U.N. Rights Investigator Accuses Israel of 'Ethnic Cleansing'

A U.N. human rights investigator accused Israel on Friday of "ethnic cleansing" in pushing Palestinians out of East Jerusalem and cast doubt that the Israeli government could accept a Palestinian state in the current climate.

A U.N. human rights investigator accused Israel on Friday of "ethnic cleansing" in pushing Palestinians out of East Jerusalem and cast doubt that the Israeli government could accept a Palestinian state in the current climate.

He spoke against a backdrop of deadlocked peace talks and accelerating Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem which Palestinians say is dimming their hope of establishing a viable state on contiguous territory.

Israel says Palestinian refusal to recognise it as a Jewish state is the main obstacle. U.S. President Barack Obama this week pressed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to help break the impasse, saying both sides must take political risks before the April 29 deadline for a framework deal.

Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, told a news conference that Israeli policies bore "unacceptable characteristics of colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing".

"Every increment of enlarging the settlements or every incident of house demolition is a way of worsening the situation confronting the Palestinian people and reducing what prospects they might have as the outcome of supposed peace negotiations."

Asked about his accusation of ethnic cleansing, Falk said that more than 11,000 Palestinians had lost their right to live in Jerusalem since 1996 due to Israel imposing residency laws favouring Jews and revoking Palestinian residence permits.

"The 11,000 is just the tip of the iceberg because many more are faced with possible challenges to their residency rights."

This compounded the "ordeal of this extended, prolonged occupation", according to Falk, an international law expert and professor emeritus at Princeton University in the United States.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed the latter, declaring it part of its eternal, indivisible capital, a move never recognised internationally.

Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as their capital. In 2005 Israel quit Gaza, now run by Hamas Islamists opposed to Abbas' peace efforts, but settlement growth continues in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Falk said that Israel had made a systematic effort to "change the ethnic composition" of East Jerusalem by making it more difficult for Palestinians to reside there while encouraging the spread of settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.

In a report last month, Falk said Israeli policies in the West Bank appeared to amount to "apartheid and segregation" with a de facto annexation of parts of the territory, denying the Palestinian right to self-determination.

There was no immediate Israeli response to his remarks on Friday. Israel has not responded officially to Falk's February report via the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the usual channel, U.N. officials in Geneva said.

In the past Israel has strongly denied accusations of persecuting Palestinians, accusing them of inciting anti-Israeli violence and being unwilling to make permanent peace with the Jewish state.

"DRIFT TO THE RIGHT"

Direct peace negotiations usually coincide with intensified Israeli settlement activity, he told reporters.

The U.S.-brokered peace process seemed to be primarily a project of Secretary of State John Kerry who had received only "minimal support from Obama himself", Falk said.

"There are other reasons for encouraging the idea that it's still possible to negotiate a settlement based on the two-state model, even though most informed observers regard it as highly implausible given the changes that have taken place during the period of occupation and given the outlook of the Netanyahu government," he said, making clear he was among the sceptics.

Even entering negotiations, he said, is seen as a "betrayal" by Israeli political factions and parties that are to the right of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"A few years ago it would be hard to imagine that there was something to the right of Netanyahu. But gradually this drift to the right has created a whole new sense of the political debate within Israel," Falk said. "And there is a strong internal Israeli opposition to any sense that the Palestinian people in any diminished way deserve a state of their own."

Falk, an American law professor who is Jewish, has come to the end of a six-year term in the independent post and the U.N. Human Rights Council is expected to name a successor soon.

He has long drawn controversy in Israel, in 2008 comparing Israeli military strikes against Hamas in Gaza - during which 1,400 Palestinians were killed and there was widespread destruction in densely populated areas - to those of the Nazis.

Last June he said critics who called him anti-Semitic sought to divert attention from his scrutiny of Israeli policies.

He is to address the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday, but it was not clear whether Israeli delegates would attend due to an ongoing strike by Israeli foreign ministry staff. More

 

© 2014

For the sake of peace, it is time to put an end to negotiations

After 20 years of a failed and fictitious peace process, there is no more room for ‘processes’ that serve as substitutes for peace. There is nothing left to clarify between the two sides. The only possible compromise for a peace agreement is well known.

By Rona Moran and Hana Amouri (Translated from Hebrew by Itamar Haritan)

The ongoing “peace” negotiations are headed for failure. Everyone knows it. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu know it, as do the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, who are participating in the negotiations under heavy American pressure. The US knows it too — since the collapse of negotiations in 2000, all those grandiose declarations periodically issued by US presidents and state secretaries have a tendency to evaporate quickly, leaving behind them momentary glory for the declarers, and additional legitimacy for preserving the status quo, deepening the occupation and the perpetuating the conflict for the residents of this country.

The current situation is comfortable for the ruling parties in Israel. Most Israeli ministers do not bother to hide their intention to continuing the colonization process in every part of the country. A small minority in the governing coalition, along with the Labor Party, expresses consistent support for “the peace process,” which may fool the well-intentioned observer to think that it wants a process that ends in an agreement. In practice, however, they support a peace process and not a peaceagreement. In other words, they support an endless process that makes it possible to preserve American support and good relations with the international community, while shoring up the major settlement blocs and allowing various corporations to continue to enjoy enormous profits from the ongoing occupation and from thetotal dependency of the Palestinian economy on the Israeli economy.

It may be that the present situation is comfortable for Israel’s ruling parties. It may be that for many in the Israeli-Jewish public, the words “occupation” and “peace” sound like echoes from the past, words that are no longer relevant for present-day discussion. But for a great many Palestinians, this dummy peace process, a process that reinforces the existing situation, is insufferable. First and foremost, because it perpetuates occupation and colonization, which put enormous pressure, perpetrate daily violence and dispossess more and more Palestinians of their lands.

The colonization process sentences Palestinians to a life of oppression and poverty; tens of thousands live in the shadow of fences and walls under harsh restrictions; tens of thousands of people in Hebron live at the whim of a group of Israeli settlers, led by a lawless gang of extremists; over 200,000 Palestinians live without civil rights in East Jerusalem, while countless others live in villages or towns subjected to constant harassment by Israeli settlers. They cannot, and they will not, accept the continuation of a “negotiation process” that perpetuates and exacerbates their suffering. This dead-end process is creating a deadly bomb under the feet of both our peoples, a bomb that will explode with tremendous force in the near future.

After 20 years of a failed and fictitious peace process, there is no more room for “processes” that serve as substitutes for peace. There is nothing left to clarify between the two sides. The only possible compromise for a peace agreement is known; there is no other alternative. The last and only historic compromise that the Palestinian people can accept and live with is well-known: a sovereign Palestinian state in all areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem; a full Israeli retreat to the Green Line; dismantling the settlements and rehabilitating the settlers within Israel; and full realization of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return. There is room for negotiations whose aim is to determine exactly how and in what ways and conditions this compromise will be carried out. There is no point to any other negotiation.

It is possible to reach a peace agreement on the basis of a partition of the land into two states, with the Green Line as the border and a solution to the refugee problem. Even so much as a sketch of such an agreement, however, is absent from the negotiation table. But it is not only what isn’t on the negotiation table that points to the real position of the Israeli negotiators, but also what is. Netanyahu’s condition that Israel be recognized as an exclusive Jewish state is not only a ridiculous demand that Palestinians declare their acceptance of Zionist ideology. Along withLieberman’s proposals for territorial and population swaps, this demand exposes the Israeli intention to act against Palestinian citizens of Israel if should the government be required to carry out another pullout from the West Bank.

In other words, the Israeli government views one part of the Palestinian people as a hostage that can be threatened and perhaps even forced to pay the price for any compromise with another part of the Palestinian people. Under such conditions, there is no partner for peace among the Israeli political leadership.

About a month ago, we, members of the Tarabut–Hithabrut movement, participated in a conference in Hebron together with activists representing three Palestinian left-wing organizations in the West Bank: the People’s Party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). With great courage, the Palestinian left-wing activists made it very clear that despite their desire for peace, they oppose continuing the present negotiations. As their partners in the struggle against the occupation, we surely agree.

Together with our partners in the Palestinian left in Hebron, we want to say loud and clear: stop the negotiations now! In their present form, the negotiations are no more than just another tool used to expand Israeli control and deepen the occupation. They hold neither hope nor a chance for a better life in this country and mainly serve as a provider of raw material for Israeli hasbara. Anyone who desires to live a joint Jewish-Arab life in this country, in conditions of democracy and justice, can pressure the Israeli government to choose a solution that has already achieved international legitimacy — a Palestinian state alongside Israel with the Green Line as the border. However, the longer this theater of peace lasts, the more distant this solution becomes. More

Posted with Blogsy

UN rapporteur accuses Israel of "genocidal intentions"

UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk has claimed that "Israel is slouching towards nothing less than a Palestinian holocaust" in his comments about the abuse of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Maariv newspaper reported that Professor Falk has accused Israel of "genocidal intentions" towards the Palestinians. The legal expert was speaking to Russia's RT television.

"When you target a group, an ethnic group and inflict this kind of punishment upon them, you are in effect nurturing a kind of criminal intention that is genocidal," Falk is reported to have told RT.

Not surprisingly, the UN rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories came under fierce attack by Israeli and pro-Israel officials. A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry said that Falk is "renowned" for what he called "his extremist and crazy anti-Israeli" positions.

Canada's Foreign Minister John Baird, a well-known supporter of Israel despite its appalling human rights record and obvious contempt for international law, revealed that his country has called for Professor Falk to be removed from his post by the UN. He described his statements as "outrageous and anti-Semitic", which is rather strange, given Falk's Jewish background. More

 

Syria: Obama’s Surprising (and Confusing) Latest Moves by Richard Falk

President Obama’s August 31st remarks from the White House Rose Garden will long be remembered for their strangeness, but the final interpretation of their significance will have to await months if not years.

Richard Falk

There are three dimensions, at least, that are worth pondering: (1) seeking Congressional authorization for a punitive military attack against Syria in support of the treaty prohibition on recourse to chemical weapons in an armed conflict; (2) reconciling any endorsement of an attack by Congress with United States obligations under international law and with respect to the United Nations and its Charter; (3) assessing the degree to which American war making prerogatives continue to operate within an unacceptable domain of American exceptionalism.

In framing the issues at stake Obama set forth the fundamental policy choices in a rather incoherent manner:

• First of all, he asserted that on the basis of evidence available to the United States Government, that the Assad regime was without doubt responsible for the massive chemical weapons attack of August 21^st directed at the Ghouta residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus, and causing over 1,000 civilian deaths, including several hundred children. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, clearly articulated the grounds for skepticism about this American construction of the Ghouta atrocity. He put forward a strongly worded request that the allegations be confirmed by the release of convincing evidence. This is a reasonable demand. Many around the world have questioned why Assad would launch such a provocative attack to coincide with the arrival of UN inspectors, and when the battlefield balance was tipping in favor of the Damascus regime. All along such important figures in the Obama administration, especially John Kerry and Joe Biden, have arrogantly dismissed the relevance of any information provided by the UN inspection team. In light of the gigantic deception relating to Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) arsenal, which was more politely described long after the event as an ‘intelligence failure,’ it would have been appropriate for Washington to admit that it has a credibility problem in winning governmental and popular support for an attack on Syria. Its refusal to acknowledge such an issue merely deepens suspicions.

• Secondly, Obama informed listeners that “..after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets.” He added that he made this decision “as Commander-in-Chief on what I am convinced are our national security interests.” This conclusion was explained to rest on the importance of punishing such a crime against humanity and deterring future recourse to chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction by Syria, as well as sending a message to Iran and North Korea about America’s readiness to use force to uphold such norms of international law.

• Thirdly, there was no effort in Obama’s remarks to show why, absent a UN mandate, the United States in coalition with a few other countries, had the legal authority to attack a sovereign state in a circumstance other than self-defense.

• Fourthly, although the decision against involvement by the British Parliament was noted, there was no consideration as to whether such an outcome should bear on American policy. Nor was the German or Italian unwillingness to join in the attack noted, nor that of the Arab League. But the French support was duly appreciated, including a dig at the United Kingdom, by reminding his listeners around the world that it was France that was America’s “oldest ally.” (It is worth noting that the roles of these two European friends were directly reversed in the context of the Iraq War; then, it was the French more conservative led government that opposed participation, while now a socialist leader in Paris supports an attack against Syria).

• Fifthly, and in the most dramatic passage in the speech, Obama announces that because the United States is a proud democracy he has made “a second decision: I will seek the authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress” by calling for a debate and vote. No mention is made of a time frame, nor how he would react in the event that authorization was not forthcoming. Such an eventuality would set up a potential tension between his duties to uphold national security and an obligation of deference to a decision by Congress on the vital matter of authority to wage war. Obama touched all the bases by saying, “Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.” In effect, there is no constitutional legal requirement to obtain Congressional authorization, but doing so will create a more effective response. But what if authorization is withheld? Or Congress is split with approval by the Senate, and disapproval by the House?

• Sixthly, there is an implicit endorsement of American exceptionalism. After saying that the case for an attack will be made internationally, as well as domestically, Obama reaffirms a national prerogative of illegal unilateralism. He uses this phrase: “But we are the United States of America, and we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to what happened in Damascus.” That is no matter that others disagree, the United States alone has the duty to act as it sees fit. It is correctly presumed that such discretion is not vested in other sovereign states. Otherwise the world would be in flames. In effect, Syria, Iran, North Korea are bound by international law, as interpreted by the United States, while the United States and its closest allies are guided by assessments of their national security interests.

It is this double standard that is at the core of American exceptionalism, and also underpins the debate as to whether it is more instructive to view the United States as ‘global leader’ or ‘imperial power,’ or possibly some blend;

There is something rather sinister about announcing an intention to strike a vulnerable country with which the United States is not at war, coupled with the announcement that the needed military capabilities are in place, but will not be used until convenient; in effect, a lethal strike against Syria can take place at any point from now on until a time weeks or months from now, depending only on the workings of the internal American political process and the disposition of its Commander-in-Chief. If this is deemed to be in the interest of the Syrian people, I would like to know how.

Even if the controversy as to the facts is ignored, and theproblems associated with double standards as to the relevance ofinternational law to the use of force, there are some other reasonsfor concern about the approach adopted by PresidentObama:

• It denies constitutional status to the request for Congressionalauthorization, making it a discretionary presidential judgment callthat is not necessitated by the Constitution, but is an expressionof Obama’s belief in democratic procedures. To not rest thisrequest on the Constitution itself is a missed opportunity, andthus amounts to yet another reassertion of excessive authority bythe Executive Branch of government;
• Itmakes no effort to assess what would be of benefit to the people ofSyria, and rather makes the case for a narrow strike as acombination of punishing (without intending to displace) the Assadregime and abstract American national security interests in itsself-appointed role as preventing the use and spread ofWMD;
• Itfails to advocate in a serious manner a diplomatic approach toending the violence of the conflict by calling for a second Genevaconference with the full participation of Iran that would deal withregional peace and security issues, as well as the war inSyria;
• Itundermines the authority of the UN and international law by vestingin the U.S. Government the final word on when it is appropriate touse international force in non-defensive modes and fails to makewar a matter of ‘last resort’;
• It draws an overly sharp a distinction between this incidentinvolving chemical weapons and other massacres that have occurredduring the course of two years of strife in Syria; regardless ofthe weaponry deployed both forms of violence are crimes againsthumanity that deserve a serious and effective response, ifavailable.

*******************************************************************

It is as yet possible that Congress will rescue Obama from havingto respect a red line he ill-advisedly proclaimed a year ago. Itwould be ironic if this one time the anti-Obama Republicans savedhim from the worse foreign policy excess of hispresidency!

It is possible that Obama will be pushed by pro-interventionists tooverride a Congressional failure to give authorization. It is alsopossible that Congress will authorize, and public opinion stronglyoppose. And we are left to wonder whether Congress canconstitutionally authorize a use of force that violatesinternational treaty law. Of course, we would be unlikely to findout given the passivity of the U.S. Supreme Court when it comes tochallenges directed at legally dubious foreign policy and nationalsecurity matters.

All of the above suggests that the revitalization of Americanrepublicanism requires, as a matter of urgency, a constitutionalconvention with an explicit mandate to restore the separation ofpowers and checks and balances in relations to war/peace issues.The U.S. Government has longed strayed from this vital pillar ofrepublican democracy.

Nothing would do more to restore confidence in the United States asa global leader! Such a momentous event will not happen withoutmassive grassroots pressure; it will never be decreed from onhigh.

A final word of blurred appreciation: CNN talking heads are veryfond of referring to Obama as epitomizing ‘the reluctant warrior.’And reluctant he is, but also warrior he has been, and continues tobe, casting a rather dark shadow over the Nobel Peace Prizedecision process. The reluctance is articulated over and over againin his words and sometimes reflected in his policies, and certainlyseems sincere. And such reluctance may be credited, at leastsubconsciously, with this welcome move to broaden the domesticauthorization process with respect to this non-defensive use ofinternational force. Obama would deserve less ambiguous praise ifhe had recognized the role of Congress prior to the decision of theBritish Parliament. And prior the many demands from Congress for agreater role gathering political momentum.More

___________________________

Editorial

I question how the international community can discipline a States Party to the United Nations for acting unilaterally? States that carry out drone strikes, committing extra-judicial killings, allegedly as part of their war on terror, a 'war' that the said state may be at least partially responsible for causing.

There has to be accountability, or as Richard Falk points out; Obama reaffirms a national prerogative of illegal unilateralism. He uses this phrase: “But we are the United States of America, and we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to what happened in Damascus.” That is no matter that others disagree, the United States alone has the duty to act as it sees fit.

The international community must uphold the Rule of Law, the United National and all International Organizations have an obligation to uphold the Rule of Law. The mandate of the Geneva Conventions must be upheld. I argue that it is a human right for all states to be held accountable and for there to consequences for illegal actions. Editor