24 sept 2009
Justice this time: Will Goldstone's report deliver?
by Ramzy Baroud
“We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the era of impunity,” Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, was quoted by IPS in response to the findings of a 574-page report by a four-member United Nations Fact finding mission.
The mission, led by internationally-renowned former South African supreme court justice and chief prosecutor in the international tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, investigated alleged war crimes committed by Israeli troops in Gaza in a 23-day bloody, unprecedented onslaught against a largely defenseless population.
But Hijab was not the only one who expressed optimism. Others did, encouraged perhaps, by the report’s use of terminology unfamiliar in a conflict where empirical experience has shown that Israeli actions, no matter how outrageously violent, will have no meaningful legal repercussions whatsoever.
Goldstone’s report, released on September 15, made some important recommendations, following a most thorough investigation that was carefully compiled by the mission – which was organized by the UN Human Rights Council last April.
One is that the UN Security Council should set up a team of experts to monitor Israel’s investigations of the war crimes committed in Gaza. If Israel fails to do so, then the situation should be referred to the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
This raises many questions, lead amongst them is: did Israel commit war crimes in Gaza, and, second, is Israel capable of conducting an honest investigation into those crimes, considering the state’s bloody legacy and lack of any serious legal accountability.
Goldstone answers both questions.
“The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly in some respects crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force,” Goldstone told reporters on September 16. He also said that the Israeli government has carried out no credible investigation.
Despite his recommendations that UN experts follow the progress of the internal investigation by Israel, and the Palestinians (since they too were accused of violating international law by lobbing home-made rockets into Israel, without taking into account the possible harm to civilians) it’s puzzling why Goldstone would think that any genuine investigation is possible in the first place.
Goldstone knows, as many of us already do, that the events in Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of 1,387 (other estimates put the number at 1,417, mostly civilians, including over 300 children), the wounding of thousands more, the targeting of an already dilapidating infrastructure (hospitals, police stations, factories, schools, and even chicken farms) of a deprived and besieged society was very much a political decision made at the highest levels by the likes of Olmert, Livni, Barak and other serial criminals who have tormented Palestinians for too long.
Palestinians were also chastised for rockets fired from besieged Gaza. Of course, Goldstone was not expected to justify or applaud the homemade rockets, or even underline their lack of effectiveness, as four Israelis were killed by rocket fire, during the period of the war. Out of the nine Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting, four were killed in friendly fire.
While both Hamas and the PA fully cooperated with Goldstone and his colleagues, Israel fully rejected the mission, refusing entry into Israel or Gaza, forcing the use of alternative routes into the besieged strip, through Egypt.
Israeli officials claim that the report was pre-written, rendering it biased from the start. They used the same predictable pattern of smears, redundant diatribes and predictable language.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the report created unjust “equivalence of a democratic state with a terror organization,” in reference to Hamas.
Following the good old democracy reference, racism kicks in. “We have nothing to be ashamed of, and don’t need lessons in morality from a committee established by Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Somalia,” Levy said. Apparently dark-skinned people of the South are both incapable of being democratic or moral. Only Israel and her allies are capable of those qualities.
“The Goldstone report has set a new standard for equating the behavior of democratic nations and terrorists,” wrote Richard Sideman, President of the New York-based American Jewish Committee in a letter published in the New York Times on September 18.
The same disingenuous sentiment utilized by Levy and Sideman (how curious that both seemed to be using the same script) echoed by many Israeli officials and their lobbyists abroad, who went into crisis management mode following the release of the report.
But why should they care?
Could it be because Goldstone called on the 192-member General Assembly to establish an escrow fund so that Israel can compensate Palestinians in Gaza? Israel would never spend its hard-earned US tax payers money on such frivolous matters.
Could it be because the Human Rights Council is convening on September 29 in Geneva to discuss the report, and could call for its transfer to the Security Council, and even the ICC?
Could it be because the report’s findings might empower an already growing boycott movement world-wide?
Could it be because it’s much harder to doubt the credibility of Goldstone, to smear him as anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew?
Could it be because all these factors are escalating Israeli fears that the “era of impunity” is indeed over?
“Perhaps next time we set out to wage another vain and miserable war, we will take into account not only the number of fatalities we are likely to sustain, but also the heavy political damage such wars cause,” wrote Israeli columnist Gideon Levy.
One would have to wait for the next miserable war, the next massacre to find out whether Israel has learned its lesson. Until then, thousands of starved, desperate yet resilient Palestinians in Gaza continue to live in their makeshift tents, atop the rubble, which was once called home, awaiting food, cement and international justice.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author of several books and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=227439
Justice this time: Will Goldstone's report deliver?
by Ramzy Baroud
“We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the era of impunity,” Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, was quoted by IPS in response to the findings of a 574-page report by a four-member United Nations Fact finding mission.
The mission, led by internationally-renowned former South African supreme court justice and chief prosecutor in the international tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, investigated alleged war crimes committed by Israeli troops in Gaza in a 23-day bloody, unprecedented onslaught against a largely defenseless population.
But Hijab was not the only one who expressed optimism. Others did, encouraged perhaps, by the report’s use of terminology unfamiliar in a conflict where empirical experience has shown that Israeli actions, no matter how outrageously violent, will have no meaningful legal repercussions whatsoever.
Goldstone’s report, released on September 15, made some important recommendations, following a most thorough investigation that was carefully compiled by the mission – which was organized by the UN Human Rights Council last April.
One is that the UN Security Council should set up a team of experts to monitor Israel’s investigations of the war crimes committed in Gaza. If Israel fails to do so, then the situation should be referred to the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
This raises many questions, lead amongst them is: did Israel commit war crimes in Gaza, and, second, is Israel capable of conducting an honest investigation into those crimes, considering the state’s bloody legacy and lack of any serious legal accountability.
Goldstone answers both questions.
“The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly in some respects crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force,” Goldstone told reporters on September 16. He also said that the Israeli government has carried out no credible investigation.
Despite his recommendations that UN experts follow the progress of the internal investigation by Israel, and the Palestinians (since they too were accused of violating international law by lobbing home-made rockets into Israel, without taking into account the possible harm to civilians) it’s puzzling why Goldstone would think that any genuine investigation is possible in the first place.
Goldstone knows, as many of us already do, that the events in Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of 1,387 (other estimates put the number at 1,417, mostly civilians, including over 300 children), the wounding of thousands more, the targeting of an already dilapidating infrastructure (hospitals, police stations, factories, schools, and even chicken farms) of a deprived and besieged society was very much a political decision made at the highest levels by the likes of Olmert, Livni, Barak and other serial criminals who have tormented Palestinians for too long.
Palestinians were also chastised for rockets fired from besieged Gaza. Of course, Goldstone was not expected to justify or applaud the homemade rockets, or even underline their lack of effectiveness, as four Israelis were killed by rocket fire, during the period of the war. Out of the nine Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting, four were killed in friendly fire.
While both Hamas and the PA fully cooperated with Goldstone and his colleagues, Israel fully rejected the mission, refusing entry into Israel or Gaza, forcing the use of alternative routes into the besieged strip, through Egypt.
Israeli officials claim that the report was pre-written, rendering it biased from the start. They used the same predictable pattern of smears, redundant diatribes and predictable language.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the report created unjust “equivalence of a democratic state with a terror organization,” in reference to Hamas.
Following the good old democracy reference, racism kicks in. “We have nothing to be ashamed of, and don’t need lessons in morality from a committee established by Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Somalia,” Levy said. Apparently dark-skinned people of the South are both incapable of being democratic or moral. Only Israel and her allies are capable of those qualities.
“The Goldstone report has set a new standard for equating the behavior of democratic nations and terrorists,” wrote Richard Sideman, President of the New York-based American Jewish Committee in a letter published in the New York Times on September 18.
The same disingenuous sentiment utilized by Levy and Sideman (how curious that both seemed to be using the same script) echoed by many Israeli officials and their lobbyists abroad, who went into crisis management mode following the release of the report.
But why should they care?
Could it be because Goldstone called on the 192-member General Assembly to establish an escrow fund so that Israel can compensate Palestinians in Gaza? Israel would never spend its hard-earned US tax payers money on such frivolous matters.
Could it be because the Human Rights Council is convening on September 29 in Geneva to discuss the report, and could call for its transfer to the Security Council, and even the ICC?
Could it be because the report’s findings might empower an already growing boycott movement world-wide?
Could it be because it’s much harder to doubt the credibility of Goldstone, to smear him as anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew?
Could it be because all these factors are escalating Israeli fears that the “era of impunity” is indeed over?
“Perhaps next time we set out to wage another vain and miserable war, we will take into account not only the number of fatalities we are likely to sustain, but also the heavy political damage such wars cause,” wrote Israeli columnist Gideon Levy.
One would have to wait for the next miserable war, the next massacre to find out whether Israel has learned its lesson. Until then, thousands of starved, desperate yet resilient Palestinians in Gaza continue to live in their makeshift tents, atop the rubble, which was once called home, awaiting food, cement and international justice.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author of several books and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=227439
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unleashed on his detested Persian adversaries in a bellicose address at the General Assembly on Thursday, challenging the legitimacy of the United Nations and labeling Iran's leaders modern-day Nazis.
"The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging," Netanyahu said, condemning the world body for its stance on Israel's Gaza assault last winter, in which at least 1,400 Palestinians were killed by his country's military. Echoing Hamas' sentiment following a UN investigation that found evidence both authorities committed atrocities during the assault, he said, "Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims." "That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did," he added, in regard to conclusions made by South African justice Richard Goldstone's six-month investigation released earlier this month, which Netanyahu charged with "falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted." But more damaging to the UN's credibility, according to the prime minister, was that its member states afforded Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadenijad the same opportunity to speak to the UN a day earlier. "Have you no shame? Have you no decency?" he asked. "What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!" "You give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state," he added over Ahmadenijad's views on the Jewish Holocaust. He slammed "those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing" for not walking out along with diplomats from Israel, the US, Canada and others during the Iranian leader's address. 'Iran threatens you' However Netanyahu went on to say that Ahmadenijad did not just threaten the legitimacy of the international community's most important institution, but that indeed he threatens the safety of all nations on the planet. "Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. If you think that, you're wrong," he said, before comparing Iran to Nazi Germany. "History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others." Netanyahu said that the most urgent challenge facing the UN "is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons," which he said he was sure they would use to reverse "the march of history." He added, "And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after a horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind." "The greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction," he said, ripping Iran's "primitive fanaticism" and its alleged nuclear program but extolling Israel, which is thought to maintain at least dozens of nuclear warheads and missiles, for being "at the forefront" of advances and offering "humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise." He called on the UN to challenge Iran. "Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge?" he asked. "Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism? ... Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?" 'Gaza assault was UN's fault' Netanyahu spent much of the rest of his speech slamming the UN for its Goldstone report. He said the Human Rights Council, which commissioned the report, was "a misnamed institution if there ever was one," and explained how his country's assault on Gaza was performed more ethically than the Allies' attacks on Nazi Germany during World War II. "There is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities," he said, comparing Hamas' homemade projectiles with Hitler's artillery. "Israel chose to respond differently," he insisted, blaming Hamas for the hundreds of Palestinian civilians killed over the course of the three-week assault. "Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers." As Netanyahu began defending Israel's conduct during the assault, Palestine's delegate to the UN left the hall. Before the Gaza assault, Netanyahu said, Israel "heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council." He said that when Israel fulfilled its obligations to withdraw from occupied Gaza, Hamas upped its attacks. "Again, the UN was silent." "Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way," he said. "Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel." The report, in fact, criticized both Israel and Hamas for their actions in Gaza. "By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals," he said. "What a perversion of truth! What a perversion of justice! |
Netanyahu thus called on the UN to dismiss the report's findings. "The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us - my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self defense," he said. "What a travesty!"
"Delegates of the United Nations, will you accept this farce?" he asked. "Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat."
'UN founded Jewish Israel'
Although challenging the UN's legitimacy on multiple points throughout his speech, Netanyahu opened and concluded it by acknowledging that the UN had created his country in the 1940s. "Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland," he said. "In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state."
Despite that, he laid out his position that its original European immigrants were not "foreign conquerors" or "strangers to this land," but rather that Israel was "the land of our forefathers" and "our homeland."
In any event, Netanyahu noted, "We recognize that the Palestinians also live there." He said Palestinians "want a home of their own," and offered to give it to them on certain terms, which he listed. He said his country was Jewish, that the failure of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination had always been rooted in the rejection of this fact, and ultimately preconditioned the establishment of their state on recognizing Israel as such.
"Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people," he said. "We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years - say yes to a Jewish state."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=227537
"Delegates of the United Nations, will you accept this farce?" he asked. "Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat."
'UN founded Jewish Israel'
Although challenging the UN's legitimacy on multiple points throughout his speech, Netanyahu opened and concluded it by acknowledging that the UN had created his country in the 1940s. "Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland," he said. "In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state."
Despite that, he laid out his position that its original European immigrants were not "foreign conquerors" or "strangers to this land," but rather that Israel was "the land of our forefathers" and "our homeland."
In any event, Netanyahu noted, "We recognize that the Palestinians also live there." He said Palestinians "want a home of their own," and offered to give it to them on certain terms, which he listed. He said his country was Jewish, that the failure of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination had always been rooted in the rejection of this fact, and ultimately preconditioned the establishment of their state on recognizing Israel as such.
"Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people," he said. "We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years - say yes to a Jewish state."
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=227537
22 sept 2009
On the Goldstone Report
On the Goldstone Report
One of the sites Goldstone visited on his tours of the Gaza Strip
by Curtis F.J. Doebbler
On 15 September 2009 the UN-mandated Fact Finding Mission on Palestine under justice Richard Goldstone released its meticulously documented report concluding that Israel had not only carried out atrocities but had done so intentionally. The extent of the atrocities documented in the report, which was based on thousands of documents and interviews, according to the Fact Finding Mission were acts whose perpetrators should be investigated as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In one of the best documented reports on Israeli violence against Palestinians to ever appear, the Fact Finding Mission concluded not only that in “all of the cases described … both the act and the consequence were intended,” but also that action should be taken to prosecute the perpetrators. The suggested action included referring the case to the International Criminal Court, something that the Palestinian Authority requested after the ceasefire was announced on 19 January 2009. It is a request that the Prosecutor of the Court is has been considering for more than none months without a reply.
It is disappointing that the report focuses on action that should be taken by Israel and the UN Security Council, both entities which have refused to act. Within hours of the report’s release the Israeli government publicly disregarded any suggestion that it would act and the US Ambassador to the UN in New York arrogantly dismissed the reports explicit call for follow-up action.
The report outlines - on the basis of eyewitness reports, photographs and interviews with Israelis, Palestinians, and international aid workers - the facts behind allegations of crimes that were committed in Gaza and brought to the Mission’s attention. Much of the evidence was accumulated during site visits by the Mission to Gaza during the summer months, approximately six months after the cessation of major hostilities.
The 575-page report, with a 33-page Executive Summary, begins by outlining its methodology; considering all relevant events since 19 June 2008 and the acts of all parties related to the treatment of the Palestinian people living in Gaza. Not only are these events analyzed, they were put in the broader context including the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza as well as inter-Palestinian violence. The events occurring between 18 June 2008 and 27 December 2008, for example, are outlined in detail in the report as is the history of Israel’s policies and treatment of the Palestinian people. The value of the contextual description is that it provides convincing evidence that Israel’s aggression against the people of Gaza was not an isolated instance, but part of a longstanding oppression of the Palestinian people.
The description of facts in the report is not always complete. Although an obvious effort was made to hear both the Palestinian and Israeli points of view on all events, equally apparent is the Mission’s concern with giving too much attention to the views of the Hamas government, which is the entity perhaps most affected by these events, after the civilian victims.
Bias toward Hamas
While the report mentions that “Hamas forces and armed groups had seized all Palestinian Authority security installations and government buildings in the Gaza Strip” in June 2007, no mention is made of the widely known efforts of Palestinian strongman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Dahlan, acting ostensibly with the support of the Fatah authorities who had lost the election, to oust the elected Hamas government officials in Gaza. The lack of views by Hamas officials is perhaps part of the Commission’s effort to mitigate the political controversy that it was aware would inevitably surround any report criticizing Israel.
The most technical part of the report is the outline of the international law that applies to the violations that occurred in Gaza. While the discussion of the law was noticeably abbreviated it makes some important points that are usually not included in UN reports on Palestine. For example, the discussion begins with an important statement about the applicability of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. In one of its most important and succinct statements of the law the Mission concludes:
“[t]he right to self-determination has an erga omnes character whereby all States have the duty to promote its realization ... [moreover] ... peoples who resist forcible action depriving them of their right to self-determination have the right to seek and receive support from third parties.”
Critics of the report have cited the reports’ statement that “[t]hose who take action amounting to military force must comply with IHL [international humanitarian law or the laws of war]” as implicitly supporting Palestinian violence against Israel. Such criticism misunderstands the nature of the law, which applies without prejudice to whether the initiation of the use of force is legal or illegal. Moreover, the consensus of the majority of states reflected in UN resolutions acknowledges the right of people striving for their self-determination against an oppressive foreign occupying power to use force.
Wide scope
The report’s sections 5 through 29 (V-XXIX) details the evidence on violations of these laws in Gaza. These details include evidence that the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel is illegal and that Israel’s “military hostilities were a culmination of the long process of economic and political isolation imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israel.”
In its main findings on Israel’s use of force in Gaza the report details deliberate attacks on civilians, on humanitarian aid workers, on government buildings and police as well as Israel’s use of prohibited weapons and the use of civilians as human shields, their arbitrary detention and their inhumane treatment. In one section of the report the Mission details the accumulative effect of Israel’s attacks on “the foundations of civilian life in Gaza” which include the “destruction of industrial infrastructure, food production, water installations, sewage treatment plants and housing.” In each case the MISSION report painstaking describes the situation, the evidence or facts, and its legal perspective on the facts.
While the overwhelming focus of the report was on Israel’s more numerous and more deadly acts of aggression, the report also criticized non-state actors such as the Hamas authorities in Gaza and Palestinian Authority more generally for carrying out actions whose perpetrators should also be investigated for having committed international crimes.
Hamas is criticized for inter-Palestinian violence as well as indiscriminate attacks on Israel through the firing of rockets and mortars. The Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah and exercising some control over the occupied West Bank is criticized for its detention and harassment of Hamas affiliated officials in the West Bank.
Recommendations
The conclusions of the report make it clear that follow-up action is expected and necessary. The report suggests first giving Israel and the Palestinians the opportunity to search for, take into custody, and prosecute the perpetrators of international crimes. If this fails, the report then suggests that the UN Security Council should act. And finally if this also fails the report suggests that the UN General Assembly can act.
The report also includes copies of the correspondence between the head of the Mission, Judge Richard Gold stone, and the Israeli authorities that shed light both on the painstaking effort that Israel made to block this UN mandated Mission and the effort that the Mission made to ensure that only reliably documented allegations are mentioned in its report.
While the report provides incontrovertible evidence of Israel’s illegal treatment of the Palestinian people, it also raises some uncomfortable questions.
Most knowledgeable observers of Palestine - surely all 15 members of the UN Security Council - know that Israel has been mistreating Palestinians for the best part of century. Why has no meaningful action been taken to protect Palestinians? Despite the well-documented evidence of serious international crimes committed on a large scale by Israeli forces it is unlikely that a Security deadlocked for the better part of a century will be convinced to act now.
Issues with follow-up
Given this situation, why does the report focuses its call for action on the Israeli government and the UN Security Council? Both have made it clear that they will not act, both before and after the report appeared.
Why wasn’t more attention given to the role of the world’s more legitimate international body, the UN General Assembly? Not only was this body the most proactive body in reacting when the fighting broke out in Gaza, but it has the most explicitly mandate for taking action. According to article 22 of the Charter of the United Nations the General Assembly has an explicit mandate to create bodies, including international courts of tribunals, to follow-up the report’s recommendations on prosecutorial action. Unfortunately the report merely gives a very weak nod to this power by mentioning the ‘Uniting for Peace’ process, which means little to most people.
In fact the mention of this extraordinary procedure by which the General Assembly may act when the Security Council does not act on a matter related to the maintenance of peace and security is misplaced. This matter is already one on which the General Assembly may act. The Human Rights Council, which is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly and under whose auspices the report was produced, has already acted on this matter of human rights and humanitarian law. The General Assembly needs no additional arguments or mandate to follow-up up the action of one of its subsidiary bodies. There is no reason the GA cannot create a special international tribunal with judges to deal with the violations of international law that took place in Gaza. The Assembly’s authority to do so is clearer than that of the Security Council that has repeatedly created such bodies.
Perhaps the most difficult and still unanswered questions are those created by Palestinian leaders and diplomats. There is almost complete silence in New York and Geneva, and what is being said is perhaps even more frightening.
Impact of the report at the General Assembly meeting
At the UN in Geneva, where the report will be discussed next week in the UN Human Rights Committee, a body which is a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly, the Palestinian Permanent Mission appears to be trying to limit the impact of the report. The Palestinians began discussing the resolution on the report not with Arab or even African delegates who are their natural and longstanding allies, but with the United States and the Europeans. The situation has reached such absurd proportions that Arab diplomats talk about the possibility of voting against a Palestinian proposed resolution for the sake of the Palestinian people.
At the UN in New York Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas played down the report, instead relying on the mediation of the United States government, whose weapons and financing Israel used to carry out the mind bogglingly inhumane aggression against the Palestinian people of Gaza. Instead of confronting the United States, Abbas has been more cozy with them, expressing his humble appreciation for the new administration’s willingness to speak with him and the Israeli leader, who not only supported the slaughter in Gaza, but who has threatened to repeat it again and again if need be. Is negotiating a surrounded Palestinian state that is a fraction of the territory decreed by the UN in the same resolutions that created Israel, the best way to achieve justice and to represent the Palestinians people?
Unfortunately the position of the Palestinian authorities based in Ramallah and the diplomats who represent these authorities, and not the elected government of Palestine, is not new. In January 2009 as the aggression against Gaza took place diplomas in New York tried to block the General Assembly from taking timely and strong action to stop the slaughter in Gaza.
In the end the report of the UN’s Independent Fact Finding Mission may have exposed, even more than the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the indifference towards Palestinian life.
***Professor Curtis Doebbler, teaches in the Faculty of Law at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=227163
by Curtis F.J. Doebbler
On 15 September 2009 the UN-mandated Fact Finding Mission on Palestine under justice Richard Goldstone released its meticulously documented report concluding that Israel had not only carried out atrocities but had done so intentionally. The extent of the atrocities documented in the report, which was based on thousands of documents and interviews, according to the Fact Finding Mission were acts whose perpetrators should be investigated as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In one of the best documented reports on Israeli violence against Palestinians to ever appear, the Fact Finding Mission concluded not only that in “all of the cases described … both the act and the consequence were intended,” but also that action should be taken to prosecute the perpetrators. The suggested action included referring the case to the International Criminal Court, something that the Palestinian Authority requested after the ceasefire was announced on 19 January 2009. It is a request that the Prosecutor of the Court is has been considering for more than none months without a reply.
It is disappointing that the report focuses on action that should be taken by Israel and the UN Security Council, both entities which have refused to act. Within hours of the report’s release the Israeli government publicly disregarded any suggestion that it would act and the US Ambassador to the UN in New York arrogantly dismissed the reports explicit call for follow-up action.
The report outlines - on the basis of eyewitness reports, photographs and interviews with Israelis, Palestinians, and international aid workers - the facts behind allegations of crimes that were committed in Gaza and brought to the Mission’s attention. Much of the evidence was accumulated during site visits by the Mission to Gaza during the summer months, approximately six months after the cessation of major hostilities.
The 575-page report, with a 33-page Executive Summary, begins by outlining its methodology; considering all relevant events since 19 June 2008 and the acts of all parties related to the treatment of the Palestinian people living in Gaza. Not only are these events analyzed, they were put in the broader context including the Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza as well as inter-Palestinian violence. The events occurring between 18 June 2008 and 27 December 2008, for example, are outlined in detail in the report as is the history of Israel’s policies and treatment of the Palestinian people. The value of the contextual description is that it provides convincing evidence that Israel’s aggression against the people of Gaza was not an isolated instance, but part of a longstanding oppression of the Palestinian people.
The description of facts in the report is not always complete. Although an obvious effort was made to hear both the Palestinian and Israeli points of view on all events, equally apparent is the Mission’s concern with giving too much attention to the views of the Hamas government, which is the entity perhaps most affected by these events, after the civilian victims.
Bias toward Hamas
While the report mentions that “Hamas forces and armed groups had seized all Palestinian Authority security installations and government buildings in the Gaza Strip” in June 2007, no mention is made of the widely known efforts of Palestinian strongman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Dahlan, acting ostensibly with the support of the Fatah authorities who had lost the election, to oust the elected Hamas government officials in Gaza. The lack of views by Hamas officials is perhaps part of the Commission’s effort to mitigate the political controversy that it was aware would inevitably surround any report criticizing Israel.
The most technical part of the report is the outline of the international law that applies to the violations that occurred in Gaza. While the discussion of the law was noticeably abbreviated it makes some important points that are usually not included in UN reports on Palestine. For example, the discussion begins with an important statement about the applicability of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. In one of its most important and succinct statements of the law the Mission concludes:
“[t]he right to self-determination has an erga omnes character whereby all States have the duty to promote its realization ... [moreover] ... peoples who resist forcible action depriving them of their right to self-determination have the right to seek and receive support from third parties.”
Critics of the report have cited the reports’ statement that “[t]hose who take action amounting to military force must comply with IHL [international humanitarian law or the laws of war]” as implicitly supporting Palestinian violence against Israel. Such criticism misunderstands the nature of the law, which applies without prejudice to whether the initiation of the use of force is legal or illegal. Moreover, the consensus of the majority of states reflected in UN resolutions acknowledges the right of people striving for their self-determination against an oppressive foreign occupying power to use force.
Wide scope
The report’s sections 5 through 29 (V-XXIX) details the evidence on violations of these laws in Gaza. These details include evidence that the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel is illegal and that Israel’s “military hostilities were a culmination of the long process of economic and political isolation imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israel.”
In its main findings on Israel’s use of force in Gaza the report details deliberate attacks on civilians, on humanitarian aid workers, on government buildings and police as well as Israel’s use of prohibited weapons and the use of civilians as human shields, their arbitrary detention and their inhumane treatment. In one section of the report the Mission details the accumulative effect of Israel’s attacks on “the foundations of civilian life in Gaza” which include the “destruction of industrial infrastructure, food production, water installations, sewage treatment plants and housing.” In each case the MISSION report painstaking describes the situation, the evidence or facts, and its legal perspective on the facts.
While the overwhelming focus of the report was on Israel’s more numerous and more deadly acts of aggression, the report also criticized non-state actors such as the Hamas authorities in Gaza and Palestinian Authority more generally for carrying out actions whose perpetrators should also be investigated for having committed international crimes.
Hamas is criticized for inter-Palestinian violence as well as indiscriminate attacks on Israel through the firing of rockets and mortars. The Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah and exercising some control over the occupied West Bank is criticized for its detention and harassment of Hamas affiliated officials in the West Bank.
Recommendations
The conclusions of the report make it clear that follow-up action is expected and necessary. The report suggests first giving Israel and the Palestinians the opportunity to search for, take into custody, and prosecute the perpetrators of international crimes. If this fails, the report then suggests that the UN Security Council should act. And finally if this also fails the report suggests that the UN General Assembly can act.
The report also includes copies of the correspondence between the head of the Mission, Judge Richard Gold stone, and the Israeli authorities that shed light both on the painstaking effort that Israel made to block this UN mandated Mission and the effort that the Mission made to ensure that only reliably documented allegations are mentioned in its report.
While the report provides incontrovertible evidence of Israel’s illegal treatment of the Palestinian people, it also raises some uncomfortable questions.
Most knowledgeable observers of Palestine - surely all 15 members of the UN Security Council - know that Israel has been mistreating Palestinians for the best part of century. Why has no meaningful action been taken to protect Palestinians? Despite the well-documented evidence of serious international crimes committed on a large scale by Israeli forces it is unlikely that a Security deadlocked for the better part of a century will be convinced to act now.
Issues with follow-up
Given this situation, why does the report focuses its call for action on the Israeli government and the UN Security Council? Both have made it clear that they will not act, both before and after the report appeared.
Why wasn’t more attention given to the role of the world’s more legitimate international body, the UN General Assembly? Not only was this body the most proactive body in reacting when the fighting broke out in Gaza, but it has the most explicitly mandate for taking action. According to article 22 of the Charter of the United Nations the General Assembly has an explicit mandate to create bodies, including international courts of tribunals, to follow-up the report’s recommendations on prosecutorial action. Unfortunately the report merely gives a very weak nod to this power by mentioning the ‘Uniting for Peace’ process, which means little to most people.
In fact the mention of this extraordinary procedure by which the General Assembly may act when the Security Council does not act on a matter related to the maintenance of peace and security is misplaced. This matter is already one on which the General Assembly may act. The Human Rights Council, which is a subsidiary body of the General Assembly and under whose auspices the report was produced, has already acted on this matter of human rights and humanitarian law. The General Assembly needs no additional arguments or mandate to follow-up up the action of one of its subsidiary bodies. There is no reason the GA cannot create a special international tribunal with judges to deal with the violations of international law that took place in Gaza. The Assembly’s authority to do so is clearer than that of the Security Council that has repeatedly created such bodies.
Perhaps the most difficult and still unanswered questions are those created by Palestinian leaders and diplomats. There is almost complete silence in New York and Geneva, and what is being said is perhaps even more frightening.
Impact of the report at the General Assembly meeting
At the UN in Geneva, where the report will be discussed next week in the UN Human Rights Committee, a body which is a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly, the Palestinian Permanent Mission appears to be trying to limit the impact of the report. The Palestinians began discussing the resolution on the report not with Arab or even African delegates who are their natural and longstanding allies, but with the United States and the Europeans. The situation has reached such absurd proportions that Arab diplomats talk about the possibility of voting against a Palestinian proposed resolution for the sake of the Palestinian people.
At the UN in New York Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas played down the report, instead relying on the mediation of the United States government, whose weapons and financing Israel used to carry out the mind bogglingly inhumane aggression against the Palestinian people of Gaza. Instead of confronting the United States, Abbas has been more cozy with them, expressing his humble appreciation for the new administration’s willingness to speak with him and the Israeli leader, who not only supported the slaughter in Gaza, but who has threatened to repeat it again and again if need be. Is negotiating a surrounded Palestinian state that is a fraction of the territory decreed by the UN in the same resolutions that created Israel, the best way to achieve justice and to represent the Palestinians people?
Unfortunately the position of the Palestinian authorities based in Ramallah and the diplomats who represent these authorities, and not the elected government of Palestine, is not new. In January 2009 as the aggression against Gaza took place diplomas in New York tried to block the General Assembly from taking timely and strong action to stop the slaughter in Gaza.
In the end the report of the UN’s Independent Fact Finding Mission may have exposed, even more than the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the indifference towards Palestinian life.
***Professor Curtis Doebbler, teaches in the Faculty of Law at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine
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