International Law, Israel, and Palestine

 International law is clear: Israeli settlements are illegal 
Iain Scobbie, Los Angeles Times - Eric Rozenman's Dec. 11 Op-Ed article, "Israeli settlements are more than legitimate," is legal nonsense that disregards history. He is correct in his observation that Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine permitted "close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes," but the conclusions he then draws are flatly wrong. more

 Israeli Organ Harvesting: The New "Blood Libel"? 
Alison Weir, CounterPunch - Last week Sweden’s largest daily newspaper published an article containing shocking material: testimony and circumstantial evidence indicating that Israelis may have been harvesting internal organs from Palestinian prisoners without consent for many years. more

 UN probe in Gaza: Especially painful testimonies 
Ali Waked, YNet - Richard Goldstone and UN delegates hear testimonies of Gaza Strip residents as part of UN Human Rights Council's investigation of Operation Cast Lead. According to Goldstone, goal of hearing is to bring story of victims to world. more

 Inside Story - Collateral damage? 
Al Jazeera - Human rights watch group says Israeli spy srones killed Palestinian civilians during Gaza war. WATCH

 Precisely Wrong 
Human Rights Watch - During the recent fighting in Gaza from December 27, 2008, to January 18, 2009, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed dozens of Palestinian civilians with one of the most precise weapons in its arsenal: missiles launched from an unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV)-the latter more commonly known as a drone. Alongside weapons that affect large areas, such as high explosive artillery and artillery-fired white phosphorous, Israeli forces in Gaza used drones in precisely targeted attacks that killed and wounded civilians. more

 Palestinian US College Grad Loses 2 Brothers in Israeli Shooting; Father Watched Son Bleed to Death After Israeli Troops Bar Ambulances 
Democracy Now! - Amer Shurrab is a Palestinian from Khan Yunis and a recent graduate of Vermont’s Middlebury College. On Friday, his father and two brothers were fleeing their village when their vehicle came under Israeli fire. Twenty-eight-year-old Kassab died in a hail of bullets trying to flee the vehicle. Eighteen-year-old Ibrahim survived the initial attack, but Israeli troops refused to allow an ambulance to reach them until twenty hours later. By then, it was too late. Ibrahim had bled to death in front of his father. Amer joins us to tell his story. WATCH

 As US arms shipment reaches Israel, President Obama urged to halt further exports 
Amnesty International - The new delivery to Israel of a massive consignment of US munitions, revealed by Amnesty International today, throws into question whether President Obama will act to prevent the US fuelling further Israeli attacks against civilians that may amount to war crimes, as were perpetrated in Gaza. more

 Israel on Trial 
George Bisharat, New York Times - Chilling testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law. The emergence of a predominantly right-wing, nationalist government in Israel suggests that there may be more violations to come. Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions. While Israel disputes some of the soldiers’ accounts, the evidence suggests that Israel committed the following six offenses: more

 Changing the rules of war 
George Bisharat, San Francisco Chronicle - The extent of Israel's brutality against Palestinian civilians in its 22-day pounding of the Gaza Strip is gradually surfacing. Israeli soldiers are testifying to lax rules of engagement tantamount to a license to kill. One soldier commented: "That's what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him." more

 Consent and advise  
Yotam Feldman and Uri Blau , Haaretz - On the first day of Operation Cast Lead, the air force bombed the graduation ceremony of a police course, killing dozens of policemen. Months earlier, an operational and legal controversy was already swirling around the planned attack. According to a military source who was involved in the planning, bombing the site of the ceremony was authorized with no difficulty, but questions were raised about the intent to strike at the graduates of the course. Military Intelligence, convinced the attack was justified, pressed for its implementation. Representatives of the international law division (ILD) in the Military Advocate General's Office at first objected, fearing a possible violation of international law. more

 3 Videos: Guardian investigation uncovers evidence of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza 
Clancy Chassay and Julian Borger, The Guardian of London - The Guardian has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields and the targeting of medics and hospitals. A month-long investigation also obtained evidence of civilians being hit by fire from unmanned drone aircraft said to be so accurate that their operators can tell the colour of the clothes worn by a target. WATCH and read more

 IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement 
Amos Harel, Haaretz - During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive. more

 Human Rights Watch Goes to War 
Mouin Rabbani, Middle East Report - The Middle East has always been a difficult challenge for Western human rights organizations, particularly those seeking influence or funding in the United States. The pressure to go soft on US allies is in some respects reminiscent of Washington’s special pleading for Latin American terror regimes in the 1970s and 1980s. In the case of Israel such organizations also face a powerful and influential domestic constituency, which often extends to senior echelons of such organizations, for whom forthright condemnation of Israel is anathema. more

 UN attacks Israeli rights 'crimes' 
Al Jazeera - Israel's policies against the Palestinians are tantamount to a "crime against humanity", the United Nations' human rights rapporteur has said. more

 Israel 'using food and medicines as weapons' 
Ekklesia - Israel is collectively punishing innocent civilians by withholding and controlling food and medicine to Gaza, says Christian Aid. more

 Sanctions causing Gaza to implode, say rights groups 
Ian Black, The Guardian - Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living through their worst humanitarian crisis since the 1967 war because of the severe restrictions imposed by Israel since the Islamist movement Hamas seized power, a report says today. more

 VIDEO – Gaza: A humanitarian implosion 
The Real News Network - A coalition of eight UK-based human rights organizations released a scathing report on conditions in the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Watch Video

 Gaza: Humanitarian situation worst since 1967 
Amnesty International UK, CARE International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Médecins du Monde UK, Oxfam, Save The Children UK and Trócaire - Poverty and unemployment up, hospitals suffering 12 hour a day power cuts, water and sewage system close to collapse. The humanitarian situation in Gaza is worse now than it's been at any time since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, according to a new report published today (6 March) by a coalition of leading humanitarian and human rights organisations. The weekend's upsurge in violence and human misery underlines the urgency of this report. more

 Treachery for treatment 
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly - His calm demeanour belies the personal tragedy he is living. Journalist Bassam Al-Wahidi, 30, is on the verge of giving in to perpetual darkness. This will happen if he doesn't have an operation to reposition his retina, an operation that he was supposed to have had last month in a Palestinian hospital in Jerusalem. Although Al-Wahidi, a news presenter on the Voice of the Workers radio station in Gaza, had completed all the necessary administrative procedures required of him to travel to Jerusalem, officers in the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, at the Erez Crossing on the northern border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, won't allow him to cross until he agrees to become an Israeli agent and provide information on the activities, leaders and members of Palestinian resistance movements active in Gaza. more

 Targeted killing won't bring peace 
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti in the International Herald Tribune - As we enter the 41st year of Israel's military occupation, one of the more sinister policies inflicted upon us is what Israel calls "targeted killings." Israel applies no death penalty, except against Palestinians living under Israeli military government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. more

 Israel killed more than 650 Palestinians in 2006, up threefold from 2005: Amnesty 
The Associated Press in the International Herald Tribune - Israeli troops killed more than 650 Palestinians last year – half of them unarmed civilians and including some 120 children – a threefold increase from 2005, a leading human rights group said Wednesday. more

 Red Cross Report Says Israel Disregards Humanitarian Law 
Steven Erlanger in the New York Times - The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a confidential report about East Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, accuses Israel of a “general disregard” for “its obligations under international humanitarian law – and the law of occupation in particular.” more

 Utterly Forbidden: The Torture And Ill-Treatment Of Palestinian Detainees 
B'Tselem & HaMoked - In recent years, Israel has openly admitted that ISA (formerly the General Security Service) interrogators employ "exceptional" interrogation methods and "physical pressure" against Palestinian detainees in situations labeled "ticking bombs". B'Tselem and HaMoked - Center for the Defence of the Individual have examined these interrogation methods and the frequency with which they are used, as well as other harmful practices. The report's findings are based on the testimonies of 73 Palestinian residents of the West Bank who were arrested between July 2005 and January 2006 and interrogated by the ISA. Although it is not a representative sample, it does provide a valid indication of the frequency of the reported phenomena. more

 The Prevalence of Torture 
Ralph Schoenman in The Hidden History of Zionism - The use of torture in Israeli prisons has been the subject of extensive inquiry. In 1977, the London Sunday Times conducted a five-month investigation. Corroboration was obtained for the evidence adduced. The torture documented occurred “through the ten years of Israeli occupation since 1967. The Sunday Times study presented the cases of forty-four Palestinians who were tortured. It documented practices in seven centers: prisons within the four principal cities of Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron and Gaza; the interrogation and detention center in Jerusalem known as the Russian Compound or Moscobiya; and special military centers located in Gaza and Sarafand. more

 Does It Matter What You Call It? Genocide or Erasure of Palestinians 
Kathleen and Bill Christison - During an appearance in late October on Ireland's Pat Kenny radio show, a popular national program broadcast daily on Ireland's RTE Radio, we were asked as the opening question if Israel could be compared to Nazi Germany. Not across the board, we said, but there are certainly some aspects of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians that bear a clear resemblance to the Nazis' oppression. Do you mean the wall, Kenny prompted, and we agreed, describing the ghettoization and other effects of this monstrosity. Before we could elaborate on other Nazi-like features of Israel's policies, Kenny moved on to another question. Within minutes, while we were still on the air, a producer handed Kenny a note, which we later learned was a request from the newly arrived Israeli ambassador to Ireland to appear on the show, by himself. Several days later, on the air by himself, the ambassador pronounced us and our comparisons of Israeli and Nazi policies "outrageous." more

 Israel: Fear for Safety 
Amnesty International - Human rights defenders working in the Occupied Territories are at risk of attack by Israeli settlers. Amnesty International is concerned at the latest such attack against those who seek through their presence to afford protection to Palestinians and to bear witness to the abuses perpetrated against them by Israeli settlers in the area. more

 Aid agencies condemn Gaza carnage 
BBC - International aid agencies have reacted with dismay to the violence in Gaza in which at least 18 Palestinian civilians are known to have died. more

 Palestinian human rights NGOs condemn Beit Hanoun Massacre; call for international investigation 
11 Human Rights Organizations - The Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) have committed an appalling act of mass murder in the town of Beit Hanoun today, one day after they redeployed around it. At dawn, the IOF fired eleven artillery shells on six homes in the town killing 18 civilians; seven of whom are children and six of whom are women. 53 others were wounded; of whom 25 are children and 12 are women. With this, the number of Palestinians who have been killed since the commencement of the IOF operation in Beit hanoun on 1 November 2006 has reached 77. more

 Israel’s ‘immoral’ use of cluster bombs in Lebanon poses major threat – UN aid chief 
UN News Centre - The top United Nations aid official today criticized Israel’s heavy use of cluster bombs in the last three days of the war with Hizbollah, describing their use as “immoral” and warning that up to 100,000 deadly bomblets still lie unexploded across vast areas of southern Lebanon where they are maiming and killing people every day. more

 High Court decision institutionalizes racial discrimination 
Amnesty International - The decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice on 14 May to uphold a law which explicitly denies family rights on the basis of ethnicity or national origins is a step further in the institutionalization of racial discrimination in Israel. more

 Israeli civil libertarian's introduction to German edition of Beyond Chutzpah 
Felicia Langer - It was high time a book on the misuse of anti-Semitism as a political weapon got written. Now it has found its author: Norman Finkelstein. He is no stranger to daring challenges, and as this book clearly shows, Finkelstein has got what it takes. The precision and meticulousness of his research and analyses are admirable. more

 URGENT!! All Eyes on Gaza Disengagement 
Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe, and Tamar Yaron from Israel - We feel that it is urgent and necessary to raise the alarm regarding what may come during and after evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip occupied by Israel in 1967, in the event that the evacuation is implemented. more

 Fortress Israel 
Ilan Pappe in the London Review of Books - The right of the Palestinian refugees expelled in the 1948 war to return home was acknowledged by the UN General Assembly in December 1948. It is a right anchored in international law and in accordance with notions of universal justice. More surprisingly perhaps, it also makes sense in terms of realpolitik: unless Israel agrees to repatriate the refugees, all attempts to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict are bound to fail. more

 Israel Plans to Dump Tons of Garbage in West Bank 
David Ratner in Haaretz - For the first time since 1967, Israel has decided to transfer garbage beyond the Green Line and dump it in the West Bank. The project was launched despite international treaties prohibiting an occupying state from making use of occupied territory unless it benefits the local population. more

 Who’s in Charge Here? 
Amira Hass in Haaretz - The Israeli intelligence officials and those who quote them in the press are right when they say that it’s not Abu Mazen and the Palestinian Authority security services who are in control in the Gaza Strip. The intelligence sources and those who quote them are misleading however, when they say that armed gangs and the Hamas run Gaza. The IDF runs Gaza. more

 One Big Prison: New Report Warns Against Continued Strangulation of Gaza Strip after Disengagement 
B’Tselem - Israel has cut off the Gaza Strip from the rest of the world to such an extent that it is easier for Palestinians in Israel or the West Bank to visit relatives in prison than visit a relative in Gaza. This is one conclusion of the 100-page report that B’Tselem and HaMoked publish today. One Big Prison documents the ongoing violations of human rights and international law resulting from Israel’s restrictions on the movement of people and goods between Gaza and the West Bank, Israel, and the rest of the world. The report also warns against Israel’s attempt to avoid its responsibility toward residents of the Gaza Strip following disengagement. more

 Caterpillar Bulldozes Shareowner Concern Over Aiding Alleged Israeli War Crimes 
William Baue in SocialFunds.com - Caterpillar faces a shareowner resolution as well as a lawsuit filed by the family of peace activist Rachel Corrie that cites the Nuremberg Tribunal as precedent in alleging war crime complicity. more

  The Palestinian Resistance: Its Legitimate Right and the Moral Duty 
Dr. Samah Jabr - The overwhelming and ceaseless atrocities of Israel’s government leave most Palestinians with little opportunity to reflect on the moral aspect of our resistance. Most often our reactions to events are immediate, instinctive and emotional. The few who still manage to consider the moral, political and strategic aspects of our struggle may find themselves all but stymied by the contradictions, the lack of choice, and the damage done by war to both reason and conscience. more

 Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes 
Derek Summerfield in the British Medical Journal - Does the death of an Arab weigh the same as that of a US or Israeli citizen? The Israeli army, with utter impunity, has killed more unarmed Palestinian civilians since September 2000 than the number of people who died on September 11, 2001. In conducting 238 extrajudicial executions the army has also killed 186 bystanders (including 26 women and 39 children). Two thirds of the 621 children (two thirds under 15 years) killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest—the sniper’s wound. more

 Why a ‘right of return’ is necessary 
Sari Hanafi in The Daily Star - The right of return of Palestinian refugees to their place of origin is enshrined in four separate bodies of international law: humanitarian law, human rights law, the law of nationality as applied to state succession, and refugee law. more

 A Very Special Kind of War 
Israeli journalist Uri Avnery - “For all I care, they can starve to death!” announced Tzahi Hanegbi, after Palestinian prisoners declared an open-ended hunger strike against prison conditions. Thus the minister for internal security added another memorable phrase to the lexicon of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. more

 World Court Condemns Israel’s Wall 
Arthur Max in the UK Guardian - The U.N.’s highest judicial authority decided Israel’s planned 425-mile-long barrier in the West Bank violates international law and must be dismantled, according to court documents that were leaked ahead of the announcement. more

 Israel’s Common Use of Torture Must Be Exposed 
Mustafa Barghouthi in The Daily Star - The pictures of American soldiers torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have shocked the world. To the Palestinian people however, these photographs of hooded or naked figures come as no surprise. For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have served time in Israeli prisons, the pictures only bring back memories of their own torture. more

 As in Tiennamen square 
Israeli journalist Tanya Reinhart in Yediot Aharonot - An extensive discussion has already taken place in Israel regarding the cost-benefit ratio of Yassin’s assassination. But the question of justice has hardly been raised. During its 37 years of occupation, Israel has already violated every article of the Geneva convention. But what it did now is unprecedented. As Robert Fisk stated it in the British Independent, “for years, there has been an unwritten rule in the cruel war of government-versus-guerrilla. You can kill the men on the street, the bomb makers and gunmen. But the leadership on both sides – government ministers, spiritual leaders were allowed to survive.” Even when the leader advocates violence and terror, the norm has been that he may be imprisoned, but not killed. more

 UN Commission on Human Rights Condemns Israeli Human Rights Violations, Including the Assassination of Sheikh Yassin 
The Commission on Human Rights this morning strongly condemned the continuing grave violations of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, in particular the tragic assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin on 22 March 2004 in contravention of the Hague Convention IV of 1907. more

 Opinion: Even if Palestine wins at The Hague... 
Ali Abunimah in The Electronic Intifada - On the first day of hearings at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Professor Mordechai Kedar at Israel’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies told the BBC Arabic Service that Palestinian assertions that Israel’s West Bank wall will make an independent state impossible were invalid. He argued that the existence of states like Liechtenstein (area: smaller than Washington, DC; population 33,000,) and Monaco (slightly bigger than London’s Hyde Park; population 32,000) proves that there will be plenty of room left for a sovereign, internationally-recognized Palestinian state no matter where Israel builds its barrier. Such arguments from Israeli “strategists,” offered with apparent seriousness, underscore the strength of the Palestinian claim that the wall is intended to annex the West Bank, not separate it from Israel, and the weakness of Israel’s legal position. more

Special Report: Israel’s Treatment of Americans
Founder of Partners for Peace Jerri Bird - The Department of State’s annual human rights reports have documented for many years a depressing litany of extra-legal human rights abuses perpetrated against the Palestinian people by Israel: countless home demolitions, land confiscations, arbitrary arrests, and widespread torture. Similar practices have also been reported in detail by numerous Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organizations for years. But it may come as an unpleasant surprise for the American public to learn that for over 30 years, Israel has also repeatedly detained, tortured and incarcerated Americans of Arab origin, without suffering any sanctions or even a public reprimand from Washington. more

The International Laws of Belligerent Occupation
Professor of International Law Francis Boyle - Belligerent occupation is governed by The Hague Regulations of 1907, as well as by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the customary laws of belligerent occupation. Security Council Resolution 1322 (2000), paragraph 3 continued: “Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in a Time of War of 12 August 1949;...” Again, the Security Council vote was 14 to 0, becoming obligatory international law. more

U.S. Vetoes of U.N. Resolutions on Behalf of Israel
Donald Neff in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - On Sept. 10, 1972, the United States employed its veto in the UN Security Council for only the second time in history—to shield Israel. That veto, as it turned out, signalled the start of a cynical policy to use the U.S. veto repeatedly to shield Israel from international criticism, censure and sanctions. Washington used its veto 32 times to shield Israel from critical draft United Nations Security Council resolutions between 1972 and 1997. This constituted nearly half of the total U.S. vetoes cast since the founding of the U.N. more

Lessons to be Learned From Israel’s Ignored U.N. Resolutions
Donald Neff in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - The Clinton-Rabin agreement ignores the sorry record of the 26 years since Israel’s conquest of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. During that period Israel has unequivocally demonstrated that it does not want peace in exchange for territory. Its insistence on expelling Palestinians who oppose the occupation and on establishing Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are only the latest manifestations of its desire to retain them. Equally important in revealing its true policy is Israel’s successful record of resisting American and other peace initiatives over the years. more