANCOUVER – Ami Meshulam, the son of Rabbi Uzi Meshulam, who is seeking political asylum in Canada, plans to sue Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Ami Meshulam seeks refugee status in Canada, claiming he is being persecuted for his involvement in exposing children of Yemen affair, like his father. ‘Israel is committing crimes against the people of Israel and a group within it,’ he says Uzi Meshulam led a campaign against the Israeli establishment which demanded an investigation into the disappearance of the children of Yemen in the late 1950s. In May 1994 he entrenched with his followers for a month and a half in his home in the city of Yehud. During a police raid on the house one of his followers was killed in a fire exchange. Meshulam was sentenced to eight years in prison and his disciples were also given jail time. After five years in prison his sentence was reduced by then-President Ezer Weizman. Meshulam never resumed his public campaign do to his poor health condition. Ami Meshulam told Ynet, “We will claim that Israel is committing crimes against the people of Israel and a group within it. The Canadians are interested in reviewing the many evidence of the fact that, contrary to common belief, Israel is not a democratic country.” He claims that the State has been persecuting him for wishing to follow in his father’s footsteps and expose the children of Yemen affair. Political asylum Meshulam left Israel four years ago for Montreal, and his fourth daughter was born there. He is seeking political asylum and the local immigration authorities are currently debating whether he can be regarded as a refugee. Thus far, six hearings were held during which four witnesses on behalf of Meshulam appeared, including Dr. Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, a specialist on ethnic discrimination. The current hearing’s second stage will commence in February 2010. Meshulam’s attorney William Sloan noted that his client’s main assertion in applying for political asylum is his fear of the Shin Bet and the pressure that has been put on him to leave Israe He further estimated that it will not be simple for Meshulam to receive refugee status. “It will not be easy because Israel is a democratic state and in order to receive refugee status in Canada we’ll have to prove that Ami is in danger,” Sloan was quoted as saying in a Jewish Canadian website.

A Tougher Stance on the Use of Military Force Stirs Little Public Debate: International Herald Tribune

Much of El Atatra, a town in northern Gaza, was destroyed in Israel's offensive against Hamas, which ended on Jan. 18.

TEL AVIV — In the year since Israel launched its devastating military offensive against Hamas in Gaza, the country’s political and military leaders have faced intense international condemnation and accusations of possible war crimes. But Israel seems to have few qualms. Officials and experts familiar with the country’s military doctrine say that given the growing threats from Iranian-backed militant organizations both in Gaza and in Lebanon, Israel will probably find itself fighting another, similar kind of war. Only next time, some here suggest, Israel will apply more force. “The next round will be different, but not in the way people think,” said Giora Eiland, a retired major general and former chief of Israel’s National Security Council. “The only way to be successful is to take much harsher action.” Such talk has raised alarm among some critics in Israel, but so far it has stirred little public debate. Both the three-week campaign in Gaza, which ended on Jan. 18, and Israel’s monthlong war in 2006 against the Shiite Hezbollah organization in Lebanon have brought relative quiet to Israel’s borders. Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, the chief of Israel’s military intelligence, said the source of the quiet was “not the adoption of Zionism by our enemies.” The main factor, he recently told an audience at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, is Israeli deterrence, starting with the war in Lebanon and continuing with the Gaza operation that the Israelis called Cast Lead. But decisive victory against irregular forces has been elusive. In the military’s assessment, the calm is temporary and fragile; Hamas and Hezbollah are said to be rearming, making another confrontation only a matter of time. While the Israeli military has a clear advantage in fighting conventional armies, it is still adapting to the new and complicated demands of asymmetric warfare. The military says it is contending with enemies who fight out of uniform and hide behind civilians, intentionally firing rockets out of populated areas into densely populated areas of Israel. Israel’s objective, according to Gabriel Siboni, a retired colonel who runs the military program at the Institute for National Security Studies, is to shorten and intensify the period of fighting and to lengthen the period between rounds. Israel was accused of using disproportionate force in Lebanon, particularly after it flattened the Dahiya district in Beirut, a Shiite neighborhood that housed the command and control headquarters of Hezbollah. Over the month, more than a thousand Lebanese were killed. But Israeli experts say that as long as the targets are legitimate ones, the whole point is to try to overwhelm the enemy with maximum force. The destruction of Dahiya “sent a message to Hezbollah of the consequences” of confrontation, Mr. Siboni said. The campaign in Gaza, intended to halt years of rocket fire against southern Israel, left up to 1,400 Palestinians dead, including hundreds of civilians. The human toll, as well as the extensive destruction of property, prompted a United Nations mission led by an internationally renowned judge, Richard Goldstone, to accuse Israel of deliberately attacking civilians and of violations of the international laws of war. Israel rejected the Goldstone report as biased and fundamentally flawed. Israel says that while mistakes were made, it chose its targets on purely military merits and went to extraordinary lengths to warn civilians in Gaza to leave areas under attack. But one of the abiding difficulties is defining the enemy when it is embedded among the population, whether as the sole power in the area, like Hamas in Gaza, or as a militia operating within a sovereign state, in the case of Hezbollah. In the 2006 war, which was precipitated by a deadly cross-border raid by Hezbollah, Israel bombed the Beirut airport, a strategic bridge linking north and south Lebanon and some power supplies. But Israel said it was doing so only to hamper Hezbollah’s war effort, and it directed the brunt of its attacks against the militia. Now, with Hezbollah playing a more active role in the Lebanese government, Lebanon could be held more responsible for Hezbollah actions against Israel, Israeli security officials and experts say. Mr. Siboni said the idea was to inflict such damage that the other side would ask whether confrontation was worthwhile. Military officials strenuously deny that Israel plans to hit economic or civilian infrastructure to cause suffering to the local population, in the hope of turning it against the war. Brig. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, chief of the Israeli military’s Operations Department, told reporters at a recent briefing in Tel Aviv that the army would not shoot at targets that had no proven link “with any form of terror.” But, he added, “we are going to use fire.” General Kochavi said that Israel would never deliberately fire on civilians but that civilian buildings containing weapons or rocket launchers would be bombed after residents had been warned to evacuate. With the war in Gaza, however, the distinction between military and civilian infrastructure seemed to become increasingly blurred.

EU remains cozy with Israel, despite the headlines: The Electronic Intifada

David Cronin, 21 December 2009 BRUSSELS (IPS) – Israel’s relations with the European Union were tense for most of 2009 — if newspaper headlines are to be believed. In the past week, a British court drew fierce criticism from Israeli politicians after it issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister, following a complaint that she had authorized war crimes in Gaza. A few months earlier, Ikea, Volvo and other firms from Sweden, the current holder of the EU’s presidency, found themselves the target of a consumer boycott campaign in Israel because of an article in a Stockholm tabloid on the alleged theft of organs from Palestinians killed by Israeli troops. And several of the Union’s foreign ministers, such as France’s Bernard Kouchner and Ireland’s Micheal Martin, have been denied permission to enter Gaza by the Israeli authorities. In reality, however, the tension has been superficial. While there may have been the occasional angry word exchanged on the diplomatic front, the EU’s political and economic ties with Israel have been strengthened over the past few years to such an extent that Javier Solana, who stepped down as the Union’s foreign policy chief in late November, has remarked that Israel is an EU member state in all but name. Perhaps the most tangible illustration of this enhanced relationship was the sealing of an accord on agriculture last month, under which 80 percent of Israel’s fresh produce and 95 percent of its processed foods can be exported to the EU without incurring any trade taxes. A cooperation accord between Europol, the EU’s police office, and Israel has also been finalized (though still awaits a formal rubber-stamp from the Union’s governments). This is despite numerous reports from human rights organizations that detainees in Israel are routinely tortured and despite rules in force since 1998 that oblige Europol not to process evidence obtained by cruel methods. Israel’s effective integration into the EU has coincided with a marked reluctance on the part of the Union to denounce acts of aggression against the Palestinians. Although some individual EU representatives have described the blockade of Gaza as an act of “collective punishment” against 1.5 million civilians, no statement criticizing the blockade as contrary to international humanitarian law has been issued by the 27-member bloc in its entirety. Furthermore, all of the EU’s most populous countries — Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland — either opposed the Goldstone report or abstained when it was considered by the UN’s General Assembly in November. (In that report, the retired South African judge Richard Goldstone and his fellow investigators found there was no justifiable military objective behind almost every attack on Gaza’s civilians undertaken by Israel in late 2008 and the beginning of this year). Leila Shahid, the Palestinian Authority’s envoy to Brussels, says that the EU’s largest countries are “accomplices by their silence” in Israel’s misdeeds. “The raison d’etre of the bigger states — including France and Spain and Great Britain — is to be guarantors of international law,” she told IPS. “To be silent is to be part of the crime.” Dries Van Agt, prime minister of the Netherlands from 1977 to 1982, said this week that he was “ashamed” of what he called Europe’s “shocking disservice to international law.” Under an “association agreement” which came into effect in 2000, all trade preferences granted to Israel by the EU are nominally conditional on respect for human rights. Yet Van Agt expressed frustration that the Union, Israel’s main trading partner, is unwilling to revoke those preferences to insist on an improvement in the treatment of the Palestinians. “Europe is failing miserably in its Israel-Palestine policy,” he said. “It is so vitally important to the economy of Israel that it has access to this big open market. Why does the EU not even consider bringing this power to bear on Israel?” Van Agt was speaking at a meeting of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine Thursday. Inspired by a probe into the Vietnam War launched by the British intellectual Bertrand Russell in the 1960s, this tribunal is exploring the conduct of Israel’s most recent offensive against Gaza. Maysa Zorob from the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq said that the EU’s “business as usual approach amounts to disregarding Israel’s policies in the Gaza Strip.” She noted that the Union has not even brought Israel to book for the damage inflicted on Palestinian infrastructure built or maintained with EU aid. Damage to EU-financed projects during Israeli bombing of Gaza about a year ago has been calculated at more than 12 million euros ($17 million). One explanation put forward by EU diplomats for their refusal to hold Israel to account is that doing so could put efforts to initiate new peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in jeopardy. Nathalie Stanus from the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network said that this attitude is shortsighted as basic tenets of justice must be respected if a durable peace can be achieved. “Without accountability, we don’t believe there will be a viable peace process,” she said. All rights reserved, IPS — Inter Press Service (2009). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

Egypt: Denial of a Wall Near Gaza: International Herald Tribune

Published: December 22, 2009 Egypt confirmed Tuesday that it was engaged in construction along its border with Gaza, but said it was not building what some reports said was a steel wall to block cross-border smuggling. “The procedures that Egypt is undertaking inside its lands, whether building or construction work along the border with the Gaza Strip, is an Egyptian concern that is related to Egypt and Egyptian national security,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossam Zaki. “We refuse to call the construction a steel wall and wonder where such a name came from.” Egyptian security officials have said a steel barrier was being built.