Gaza double standards

United Nations Report

Israel’s Ongoing War on the U.N. Waged With Impunity

By Ian Williams

A U.N. vehicle destroyed in an Israeli strike on Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, July 29, 2014. (MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

One of Ban Ki-moon’s forgotten achievements just after taking office in 2007 was to secure compensation for the U.N. premises destroyed by Israeli weaponry in Gaza. He is unlikely to get anything this time, however—even though in at least one incident, in which it seems almost certain that Israeli mortar fire landed on the UNRWA school at Beit Hanoun, killing dozens of sheltering refugees, evokes memories and suspicions. Not only was it the fourth UNRWA school that Israel had fired on, it was just the latest in a long chain of incidents, going back to the 1948 assassination of U.N. envoy Count Folke Bernadotte, in which Israelis have targeted U.N. premises and personnel. (See September 1995 Washington Report, p. 83, and the September 2013 issue, p. 30.) Who now remembers Qana in 1996, when the IDF continued its shelling even after being called and told what it was doing? (See July 1996 Washington Report, pp. 6 and 21.) The innocent dead victims find themselves promoted to “human shields.”

The savagery of these attacks defies military logic. Like the Sarajevo marketplace massacre, it is just possible that the motive was undisciplined individual bigotry and that the higher military and political echelons winced at the undiplomatic crassness of their personnel. But in Bosnia it eventually proved too much, and the international community unleashed force against the perpetrators and their protectors.

Looking at the long chain of incidents, even with the vicious, racist and reactionary ministers in the Israeli cabinet, we have the same disturbing paradigm of impunity. The Israeli government will deny rather than condone these incidents of murderous barbarism, but it will blame the victims rather than take action against the perpetrators. In the IDF chain of command and control there is a clear culture of impunity. Even if Beit Hanoun was the product of one or two Israeli soldiers exercising their racist fantasies, they can be confident that their careers will continue untrammeled, and that they might even be heroes to the civilians lounging on deck chairs cheering the assault on Gaza.

While not quite cheering, much of the international community shares complicity in this culture of impunity. Where is the pressure on Israel to stop such incidents, to punish the guilty? At one time, it seemed that the International Criminal Court offered a means to do so. But Washington and its allies are effectively writing an exclusion clause into international law: Israel can do no wrong. We can rightly condemn Slobodan Milosevic or Bashar al-Assad for deeds in Bosnia or Syria, but not Binyamin Netanyahu.

It is wrong to blame the diplomats, who are, after all, men and women sent abroad to lie for the countries. The real Pontius Pilate emulators, washing their hands in the blood of others, are back in their respective capitals. Nowhere has that been seen more than in the last weeks of the Israeli attack on the Gaza ghetto.

To anyone who is not imbued with U.S. mainstream media, soaked as it is in Israeli hasbara and its official spokespeople intoning lying platitudes with straight faces, Israel’s disproportionate use of force in Gaza was already apparent even before its shelling of U.N. shelters. So where to begin?

We could start with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose effort to win statehood for Palestine is now revealed to be a pointless morale-boosting diversion since he refuses to take the only step that would have given it any significant meaning—accession to the International Criminal Court, which would make crimes committed on Palestinian territory subject to ICC proceedings.

The unity government of Hamas and Fatah—which is, of course, the real proximate cause of IDF operations and crimes in Gaza—de-emphasized the applicability of the treaty to a Palestine that had joined. But of course Abbas and the Palestinian Authority are hostages to Israeli security, waiting for the IDF to pick them up, or off, at will.

Then we can move to Secretary of State John Kerry for his indiscreet remarks on Fox—“Hell of a pinpoint operation”—in which his private candor about IDF operations contrasted so signally with his hypocritical mantras about supporting Israel’s right to self-defense.

Kerry’s office later explained that “his private comments were consistent with his publicly stated view…: Israel has the right to defend itself, including against recent tunnel attacks, but he has encouraged them to not only take steps to prevent civilian casualties, but to take steps to de-escalate and we’re working together to achieve a cease-fire.”

An objective observer might comment that “achieving a cease-fire” could be done most effectively by stopping financial, military and diplomatic support to the country that is refusing it, not to mention the personal motives of payback to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for his repeated insults and nose-tweaking of both President Barack Obama and Kerry.

Human Rights Council Vote

The abdication of ethics continued in July, with the U.S.’ lonely negative vote on the U.N. Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation into what was happening in Gaza. But Washington was pretty much first among almost equals in its diplomatic amorality. No less than 17 countries went along to the point of abstention on the resolution. Korea and Japan and a fistful of French neo-colonies joined the EU in approving the sentiments of the resolution, but not daring to put their hands up for it.

The 29 countries supporting it were not all great paragons of human rights protection, but at least they went on record in support of “Ensuring respect for international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Interesting was Dublin’s statement. Ireland, with a population angry about events in Gaza, hedged its bets in a typical manner. It “fully accepts that the Government of Israel has the right to defend its people, but this right does not negate the rights of others. Any use of military force in self-defense must be in accordance with international humanitarian law, and in particular must be both discriminate and proportionate. In view of the casualty figures, we do not believe that this has been the case.”

But it followed the EU line, which was somewhat tangled in its own right. In effect, the EU is hampered because, short of Israel nuking a European city, members like France and Germany cannot bring themselves to condemn the country, and thus prevent any joint EU criticism. But of course they cannot say, anymore than Kerry can, that Israel is above the law, so they made the excuse that the UNHRC resolution “fails to condemn explicitly the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israeli civilian areas as well as to recognize Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself.”

This is thinner even than the average fig leaf, since the resolution that was passed declares unequivocally that it “Condemns all violence against civilians wherever it occurs, including the killing of two Israeli civilians as a result of rocket fire, and urges all parties concerned to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”

It is true that in this context, the mention of the two dead somewhat accentuates the hundreds dead on the other side, but it is difficult to reconcile the EU lie with the reality.

One hesitates to inflict formal U.N. prose on readers, but the preamble to the Human Rights Council resolution cites the international law that Israel is so patently flouting. It begins:

Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

Recalling General Assembly resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006 and Human Rights Council resolutions 5/1 and 5/2 of 18 June 2007,

Reaffirming the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and the inadmissibility of the acquisition of land by the use of force, as enshrined in the Charter,

Affirming the applicability of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, in particular the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,

Reaffirming that all High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention are under the obligation to respect and ensure respect for the obligations arising from the said Convention in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and

Reaffirming their obligations under articles 146, 147 and 148 with regard to penal sanctions, grave breaches and responsibilities of the High Contracting Parties,

Gravely concerned at the lack of implementation of the recommendations contained in the report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict of 2009, and convinced that lack of accountability for violations of international law reinforces a culture of impunity, leading to a recurrence of violations and seriously endangering the maintenance of international peace,

Noting that 9 July 2014 marked the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and that no progress has been made on its implementation, and affirming the urgent need to respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law and international human rights law in this regard,

The resolution calls not only for a new “Goldstone” Commission to investigate what is happening, but calls up Switzerland, the responsible power, to convene a convention of parties to the Geneva Convention to consider Israel’s failure to apply its strictures to the occupied territories—thereby giving Europe and the U.S. the opportunity to show their pusillanimity yet again.

Many critics of the U.N. system rightly condemn the veto as an obstacle to progress, but taken overall, a veto is almost healthy, an honest statement of a position. An abstention is in its own insidious way even more pernicious, since the accompanying statements so often show that the governments concerned accept all of the facts, even the conclusions, but are too invertebrate to record a vote in the face of American and Israeli displeasure.

Faster than the USS Liberty compensation

'Reimbursement', not justice

From Ian Williams
Middle East International 22 January 2010

Israel has confirmed to the United Nations that it is agreeing to pay $10.5 million for the 15 January 2009 destruction of UN premises in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Most of the payment goes to UNRWA, with a few hundred thousand dollars for the office of the UN Special Coordinator for the peace process, whose facilities were also trashed in an act redolent with symbolism.

At Israeli insistence, the payment is scrupulously described as ‘reimbursement’ for the ruined supplies and facilities. Since UNRWA is a voluntarily funded agency, not paid for from the UN general assessment, the ‘reimbursement’ is as much a gesture to the donor countries who have shown increasing restiveness at seeing their aid to the Palestinians regularly destroyed by the IDF, as it is to the UN – although relations between Ehud Barak and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are perhaps more important.

Specifically excluded from the payment (carefully not labelled ‘compensation’, let alone ‘reparation’) is any money for human victims of the tragedy. Some Israelis now admit that ‘mistakes’ were made, but the Board of Inquiry, set up by Ban Ki-moon and headed by Ian Martin, a respected human rights figure, concluded that the action was part of a pattern of attacks on UN premises, schools, hospitals and warehouses.

The ‘reimbursement’ also excludes any admission of guilt by Israel: it is not to set a precedent. Indeed, it is unprecedented. It took 14 years for Israel to pay $6 million to compensate the US Navy for damage to the USS Liberty in 1967. Furthermore, Israel has not, as far as we know, compensated the Overseas Private Investment Corp, a US government-backed fund, for the $48 million owed to the Connecticut-based Morganti Group for its share of the Gaza power plant bombed by the Israelis in 2006. Nor has it compensated the European Union, whose members have been uncommonly vociferous about the costs of regular IDF flattening of their expensive aid projects.

Last January, Ban Ki-moon came, saw and was disgusted with the results of the Israeli attack and has persevered when previous UN chiefs have, in effect, let the IDF get away with successive horrors – just think of the recidivist shelling of UNIFIL’s outpost at Qana in 1996. His persistence, and relationship with Barak, the good cop of current Israeli foreign affairs compared with the Lieberman/Ayalon team officially holding the foreign portfolio, delivered the deal.
Special relationship

Barak immediately apologised to Ban for the destruction, which involved phosphorus shells. The secretary-general reported at the time: “The defence minister said to me it was a grave mistake and he took it very seriously. He assured me that extra attention will be paid to UN facilities and staff, and this will not be repeated.” Ban’s indignation was compounded because he was actually in Israel trying to secure a ceasefire when the UN premises were attacked. He could have been forgiven for thinking that someone in the IDF was trying to send him a message, not least when, as he soon complained, Israeli forces went ahead and carried out more such actions.

Barak and his ilk seem to have pushed the ‘reimbursement’ deal through. They are concerned at the erosion of the new special relationship between Israel and this UN administration. At one time, Israeli governments could rely on Washington to do the heavy lifting to bludgeon the international organisation into taciturn acquiescence. But the Obama administration, with its own issues with Netanyahu, cannot be relied upon to the same extent, so Israel has to do its own bilateral stroking.

But the greatest leverage for the UN was the detailed 184-page report of the Board of Inquiry led by Ian Martin, former special representative in East Timor. Reporting back to Ban last May, he concluded “that IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage and loss of property.” The report also called for compensation for damage to property, which was promptly endorsed by Ban.

Only a 27-page summary was published and the full report has been kept confidential. It is likely to be buried even more deeply as part of the deal. Almost certainly, Israel’s fear is that the details in there would add to the growing prospects of international criminal charges against Israeli personnel. The book was closed on using the Martin report as the basis for any further action.

The report is not being greeted as a triumph by local UN staff, who look with an understandably jaundiced eye at the damage Israel has done in Gaza. Ban may have achieved more than anyone else before in getting compensation, but many local employees, ruefully contemplating the death of colleagues and the people whose welfare they are charged to maintain, complain that it is at the cost of justice.

Obama's Opportunity in Gaza

Obama and Israel

Ian Williams | January 9, 2009

Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

On January 5 John Bolton, the former unconfirmed U.S. envoy to the United Nations, advocated in The Washington Post a "three-state solution" to the Palestinian problem. This "solution" involved returning Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan because the Palestinian state has manifestly failed.

A perennial cutter of Gordian knots, Bolton usually misses the complexity of the turns — and the identity of the knot-tiers. In this case, he missed the rather obvious point that the Palestinian Authority's ailments are connected to the Israeli refusal to allow a viable and contiguous state to exist and its constant undermining of whatever party the Palestinian people elect, first Fatah and now Hamas. In fact, Bolton doesn't go far enough. Following his line of "reasoning," Israel should be returned to Britain as a mandate and then quickly turned over to the United States.

The Obama administration isn't likely to pick up Bolton's advice to dissolve the Palestinian state. In the current policy vacuum, however, Obama should be ready for a serious rethink of U.S. policy. And that rethink should begin with Israel.
Israel and the United States

Israel is far from being simply a U.S. satellite and base. In many ways, the United States orbits Israel. For domestic political reasons, the U.S. government in effect uncritically guarantees almost any act of any Israeli government. There are, of course, some limits, though not many. For example, it's clear that Israel either couldn't or wouldn't mount an attack on Iran without U.S. approval, which was likely withheld more because of its potential effect on U.S. forces in the region than any principled objection to the idea.

This U.S.-Israeli relationship gives President-elect Obama, despite his distressing silence on the Gaza conflict, a unique window of opportunity. Domestically, he garnered the votes of almost 80% of American Jews, despite a furious campaign from Republican and Likudnik die-hard organizations questioning his attachment to the Zionist project and Israel's defense.

Even after his kowtowing to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) during the primaries, Obama won even more support from American Muslims than he did from Jews.

Obama shouldn't listen to conservative Jewish organizations, who outshout the silent majority of American Jews who abide by their traditional liberal and humanitarian instincts. The overwhelming majority of American Jews voted for Obama, and the emergence of voices like J Street offers an opportunity for a new president who owes the "Israel Lobby" nothing.
Obama and Israel

If Obama wants to be a real friend to Israel, he has to let the Israeli government know its actions are not consequence-free. There is both a principled and a pragmatic constituency that he can address in Israel itself. Until now, the Israeli electorate has worked on the principle that whatever happens, the United States will provide support. If the government needs replacements for expended cluster bombs, the United States will airlift them in. If the UN, the EU, and other international actors criticize Israel's military actions, Washington will send the aid check as always. This uncritical support of Israel must change.

Obama shouldn't let the immediate crisis in Gaza deflect from the root problem. Israeli leaders have a profound ambivalence toward the peace process, to which they officially subscribe even as they continue building settlements in the West Bank. The United States must push Israel toward greater engagement with a peace settlement. Nor can the United States or the EU continue to ostracize any Palestinian (or for that matter the Lebanese) leadership demonized by Israel as terrorists.

On the carrot side, Obama should promise full security guarantees to Israel within the internationally accepted borders, based on the June 1967 lines.

Since he is being bipartisan, the new president should take up where George Bush Sr. and James Baker left off almost two decades ago. Any Israeli spending on settlement building should be condemned in the UN, and matched by equivalent reductions in U.S. aid. He should also implement actual U.S. policy by reminding Israelis that American weaponry is intended for defensive purposes and that any used in attacks beyond the borders won't be replaced.

Finally, the president-elect should speak out now about the desirability of Israel abiding by UN Security Council Resolution 1860, which calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli troop withdrawal, and sustained delivery of humanitarian assistance. A word from Obama would give Israel the excuse it desperately needs to extricate itself from the hole it dug in Gaza, while redounding to the president-elect's credit globally.

Given the cast of mind of many leading Democrats, such a rethink of U.S.-Israel relations is sure to be controversial. But early and speedy action before Obama starts campaigning for reelection should produce results. And backing a durable peace would be the best way of supporting Israel in the end.

Ian Williams is a senior analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus.

The IDF war on the UN

The UN in Israel's sights
The shelling of schools in Gaza caps off a tumultuous relationship between the UN and Israel
•
o Ian Williams
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 January 2009 13.30 GMT
As well as the untimely and tragic end of over 40 Palestinian civilians, the Israeli shelling of UN schools in Gaza could be taken as a final farewell salute to the honeymoon between Ban Ki-moon and Israel.
Ban came into office with somewhat limited appreciation of the Middle East, and seemed to take much of his attitude second-hand from Washington. But his own deep sense of ethics and growing experience of Israeli duplicity and obduracy could be plotted on the rising curve of indignation in his public statements. Israel has been provided with the exact coordinates of all UN agency installations in the strip. So are those who fired the shots incompetent, ruthless or undisciplined and vindictive?
There is a morbid circularity in this. When Boutros Boutros Ghali took office as UN secretary general, he was reviled by much of the Arab world as the architect of the original Camp David accords, which they regarded as treachery. He left as their hero after Israel shelled the UN compound at Qana in Lebanon, killing over a hundred civilians who had taken shelter there.
Famously, when the Israeli ambassador came to ask for the suppression of the UN's report on the incident because it would "open deep wounds in Israel" Boutros Ghali retorted that they could not match the wounds inflicted on the Lebanese who were shelled.
Ironically, Kofi Annan, who was accused of trying to soften the report in Israel's favour and did much to bring the Jewish state into the UN mainstream, left office in 2006 with a similar problem: the day-long shelling of the UN compound at Khiam and killing of four UN peacekeepers, despite long hours of messages from local UNIFIL commanders, and even high-level messages from the UN HQ directly to Israel.
There is a pattern here. Firstly, the regular gruesome pre-election blood sacrifice to prove that Israeli politicians like Ehud Barak are hairy-chested and macho enough to be elected. The IDF personnel involved are either criminally culpable or incompetent, but can be confident that they will escape with impunity – an impunity that increases with each shooting incident in the territories. IDF spokespeople will refer to alleged "terrorist" activity near the sites as they did here and tut tut about how the nasty Arab terrorists use human shields.
Interestingly, this does not apply when they set up machine gun nests on the top of UN schools, as they have done in the past, or on the top of apartment blocks, as they have done this time.
The IDF, of course, always behaves as if it is shocked, shocked, that wild firing into the most densely populated territory in the world produces civilian casualties.
But now let us compare international reactions. A Serb mortar shell into the market place in Sarajevo in 1995 led to much-belated Nato and UN intervention against the perpetrators. Here the US that called for that action has, as in 2006 in Lebanon, resisted almost unanimous international calls for a ceasefire, and is now belatedly converted to the idea, albeit hedged around with enough qualifications to keep the blood flowing into Gaza's already overflowing sewers a little longer.
When the US does move, it will almost certainly be, as in Lebanon, to use the UN security council as a fireman's ladder to let Israel get down gracefully from the gory pole it has once again mounted. It is too much to hope that the perpetrators will appear before an international court?
But one can anticipate that even more Israeli politicians and generals will be checking with their lawyers as well as their travel agents before going on any trips abroad.

Hamas springs Alan Johnston

So let's get this straight, while Fateh controlled Security in Gaza, a rogue clan abducted Alan Johnston. When Hamas took over security, or staged a coup, or whatever happens when an elected government exercises its authority, they tracked him down, and rescued them. He thanks them.

Interesting, bearing in mind that Blairbush and Olmert do not want us to talk to Hamas...

And congratulations Alan, who like many other journalistic hostages in the Middle East (too many) does not blame the entire people, all Arabs or indeed all Muslims for their plight.

Unlike some of their colleagues hostage to Murdoch & Co in the West.