With two Israeli army officers, “disciplined” for firing artillery shells towards a densely-populated area near a UN compound, still not facing a criminal investigation by the Israeli Defense Forces, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed on Thursday that he had received a full internal report from the Israelis.
This document completely expresses Israel’s commitment to conduct an honest internal probe according to the standards of international law. Despite the difficult conditions of fighting against Hamas terror, Israel has stringently abided by international norms and will continue to do in the future – though our foremost obligation is to protect our citizens.
However, The Independent of London reported a confession from a high-ranking Israeli official who talked to Israel’s Yedhiot Ahronot. The officer said that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement, concerning the protection of civilian lives, to minimise military casualties during the Operation Cast Lead. The senior commander said:
Means and intentions is a definition that suits an arrest operation in the Judaea and Samaria [West Bank] area… We need to be very careful because the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] was already burnt in the second Lebanon war from the wrong terminology. The concept of means and intentions is taken from different circumstances. Here [in Cast Lead] we were not talking about another regular counter-terrorist operation. There is a clear difference.
According to the newspaper, a more junior officer who served during the operation described the new policy as one of “literally zero risk to the soldiers” as a part of the policy to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war.
UPDATED 2 FEBRUARY: Haaretz reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to persuade Defense Minister Ehud Barak to accept an Israeli investigation into civilian deaths during Operation Cast Lead. However, officials said that both Barak and Gabi Ashkenazi, the Chief of Staff of Israel Defense Forces, refused to yield authority to investigators from outside the defense establishment.
“The prime minister knows what he wants to do on this matter – but he does not want to bring the matter to the cabinet,” a senior source close to Netanyahu said.
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With the General Assembly convening on 5 February 5 to discuss progress on the Goldstone Report and its recommendations, Israel submitted its response to United Nations over last year’s Gaza War.
The committee will reportedly have the authority to summon everyone who was in charge of the IDF investigations and any civilian who took part in the main deliberations. However, it will not have the authority to question operational commanders. The committee is likely to take testimony of lower-ranked officials, ensuring that there is no basis to send officials to international courts.
Last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, in front of the Auschwitz extermination camp ,that the world must learn from the Holocaust to unite against new threats. His reference to “impending danger” and an “existential threat”, as well as “murderous evil [which] must be stopped as soon as possible, before it can realize its schemes”, was of course aimed at the “nuclear threat” of Iran.
To prevent this “evil”, Netanyahu emphasized the need of a strong state and a powerful army and added:
We must warn of the impending danger to the rest of the world and at the same time to be ready to defend ourselves.
We the Jewish people learned the lesson [of the Holocaust] well after we lost one-third of our people.
I pledge as prime minister that we will never let the hand of evil harm our people and our state, never again.
All enlightened nations must absorb this lesson.
At the end of his speech, Netanyahu set out the “holy” defense line and said that he would not to allow a “new Amalek”, a reference to a Biblical king who waged war against the Jews, to threaten again to destroy the Jewish nation.
Having already expressed concerns over the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, Ban said at a meeting in New York:
Settlement construction violates international law and contravenes the Road Map, under which Israel is obliged to freeze all settlement activity, including the so-called ‘natural growth.’
This is in no one’s interest, least of all Israel’s. Settlement activity undermines trust between the two parties, seems to pre-judge the outcome of the future permanent status negotiations, and imperils the basis for the two-State solution.
In the absence of talks, confidence between the parties has diminished. Tensions have risen in East Jerusalem. People in Gaza and southern Israel continue to suffer from violence. If we do not move forward on the political process soon, we risk sliding backwards.
It bears repeating that the international community does not recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, which remains part of the occupied Palestinian territory. A way must be found, through negotiations, for Jerusalem to emerge as the capital of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, with arrangements for the holy sites acceptable to all.
“With this payment, the United Nations has agreed that the financial issues relating to those incidents referred to in the terms of reference of the Board of Inquiry are concluded,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman Martin Nesirky told a news briefing on Friday. “The Secretary-General would like to record the cooperative approach that the Government of Israel has shown in the course of the discussions that led to this settlement.”
“The continuing closure of the Gaza Strip is undermining the functioning of the health care system and putting at risk the health of 1.4 million people in Gaza,” Max Gaylard, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory, said in a joint statement with the Association of International Development Agencies.
Repair and maintenance of facilities are hampered because construction materials are not allowed into the territory. (During Operation Cast Lead, 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals were damaged and 43 of its 110 primary health-care facilities were either damaged or destroyed.) Certain types of medical equipment, such as x-ray equipment and electronic devices, are very difficult to bring in, and health professionals in Gaza have been cut off from the outside world.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also stated that many specialized treatments, such as for complex heart surgery and certain types of cancer, are not available in Gaza and patients are therefore referred for treatment to hospitals outside Gaza. However, many patients have had their applications for exit permits denied or delayed by the Israeli authorities and have missed their appointments, with some dying while waiting for referral.
“The Government of Israel has a legal duty to guarantee the right to health for people in Gaza. The humanitarian community calls for the crossings into Gaza to be reopened,” concluded the statement.
Iran: There’s a lot going on in and about Iran today – the trials are continuing; the Regime’s propaganda machine trundles on too! All the news, including links to our own stories and other news media, can be found on our live weblog.
In the light of the Ashura demonstrators’ trial starting this morning, and as they are charged with “Mohareb” (offending God and the prophet), Edward Yeranian assesses how this may hurt the regime.
We’ve got the video of the CNN interview in which Tehran University academic Seyed Mohammad Marandi lays out, in the guise of reporting and analysis, the strategy. (Apologies to those of you in the US whom CNN have blocked from seeing the video; the alternative, as laid out by our readers, is to download the video from CNN’s Amanpour website and play it back using QuickTime.)
Afghanistan: We have an evaluation from Juan Cole on this morning’s Taliban bomb attack in Kabul, which reportedly killed five and injured eight people. A video of the Esanech (Press TV) report on the attack can be viewed here.
Haiti: EA’s Josh Shahyrar has been producing an almost constant humanitarian liveblog since the Haiti earthquake disaster last Tuesday – read his latest posts (17-18 January) here.
Israel: EA’s Ali Yenidunya reports on the “strategic” relationship between Israel and Turkey, following Sunday’s 3.5 hour meeting in Ankara between Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. An Israeli official said the meeting was conducted “in a very friendly atmosphere”.
Palestine: After Israel’s Foreign Minister said on Sunday that it would make no further “gestures” towards the Palestinians, Palestinian Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas has called on Washington to “Draw Red Lines”.
Speaking at a legal conference in Jerusalem, Israel’s Former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak said that Israel should stop boycotting the International Criminal Court. Barak claimed that Israel will benefit from its participation in the court despite the risk that its soldiers, military officers and politicians may be brought to trial: ”Israel is part of the international community, and it must conduct itself in accordance with the interpretation that is common in international law.”
In 2000, Israel signed the Rome Statute which established the International Criminal Court, but the signature was never ratified by the Knesset.
A country that believes in the morality of its actions and those of its soldiers should not behave like a permanent suspect and boycott institutions of international law. On the contrary: It must fight within those institutions for its positions and justice. Joining the International Criminal Court at The Hague will place Israel on the side of the enlightened nations, and will contribute to restraining forceful and harmful actions. Barak’s recommendation deserves to be adopted.
With two Israeli army officers, “disciplined” for firing artillery shells towards a densely-populated area near a UN compound, still not facing a criminal investigation by the Israeli Defense Forces, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed on Thursday that he had received a full internal report from the Israelis.
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