Israel's War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands
The Israel Defense Forces on Monday denied that two of its senior officers had been summoned for disciplinary action after headquarters staff found that the men exceeded their authority in approving the use of phosphorus shells during last year’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli government wrote in a recent report.
IOA Editor: Looking past Israel’s propaganda smoke screen, it is apparent that at the IDF no evil deed goes punished.
The Amman prosecutor general on Wednesday agreed to open an investigation into a complaint against Israeli politicians over statements suggesting that Jordan become an alternative homeland for Palestinians, activists said.
“Whereas the bulk of the (Goldstone) report addressed violations by Israel, the occupying power, it also considered violations by Palestinian armed groups and the Palestinian authorities in Gaza and the West Bank… We urge you to immediately take clear and public steps toward holding to account all those who prove to be responsible for the violations detailed in the report”
A few days before Israeli physicians rushed to save the lives of injured Haitians, the authorities at the Erez checkpoint prevented 17 people from passing through in order to get to a Ramallah hospital for urgent corneal transplant surgery… So what if the Goldstone Commission demanded that Israel lift the blockade on the Strip and end the collective punishment of its inhabitants? Only those who hate Israel could use frontier justice against the first country to set up a field hospital in Haiti.
See also: Larry Derfner: The pride and the shame
The power to arrest individuals reasonably suspected of war crimes anywhere in the world should they set foot on UK soil is an efficient and necessary resource in the struggle against war crimes, and must not be interfered with.
Also: British MP: Israel and Egypt’s blockade of Gaza is ‘evil’
A new global movement is challenging Israel’s violations of international law with the same strategies that were used against apartheid
The failure was a twin flop: An intelligence failure, which U.S. President Barack Obama has already stated, in the poor handling of information that arrived at the State Department and probably also the CIA from both the father of the would-be bomber and the British security service; and a failure within the security system, including that of the Israeli firm ICTS.
IOA Editor: The biggest “flop” is the refusal of the powerful to accept that terrorism is an outcome of underlying conditions which must be urgently reconsidered. As Seumas Milne argues powerfully in Terror is the price of support for despots and dictators, terrorism is the result of such support and “the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land.” As we already noted, this point, and the profound questions that follow, do not receive the public attention a single case of a would-be terrorist act (in the West) gets.
A country that believes in the morality of its actions and those of its soldiers should not behave like a permanent suspect and boycott institutions of international law. On the contrary: It must fight within those institutions for its positions and justice. Joining the International Criminal Court at The Hague will place Israel on the side of the enlightened nations, and will contribute to restraining forceful and harmful actions.
IOA Editor: It is not entirely clear whether Haaretz is saying that Israel should stop its thuggery and join the international (law) community, or that it should join the international community so that it can get away with its thuggery. It is clear, though, that the pressure of the international community is making the Israeli government, and public opinion, squirm – and that, of course, is a good thing.
In the wake of the release of the United Nation’s Goldstone report accusing Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the Gaza war, as well as efforts to issue warrants abroad for the arrest of senior IDF officers and former ministers, some Israeli officials have said the international rules of war need to be changed to better reflect the realities of asymmetric warfare… [E]efforts are being made to reach understandings with Western democracies and other countries… to adopt what some call a dynamic interpretation of existing rules of war that would be better suited to the changing realities. Such rules would not restrict armies from countering the threat of terrorism because of concern that its officers or political leadership would be accused of war crimes.
IOA Editor: As eloquently described by Daniel Machover, this new focus on international law is part of a strategy to blur the distinctions between military control of a population resisting occupation and a war against a terrorist organization such as al-Qaeda. If existing international laws of war were to undergo a “dynamic interpretation,” and be rewritten to “be better suited to the changing realities,” the occupiers will gain a far greater freedom of action – such as the ability to bomb civilian population centers and otherwise act “disproportionally,” without the threat of possible ICC charges.
[T]his strategy seems to require the blurring of any distinction between peoples fighting for self-determination or struggling against foreign occupation or internal repression and al-Qaeda or similar terrorist organisations… Tzipi Livni’s response to the arrest warrant against her: “what needs to be put on trial here is the abuse of the British legal system. This is not a suit against Tzipi Livni, this is not a lawsuit against Israel. This is a lawsuit against any democracy that fights terror.”
Baroness Scotland announces plans to alter laws after attempts to obtain warrants against Israeli generals for war crimes
British government under pressure to remove threat of legal action against Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza
“Genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation… It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.” (Raphael Lemkin, 1943)
“Suddenly, the ICC has turned into a potential threat,” warned Reisner, who was one of the architects of Israel’s policy not to have the military police investigate IDF soldiers suspected of involvement in the deaths of Palestinian civilians, a policy that has been in force since the beginning of the intifada in 2000. “If that happens, it will be a turning point in Israel’s position in the world.”
According to a current prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague… the significance of the Goldstone report… lies in its conclusion that Israel’s leaders “planned and predetermined the grave violations [of international law] and human rights abuses” long before the attack on Gaza.
The war the police and the Israel Defense Forces are openly waging against protests by left-wing and human rights activists has heated up in recent weeks. As a result, concern is growing over Israel’s image as a free and democratic country.
The New York-based rights group also criticised the Israeli blockade which “created massive humanitarian need and prevented the reconstruction of schools and homes” in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
[I]n two of the three cases the troops behaved as if they were preparing for an execution, not an arrest. Relatives and eyewitnesses told B’Tselem that the two were unarmed and did not attempt to flee, and that the soldiers weren’t trying to stop them, but rather shot them from close range once their identity was revealed.
One of the disturbing features of the persistent use of torture by many countries in conflict situations around the world is the role some doctors play in condoning it…. [Dr Ruchama Marton, head of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel] was thinking about what some regard as the very unsatisfactory situation in Israel.
Livni is now unable to travel to Britain and a number of other countries, as if she were the president of Sudan. It is not (only) the world, it is (also) us. The arrest threat was issued by the most enlightened of nations. They did so when they became aware that Israel was not investigating itself. Is this not enough to rock Israeli society, to cause it to shine a light on itself instead of reprimanding half the globe?
“There is no Palestine without Jerusalem no one will accept this. Without Jerusalem there will be no peace,” [Abbas] said.
Israeli Border Police officers determined her laptop computer was a security threat and shot it three times. Lily Sussman, 21, wrote on her blog that the police officers subjected her to two hours of questioning and searches, before firing three bullets into her Apple Macbook. “They had pressed every sock and scarf with a security device, ripped open soap and had me strip extra layers. They asked me tons of questions.”
The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned the British envoy to Israel to rebuke him over the arrest warrant issued for Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes in Gaza. … [Naor Gilon, deputy director at the Foreign Ministry in charge of Western Europe] called on Phillips to urge his government to change the law that allows for arrest warrants to be issued against senior Israeli officials over alleged war crimes perpetrated in Gaza during the winter conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Berlanty Azzam , 22, has been in the West Bank since 2005 and has only two months of studies left in order to complete her Bachelor’s degree in business administration. In late October, however, the Israeli authorities expelled her back to Gaza claiming that that she was illegally staying in the West Bank.
Israeli security agents held a Palestinian patient for three weeks without charge, interrogated him repeatedly and offered access to hospital care if he agreed to become an informant, the Guardian has learned.
[A]n all-time record for the number of Arab residents of East Jerusalem who were stripped of residency rights by the [Israeli] Interior Ministry. Altogether, the ministry revoked the residency of 4,577 East Jerusalemites in 2008 – 21 times the average of the previous 40 years… The [effort] was the brainchild of former interior minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) and [the head of] the ministry’s Population Administration.
IOA Editor: Depopulating the Palestinians, or ethnic cleansing, is not new for Israel. In addition to the forcible removal of Palestinians during the Nakba, the Israeli government has used a variety of tricks to “redeem” the Land of Israel from its native Arab population. The removal of East Jerusalem Palestinian residents is somewhat similar to a government practice of the early 1950s, targeting the so-called “absent present” residents: those who temporarily left their homes or land during the war, but remained within what later become Israel. They were prevented from reclaiming their property and Israel was thus able to confiscate it for the exclusive use of its Jewish citizens.
“… [W]e know the incident I was involved in was not an unusual one, but one that happens a lot… The only difference is that in my case it was documented and that’s how the entire world saw and heard about it… The Israeli courts have proved and taught us that they are part of the occupation system. It’s like the judge, the defendant and the prosecutor are the same thing, as they are part of one system. How can the same system judge itself?”
“To the best of my knowledge, there’s probably no other country in the world… which is subject to such an intrusive regime of aerial surveillance,” UN special envoy for Lebanon Michael Williams said this month.
Noam Chomsky in BBC interview:The war in Afghanistan is “immoral.” He spoke to Stephen Sackur and answered viewer questions, among them several on the Middle East.
[Lacking] the most essential elements of statehood: independence and sovereignty, and effective control over its territory… A Palestinian state that is recognised under these circumstances, with its territory partitioned, and subdivided into cantons, surrounded by walls, fences, ditches, watchtowers, and barbed wire, would scarcely be a state worthy of the name.
[T]here is a gradual mobilizing, galvanizing of public opinion such that… you can see the writing on the wall, that Israel is getting closer and closer to being held accountable… And in that respect you can say the Goldstone report marked a qualitative change. They recognized now for the first time that the shadow of accountability is hanging over them.
The outrageous treatment of the 21-year-old Bethlehem University student, Berlanty Azzam by the Israeli military is the latest incident in a long list of brutalities carried out by one of the longest and most brutal military occupations in history. Returning to Bethlehem in the West Bank, after a job interview in Ramallah, Berlanty… was detained at a military checkpoint, blindfolded, handcuffed, loaded into a military jeep and deported to Gaza.
“I would suggest that time has come for Israel to look at the allegations not only of the killing and injuring of so many civilians but also the collective punishment meted out to the people of Gaza by the substantial destruction of the infrastructure, and particularly the food infrastructure of Gaza. The debate should continue, not attempt to be silenced.”
“We have been under enormous pressure and tremendous attacks, some of them very personal, as have been the attacks against Richard Goldstone with really vituperative language used to describe him: obsequious Jew, self-loathing Jew and all the rest of it.”
It has been five years since the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel should cease construction, dismantle the wall, and pay reparations to affected Palestinians. But the “Separation Barrier” is now 400 km, double its length at the time of the court ruling.
“The Israeli occupation impacts on the lives of Palestinian women at every juncture. From sexual harassment and assault, discriminatory treatment of Palestinian female prisoners to being forced to give birth at Israeli checkpoints,” Dima Nashashibi from WCLAC told IPS.
NOAM CHOMSKY:
