[Bil'in] residents say the IDF conducts nighttime raids up to four times a week, sometimes using percussion grenades and tear gas and sometimes also entering homes, which has led to Israeli activists staying overnight in village homes. Read more »
After years of total disdain for the international community, of violating laws and treaties while Israeli legal experts turn into a kind of public defense counsel for our generals, there are finally members of the military elite who can no longer travel to Switzerland to ski, or to the opera in Covent Garden, or to a high-tech exhibition in Spain, without first consulting their lawyers. And that’s a good thing. Read more »
In a single phone call to his man in Geneva, Mahmoud Abbas has demonstrated his disregard for popular action, and his lack of faith in its accumulative power and the place of mass movements in processes of change. Read more »
Ya’alon was asked to attend the dinner by the British branch of the Jewish National Fund.
IOA Editor: Ya’alon is the former IDF chief of staff and a life-long career officer who, in different capacities – including the commanding officer of Israel’s Central Command, responsible for the West Bank during the Second Intifada – was responsible for the death of possibly thousands of innocent Palestinians.
The Jewish National Fund, which predates Israel’s existence, is the foremost national institution responsible for the acquisition of lands, ultimately bearing a significant part of the responsibility for the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
There couldn’t be a more deserving person, or institution, to stand before the International Criminal Court.
See also Tiptoeing between lawsuits: Senior officials stay in Israel Read more »
Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said that the move “was totally unacceptable, unjustified… There is no justification for postponing the approval of that report and all human rights organisation, most political organisations in Palestine are against that decision.
IOA Editor: It’s the American way – Occupation-as-usual…
See also Washington Post: UN Panel Defers Vote On Gaza Report Read more »
Amnesty, HRW: US intervention to quash a vote on the report “obliges the United States and other governments blocking action at the council to press Israel and Hamas to commence credible investigations.” Read more »
The Palestinian leadership—under heavy international pressure lead by the United States—deferred the draft proposal at the Human Rights Council endorsing all the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission (the Goldstone Report). This deferral denies the Palestinian peoples’ right to an effective judicial remedy and the equal protection of the law. It represents the triumph of politics over human rights. It is an insult to all victims and a rejection of their rights. Read more »
The establishment of a state commission of inquiry to investigate the Goldstone report’s allegations of Israeli war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza is the only appropriate response the Israeli government can make. Read more »
The wounds of Gaza have not yet healed, the debris has not yet been cleared and the housing there has not yet been rehabilitated. Israel has also not been rehabilitated. It still insists that everything went as it should have. But cracks are now appearing. There is something cynical and depressing about the fact that it is happening only after Israeli leaders started to fear for their personal fates. Now it may be hoped that Goldstone, the United Nations and the world will not give in. Read more »
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: “I lend my full support to Justice Goldstone’s report and its recommendations. I fully agree with him that the prevailing impunity for human rights violations in the Middle East conflict must end.” Read more »
