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Israel Won’t Work With UN Gaza ‘War Crimes’ Probe

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Israel said Friday that it will not cooperate with a United Nations team appointed to investigate alleged war crimes committed during its 22-day offensive in Gaza. The UN announced from Geneva Friday that the four-member team, headed by South African war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, will head to the region this weekend, and wants to begin work next week.

The team will remain in the region for one week and was expected to present its report next month.

“This committee has been instructed to find Israel guilty no matter what and there is no point in cooperating with such a masquerade,” Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palmor told the German Press Agency dpa.

Goldstone has previously said the investigation would go ahead with or without Israeli cooperation. Aides to the jurst say he has been attempting to contact the Israeli government and implied he has not received a response.

The team “will enter Gaza from Egypt via the Rafah crossing point,” the UN fact-finding mission said in a statement, effectively eliminating the need for Israeli approval to reach the enclave.

Both Goldstone and Martin Ihoeghian Uhomoibhi, the President of the Human Rights Council who appointed the team, have said they want the mission to include investigations into possible violations of Israeli human rights as well.

The UN would only say that besides Gaza “other field visits are being planned.”

Israel, and other nations such as Canada, have accused the UN Human Rights Council - which mandated the fact-finding mission in a January resolution passed by 33 in favour, one against and 13 abstentions - of overtly singling it out.

That resolution “is profoundly biased,” Palmor claimed, saying it ordered a probe only into alleged Israeli violations, while ignoring Hamas, the Islamist movement ruling Gaza.

In April, when the full mandate of the team was announced, Goldstone said his “mission will have regard to all human rights violations and international humanitarian law violations committed in Israel, Gaza and the occupied territories.”

This would help the mission “gain the credibility of all sides and be truly, truly independent and produce a report that is fair, balanced and impartial,” Uhomoibhi had said after extending the mandate.

Israel launched the December 27 to January 18 offensive in Gaza in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian militants from the coastal salient at its southern towns and villages.

According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), 1,417 Palestinians, most of them civilians, died in the war, which also caused massive destruction. Thirteen Israelis also died.

Goldstone was the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and was a key legal figure in South Africa’s transition to democracy.

He said that as a Jew, it was “quite a shock” to have been appointed to head the mission.

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The anti-cluster bomb campaign

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Geneva - Human rights groups launched Friday a “week of action” to try to convince governments to sign and ratify the international treaty which bans the use, production and stockpiling of cluster munitions. The campaign was being launched one year after countries concluded negotiations on the treaty in Ireland. In December, the treaty was opened for signatures. Since then, 96 governments signed and seven have ratified the treaty.

 

Work has also commenced in several countries on eliminating their stockpiles of the weapon.

 

Spain became the first country to destroy its entire stockpile in March. Other countries were on their way, the Banning Cluster Munitions report released Friday said. These included Canada, Colombia and Britain.

 

Steve Goose, of Human Rights Watch’s arms control division, said he was “optimistic” the United States would eventually join the convention.

 

He noted that President Barack Obama, when he was in the Senate, supported some bans on cluster bombs, and also signed into law, after entering the White House, a permanent ban on exporting the weapon.

 

Cluster bombs eject sub-munitions over a wide area, making them a deadly and generally imprecise weapon. Many fail to explode and effectively turn into landmines scattered across civilian populated areas. Clearing them can also be an expensive task.

 

In Afghanistan, for example, Human Rights Watch said 232 strikes by the US army spread 1,228 cluster bombs, with 248,056 bomblets, throughout the country in 2001 and 2002. Parts of the country were also covered by the weapon during the Soviet invasion.

 

Afghanistan, like Laos and several other countries, remains heavily affected by cluster munitions.

 

“Cluster bombs have killed and injured far too many civilians at the time of attack,” said Steve Goose, of Human Rights Watch’s arms control division.

 

“Even worse, they go on killing days, weeks, months and even decades later,” he added, explaining that after they fail to explode they can remain for years in the ground or in lakes where people fish.

 

The coalition said some of the world’s biggest users and stockpilers have not yet signed up to the convention. These include the US, Russia, China, North Korea, and Israel.

 

It was Israel’s massive use of clusters in southern Lebanon in 2006 that sparked rights groups into action on getting the treaty together, the report said.

 

Russia and Georgia have both been accused of using the weapon during their conflict last summer.

 

Cluster bombs were still believed to be produced in at least 17 states. At the same time, more countries who support the treaty were also banning the transport of the weapon through their territory, effectively limiting the way to move them.

 

The treaty, beyond calling for the complete destruction of all cluster bombs within a decade, also orders states to give extensive assistance to victims of munition.

 

It does not include clauses on criminal prosecution against users, and the campaigners said that would have to be decided at the level of national legislators.

 

Six months after the 30th country signs the treaty it will enter into force. That is expected to occur next year, Goose said.

 

The progress made in ending the use of the bombs was a “remarkable story of sea change in the international perspective on the weapon,” Goose said.

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Council Rejects ID Card Scheme

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Have Your Say: Council Rejects ID Card Scheme
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Related News

• UN human rights investigators leaving for Gaza next week
• Human rights leaders call for investigation into Gaza conflict
• IDF: No War Crimes Committed in Gaza
• UN rights chief urges probe into Gaza killings
• Israel’s war crimes not “collateral damage”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Contributions & Guests . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.