EDITOR: The US is making sure there is no Two States solution
As if the two-state solution was still a faint possibility, the US has stepped in in order to make sure it cannot ever take place… by depriving the PA of its income, it makes sense for the PA to end the show, and to return the keys to Israel. Now Israel can look after the territories, and also pay for it. To continue to play the US/Israel game is a crime, and does no longer fool the Palestinian people or anyone else.
In the meantime, It has become safer for war criminals to travel to Britain. And why not? A country itself involved in so many war crimes, is the natural place for war criminals to visit safely.
Minister: All 2011 USAID projects halted: Ma’an News
Published Friday 07/10/2011
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — All projects by the US international assistance agency in the Palestinian territories funded under its 2011 budget have been halted, the minister of economy in the West Bank said Friday.
Hasan Abu Libdeh said funding for USAID projects stopped after the US Congress blocked transfer of some $200 million in funds in August. Implementation will continue for a few weeks until the funds run dry, he said.
The project freeze relates to funding for infrastructure work, specifically for “roads, water, health and other projects related to building the capacities (of the Palestinian Authority),” Abu Libdeh told Ma’an.
Dozens have already lost their jobs related to projects earmarked for blocked funds, he said.
US lawmakers put a hold on the aid in September after President Mahmoud Abbas went ahead with his bid for membership of the UN despite US and Israeli opposition.
A US official told Ma’an that USAID had not halted its programs.
“We are working with the Congress to remove Congressional holds with respect to the release of (the 2011 financial year’s) assistance for the Palestinians,” the official said.
“The lifting of the holds is necessary for programs to continue as planned. Ongoing programs will continue until funds are exhausted.”
US officials are in “frequent contact with our Palestinian partners to explain the holds on our assistance and their implications for our programs in the West Bank and Gaza,” the official added.
The Obama administration is exerting huge efforts to overturn the freeze on funds, officials say, and Israel has also warned that it supports continued aid to the Ramallah-based Palestinian government.
“We think it is money that is not only in the interest of the Palestinians, it is in US interest and it is also in Israeli interest and we would like to see it go forward,” State Dept. spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
Abu Libdeh, the minister, said he was officially informed of Congress’ move by a senior USAID delegate, and that it was unclear whether there will be US government funding for Palestinian projects in 2012.
The PA, which exercises limited rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has often failed to pay its 150,000 employees on time and in full and remains reliant on foreign aid to fill a deficit projected at $900 million this year.
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank say that financial problems threaten the state-building program overseen by Salam Fayyad, the prime minister in the West Bank.
The 27-member European Union, the PA’s single biggest funder, has said that it will continue funding the West Bank government.
Muslim and Christian graves desecrated in Israeli city of Jaffa: Guardian
Militant Jewish settlers smash tombs and spray stones with graffiti on Yom Kippur and firebomb is thrown at synagogue
Jaffa, south of central Tel Aviv, where graves were desecrated on Yom Kippur. Photograph: Gil Cohen Magen / Reuters/Reuters
Dozens of gravestones have been desecrated at Muslim and Christian cemeteries and a firebomb thrown at a synagogue in Jaffa, Israel, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
At least five tombs were smashed and around 20 others sprayed with Hebrew graffiti, including ‘Death to Arabs’ and ‘Price Tag’ – a slogan used by militant Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and their supporters.
The “price-taggers” have vowed to avenge any move by Israel to uproot West Bank settlement outposts built without Israeli government permission, and have set fire to mosques and vandalised both Israeli and Palestinian property.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a firebomb thrown on to the roof of a synagogue in the Jaffa area caused no damage or casualties. He said an investigation had been launched and that patrols had been stepped up.
A few dozen Israelis and Palestinians turned out in a show of protest against the attacks and a local councillor blamed settlers. Jaffa is the ancient part of Tel Aviv, with a mixed Jewish and Arab population, including Christians and Muslims.
“All these extreme settlers are doing different activities and they are not paying a price for anything,” said Sami Abu-Shehadi, a member of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality council. “Settlers have been saying that they want to bring the conflict inside [Israel] and this is exactly what they are doing now,” he said.
Rosenfeld said there was no initial indication the suspects were settlers or settler supporters, and that there was also a possibility that they might be football hooligans.
Israeli president Shimon Peres condemned the vandalism. “The desecration of graves is a forbidden and criminal act that defames our honour and is contrary to the moral values of Israeli society,” he said.
On Monday, a mosque in a Bedouin village in northern Israel was set on fire and graffiti sprayed on its walls in an attack authorities have blamed on hardline Jewish settlers. The attacks have drawn broad condemnation from Peres and other Israeli leaders, and the country’s chief rabbis visited the scene in a bid to calm tensions.
In 2005 a Jewish couple were charged for throwing a pig’s head into a Tel Aviv mosque in an attempt to derail Israel’s pullout from Gaza, which went ahead in August of that year.
In 2008 riots erupted in the coastal city of Acre in northern Israel when Jews accosted an Arab man who drove his car into a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood during Yom Kippur when all traffic halts and the country shuts down for 24 hours.
Sleep easy, war criminals
Britain’s insulting new rules on arrest warrants will only encourage Israel’s view of itself as above international law
Israel has violated innumerable UN resolutions and international laws over the past 50 years without any sanction being incurred – whether legal, economic, political or military. Most blatant is its disregard for the overwhelming opinion of the international court of justice in The Hague, which in 2004 declared the erection of a wall through the occupied territories to be unlawful. If you add the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, continued extension of illegal settlements, forced evictions and house demolitions, requisition of water resources, Gaza blockade and illicit use of cloned passports to facilitate an assassination outside Israel, anyone might be think that this is a state that regards itself as above the law.
The creation of international crimes with universal jurisdiction was accomplished after years of negotiation and careful deliberation for one purpose: to ensure there could be no hiding place or safe haven for the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes against humanity. In practical terms it means that no matter where the offence took place, nor who the victims were, nor who carried out the acts, a judicial process could be invoked to prosecute those responsible. Examples of such cases are genocide, war crimes and torture.
The ICJ itself made clear in the wall case that the obligation to prosecute is the concern of all states. The problem is that no state has been willing to take on this task vis-a-vis Israel other than on a very muted diplomatic level. Lawyers acting for individuals in Palestine have been forced to do so themselves.
In 2009 Westminster magistrates court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister at the time of Operation Cast Lead, which caused an estimated death toll of 1,400 in Gaza. Britain’s Labour government hierarchy fell over itself rushing to the Israeli authorities, not about the deaths but to apologise for the warrant.
A dramatic incident occurred as Livni was about to appear on Israeli television during the invasion. The interviewer Shlomi Eldar recognised a name that appeared on his mobile – Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor who had courageously and steadfastly given services without fear or favour equally to Israelis and Palestinians. “They shelled my house. They killed my daughters. What have we done? Shlomi, I wanted to save them but there are dead. They were hit in the head. They died on the spot. Allah, what have we done to them?” Three of his daughters and his niece had just been killed by Israeli forces. The call was broadcast and transmitted round the world. The whole story of the operation as the doctor witnessed it is told in his acclaimed book I Shall Not Hate.
There could be no question that this admired physician was associated with Hamas or terrorism, or even a hostile thought. Only two possibilities make sense: a deliberate attack, or an indiscriminate one that did not afford proper protection for civilians. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the UN fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict found that the Israelis – and Hamas – had committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. While the leader of the mission had second thoughts about part of the conclusions in April this year, the other three distinguished members of the panel did not, and the Foreign Office maintained its support for the report and did not wish to see it withdrawn. In any event none of this relates to a failure to accord civilians proper protection.
In September the British government changed the ground rules by providing the director of public prosecutions with the power of veto over private applications for arrest warrants (in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act). It is an insult to the courts to insinuate that they cannot be trusted to assess the requisite threshold for issuing a warrant. In 10 years only two out of 10 such applications had been granted. We are dealing here with arrest, not charge.
The DPP made clear in January that he would consult the attorney general if approached for approval. The attorney would then decide whether it was in the public interest to prosecute. Such a decision would normally not arise until all relevant evidence had been assembled so that an overview could be made on the twofold test of evidential adequacy and public interest. To essentially assess that there is no reasonable prospect of a conviction at the start is to pre-empt the whole process and makes a mockery of the concept of universal jurisdiction.
It is therefore highly unlikely that any prosecutions of consequence will ensue either at the instigation of the government itself or of an individual – as Livni’s meeting with William Hague in London this week demonstrated. Given the British government’s lacklustre performance in this field when it comes to nations or individuals who are seen to be unacceptable (eg Pinochet, where it took a Spanish magistrate to act), those in positions of command and responsibility at times when war crimes are committed can now rest easily in their beds.
Tzipi Livni spared war crime arrest threat: Guardian
Foreign Office declares that the Israeli opposition leader enjoys temporary diplomatic immunity as she is on a ‘special mission’
The Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni has avoided the possibility of prosecution in a British court for war crimes after the Foreign Office declared that she enjoys temporary diplomatic immunity.
A private application for a warrant to arrest the former foreign minister during her visit to London was made on Tuesday and had been under consideration by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC.
But the announcement that the Foreign Office had issued a rarely heard of certificate that she was on a “special mission” infuriated Palestinian activists and human rights groups.
Legislation passed earlier this year requires the DPP to give his consent to any private prosecution for war crimes launched in courts in England and Wales to prevent politically motivated cases and to ensure that there was “solid evidence”. Under what is known as universal jurisdiction, war crimes committed anywhere in the world can be tried in UK courts.
The arrival of Livni was a significant test case. In late 2009, an arrest warrant was issued for Livni on the grounds she had been a member of the Israeli war cabinet that sanctioned the assault on Gaza in which more than a thousand Palestinians were killed. On that occasion she cancelled her visit.
In a detailed statement, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) revealed that it had received a fresh application for an arrest warrant on Tuesday. “No concluded view has been reached on whether there is sufficient evidence to support a realistic prospect of conviction against Ms Livni.”
On Thursday, it added, the CPS had been served with a certificate by the foreign secretary, William Hague, declaring the Foreign Office “has consented to the visit to the UK of Ms Livni as a special mission”.
“Special mission” immunity status, the CPS said, could not be challenged.
The private prosecution application had been brought on behalf of an unnamed Palestinian police officer whose brother, also a police officer, was killed during the first day of the attack on Gaza in 2008.
The case was handled in London by Daniel Machover of the solicitors Hickman and Rose. A joint statement with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said: “The DPP … has been blocked from any arrest decision … but not on the basis of a lack of evidence. The only reason given by the DPP is the retrospective grant of diplomatic immunity to Ms Livni by the British foreign secretary on the basis of a ‘special mission’.
“The government has abused the law in order to ensure that Ms Livni escapes accountability. Ms Livni is not a member of the Israeli government, but the leader of the opposition. This action exhibits a serious and worrying disregard for the rule of law, and appears to be in violation of the UK’s international obligations.”
Hague said: “It was an appalling situation when political abuse of our legal procedures prevented people like Ms Livni from travelling legitimately to the UK. We have dealt with this urgently as we promised to on coming to office.
“The UK will continue to honour our international obligations and make sure that people who have committed some of the most awful crimes – wherever in the world they took place – can be brought to justice in our courts.”