No territorial concessions to Palestinians, says Netanyahu
- Details
- Written by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
- Published: 04 February 2009 04 February 2009
- Hits: 4310 4310
Land would be 'grabbed by extremists', says Israeli opposition leader
[I guess he's not counting HIS extremists . . .]
Israel's rightwing opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the polls before next week's parliamentary elections, warned today against giving up any occupied territory to the Palestinians, saying it would be "grabbed by extremists".
Under Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are likely to grow more rapidly, putting Israel at odds with the new US administration.
In a speech, Netanyahu said that rather than peace talks with the Palestinians about giving up territory, he favoured economic development – a plan of "economic peace". He has stopped short of endorsing a two-state solution that would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
It is a stance that is likely to draw criticism from Washington, particularly from new Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who wrote a report in 2001 explicitly calling for a halt to all settlement growth. Since then the Jewish settler population has increased significantly until today it stands at nearly 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Netanyahu has said he will not be bound by current prime minister Ehud Olmert's commitment to withdraw from some West Bank settlements and from large parts of the occupied territory as a whole. "I will not keep Olmert's commitments to withdraw and I won't evacuate settlements," Netanyahu was quoted as saying last week in the Ha'aretz newspaper. "Those understandings are invalid and unimportant."
Netanyahu is opposed to territorial withdrawals, even from the Golan Heights, captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 war. Others, including members of the current Kadima-led government, have said they would give up sovereignty over the Golan Heights in return for a peace deal with Syria.
Last month Netanyahu said there were other "models" for the Palestinians short of complete sovereignty.
His comments come at a time of growing assertiveness from the settler movement. None of the leading election candidates have taken a strong position against the settlers. Even Tzipi Livni, head of Kadima, who favours the creation of a Palestinian state as long as Israel's interests are met, said she believes in "maintaining maximum settlers and places that we hold dear such as Jerusalem".
There is frequent evidence of continued settlement expansion, despite the latest year-long round of peace talks. Under the US road map, which remains the basis of peace negotiations, Israel is committed to halting all settlement growth. All settlements are illegal under international law.
Yesterday, Ha'aretz reported that defence minister Ehud Barak had agreed to approve a new settlement in return for the evacuation of Migron, a settlement of 45 families which even the Israeli government regards as illegal. Evidence of the approval emerged in an affidavit submitted on Monday to the Israeli high court. A plan is being considered for 1,400 housing units at the new settlement. In January last year, Olmert committed himself to evacuating settlers from Migron within six months, though it now appears that no one will leave the settlement for at least another two or three years.
It has also emerged that Israel has spent more than 200m shekels (£35m) in the past two years preparing infrastructure to build thousands of homes between east Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim, one of the largest settlement blocs on the West Bank. A police base was built on the site in May last year and, according to Ha'aretz, much more building is expected in the area. The defence ministry told the paper it regarded Ma'ale Adumim as "an inalienable part of Jerusalem and the state of Israel in any permanent settlement".
A secret Israeli government database on settlement construction that was leaked last week to an Israeli human rights group showed that in three-quarters of all West Bank settlements some construction had taken place without proper permits. It showed more than 30 settlements were built at least in part on privately owned Palestinian land.
Michael Sfard, the lawyer for the Yesh Din rights group, said it amounted to a "severe indictment" of Israel's military and government. The group plans to use the information to file lawsuits on behalf of Palestinians.
URGENT: Act Now To Defend UNRWA In Gaza
- Details
- Written by American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
- Published: 04 February 2009 04 February 2009
- Hits: 4337 4337
ACT NOW: CONTACT CONGRESS ON GAZA RESOLUTION : ASK FOR SUPPORT ON H.R. 66
- Details
- Written by ADC ADC
- Published: 03 February 2009 03 February 2009
- Hits: 4252 4252
Exchange Between Bill Moyers and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League
- Details
- Written by Bill Moyers Bill Moyers
- Published: 03 February 2009 03 February 2009
- Hits: 2996 2996
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 7:34 AM
Subject: Bill Moyers:
Exchange Between Bill Moyers and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League
Following Bill Moyers' reflections on the events in Gaza on the JOURNAL last week, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman sent him this letter:
Mr. Moyers,
In less than a thousand words, you managed to fit into your January 9 commentary: (1) moral equivalency between Hamas, a radical Islamic terrorist group whose anti-Semitic charter cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and perhaps America’s greatest ally in the world; (2) historical revisionism, asserting that Canaanites were Arabs; (3) anti-Semitism, declaring that Jews are “genetically coded” for violence; (4) ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel, claiming that checkpoints, the security fence, and the Gaza operation are tactics of humiliation rather than counter-terrorism; and (5) promotion of an individual, the Norwegian doctor in Gaza, who has publicly expressed support for the September 11 attacks.
I have seen and read serious critiques of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and I have disagreed with many of them. Your commentary, however, is different, consisting mostly of intellectually and morally faulty claims that do a great disservice to the PBS audience. It invites not disagreement, but rebuke.
On one point you are correct – “America has officially chosen sides.” And rightly so. Fortunately for our nation, very few of our citizens engage in the same moral equivalency, racism, historical revisionism, and indifference to terrorism as you. If the reverse held, it would not be a country that any decent person would want to live in.
Sincerely,
Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League
In response, Bill Moyers sent Mr. Foxman the following message:
Dear Mr. Foxman:
You made several errors in your letter to me of January 13 and I am writing to correct them.
First, to call someone a racist for lamenting the slaughter of civilians by the Israeli military offensive in Gaza is a slur unworthy of the tragedy unfolding there. Your resort to such a tactic is reprehensible.
Earlier this week it was widely reported that the International Red Cross “was so outraged it broke its usual silence over an attack in which the Israeli army herded a Palestinian family into a building and then shelled it, killing 30 people and leaving the surviving children clinging to the bodies of their dead mothers. The army prevented rescuers from reaching the survivors for four days.”
When American troops committed a similar atrocity in Vietnam, it was called My Lai and Lt. Calley went to prison for it. As the publisher of a large newspaper at the time, I instructed our editorial staff to cover the atrocity fully because Americans should know what our military was doing in our name and with our funding. To say “my country right or wrong” is like saying “my mother drunk or sober.” Patriots owe their country more than that, whether their government and their taxes are supporting atrocities in Vietnam, Iraq, or, in this case, Gaza.
Contrary to your claim, I made no reference whatsoever to “moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel. That is an old canard often resorted to by propagandists trying to divert attention from facts on the ground, and, it, too, is unworthy of the slaughter in Gaza. Contrary to imputing “moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel, I said that “Hamas would like to see every Jew in Israel dead.” I said that “a radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth.” And I described the new spate of anti-Semitism across the continent of Europe. I am curious as to why you ignored remarks which clearly counter the notion of “moral equivalency.”
And although I specifically referred to “the rockets from Hamas” falling on Israel and said that “every nation has the right to defend itself, and Israel is no exception,” you nonetheless accuse me of “ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel.” Once again, you are quite selective in your reading of my essay.
Your claim that “the checkpoints, the security fence and the Gaza operation” [I used the more accurate “onslaught”] are not humiliating of the Palestinians is lamentable. I did not claim that these were, as you write, “tactics of humiliation rather [emphasis mine] than counter-terrorism,” but perhaps it is overly simplistic to think they are one and not the other, when they are both. Also lamentable is your description of my “promotion” of the Norwegian doctor in Gaza when in fact I was simply quoting what he told CBS News: “It’s like Dante’s Inferno. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.” The whole world has been able to see for itself what he was talking about, and as one major news organization after another has been reporting, is reeling from the sight.
And, to your claim that I was “declaring Jews are ‘genetically coded’ for violence,” you are mistaken. My comment – obviously not sufficiently precise – was not directed at a specific people but to the fact that the human race has violence in its DNA, as the biblical stories so strongly affirm. I also had in mind the relationship between all the descendents of Abraham who love the same biblical land and come to such grief over it.
From my days in President Johnson’s White House forward, I have defended Israel’s right to defend itself, and still do. But sometimes an honest critic is a government’s best friend, and I am appalled by Israel’s devastation of innocent civilians in this battle, all the more so because, as I said in my column, it is exactly what Hamas wanted to happen. To be so indifferent to that suffering is, sadly, to be as blind in Gaza as Samson.
Sincerely,
Bill Moyers
'Phosphorus wounds' alarm Gazans
- Details
- Written by Aleem Maqbool, BBC News, Gaza City Aleem Maqbool, BBC News, Gaza City
- Published: 02 February 2009 02 February 2009
- Hits: 4616 4616
|
By Aleem Maqbool
BBC News, Gaza City |
Staring straight ahead and rocking steadily backwards and forwards in her hospital bed, Sabah Abu Halima lists the fate of each of her nine children.
"Abed, 14 years old, was decapitated," she says. "Shaheed, one year and three months, was in my arms when the fire took her…"
Sabah explains that her husband and four of her children died when their house in northern Gaza was shelled during the recent Israeli offensive.
Many of the rooms in that house now lay dark and empty - blackened by fire.
The light fittings and power sockets have melted down the walls.
A shaft of light coming from the ceiling of the corridor, and mangled steel, marks the entry point of one of the missiles.
Scrawled, in Arabic, on the wall of a bedroom is the statement: "From the Israeli Defence Forces, we are sorry."
But on the next wall, there is a patch of white where, Sabah's 20-year-old son Mahmoud tells us, had also been the words "nice underwear". He says he scrubbed them off in anger.
'Strange burns'
Hundreds were killed in the 22-day Israeli offensive, but it is the manner in which Sabah's relatives lost their lives, and the weapon used, that has attracted attention.
Sabah herself has suffered terrible burns on her arms, legs and torso and is considerable pain.
"There was fire, and so much white smoke," she says. "The missile melted my children. My daughter-in-law melted in front of my eyes."
Dr Nafiz Abu Shabaan, the head of the unit in which Sabah is being treated, says he has seen many victims with what he described as "strange burns".
"These burns were very severe, very deep, and became deeper and wider over time," he says. "In some cases, smoke came out of the wound, even after hours."
The cause of these types of injuries is believed, by visiting medical officials, to be Israel's use of shells containing white phosphorus.
Incendiary weapon
In another part of the city, at a former security compound flattened by the Israeli bombardment, Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, points out evidence that white phosphorus had been used.
"We're standing here right next to an M825A1, which is the US designation for their white phosphorus shell," he says.
"Manufactured in the US and sold to Israel, the shell here is unexploded, although it's cracked and you can see the phosphorus pouring out in kind of this yellow-orange colour."
"Around the area there are also some white phosphorus felt pieces," he adds.
"As the weapon explodes in mid-air, 116 pieces of felt doused in white phosphorus fall on a large area. These pieces are littered around here. If you kicked them open, they would begin to smoke and potentially reignite."
Controversial as it is, white phosphorus is not illegal, at least in an open battlefield setting, where it is used to mask troop movements, or set on fire areas of high brush that need clearing.
But the international convention on the use of incendiary weapons says it should not be used where there is a possibility of hitting civilians.
The compound sticks to human skin and will burn right through to the bone, causing death or leaving survivors with painful wounds which are slow to heal.
United Nations officials say it was used in the shelling of a school in which hundreds of civilians were taking refuge from the fighting, and fired at the UN's main headquarters in Gaza.
Eyewitnesses and victims talk of it being used on many other occasions in built-up areas.
Internal investigation
After initially denying that white phosphorus shells were fired in Gaza, some Israeli military officials have now acknowledged its use.
The army says it has started an internal investigation, the insistence being until now that no weapons were used illegally.
Human rights groups have meanwhile started their own research.
"It's important that we investigate the use of white phosphorus, because it does appear that it was used incorrectly in a clear breach of Geneva Conventions, " says Mr Garlasco.
"But as grave as the injuries caused by white phosphorus are, there are a number of weapons that were used in Gaza that killed and injured an awful lot more people," he adds.
"We have to look at the full variety of weapons that were used here, how they were employed and how they impacted on the civilian population."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7848768.stm
Published: 2009/01/24 12:59:09 GMT
© BBC MMIX