UN rights official slams 'cowardly...

[Steve Gardner]

...Israeli war crime' in Gaza

UN special rapporteur, John Dugard, pulls no punches in his criticism of the 'collateral damage' recently inflicted by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

This is a man who has, in the past, compared "Israel's laws and practices in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories]" to apartheid (see second article).

Source: Yahoo News

GENEVA (AFP) - Israel's targeting of a Hamas government office which caused serious casualties at a nearby wedding party was a "war crime" and those responsible should be punished, a United Nations official said Saturday.

John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, also slammed the killing of Palestinians in other attacks and the closing of border crossings.

"The killing of some 40 Palestinians in Gaza in the past week, the targeting of a Government office near a wedding party venue with what must have been foreseen loss of life and injury to many civilians, and the closure of all crossings into Gaza raise very serious questions about Israel's respect for international law and its commitment to the peace process," Dugard said in a statement.

"Recent action violates the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention," Dugard charged in the statement put out by the UN human rights commission.

"It also violates one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law that military action must distinguish between military targets and civilian targets."

He said that "Israel must have known" about the wedding party in the Gaza Strip near to the interior ministry when it launched missiles at the ministry building on Friday.

The massive air strike destroyed the former interior ministry building in Gaza City, now abandoned, sending a tide of shrapnel crashing against adjacent apartment buildings and killing a 47-year-old woman.

Around 50 people were wounded in the blast, including several children. At least 30 of the victims had been attending the wedding party near the building.

"Those responsible for such cowardly action are guilty of serious war crimes and should be prosecuted and punished for their crimes," Dugard said.

The United States and other participants in the Annapolis conference in November to relaunch the Middle East peace process "are under both a legal and a moral obligation to compel Israel to cease its actions against Gaza and to restore confidence in the peace process, ensure respect for international law and protect civilian life," he said.

"We attacked the building and nothing else," an Israeli army spokeswoman said of Friday's raid, calling the target a "headquarters" of the radical Hamas movement which controls the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, Israel announced a complete closure of the Gaza Strip after a sharp escalation in rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants on Israeli communities across the border and retaliatory raids by the Israeli army.

Source: The Guardian

Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Friday February 23, 2007
The Guardian


A UN human rights investigator has likened Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories to apartheid South Africa and says there should be "serious consideration" over bringing the occupation to the international court of justice.

The report by John Dugard, a South African law professor who is the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, represents some of the most forceful criticism yet of Israel's 40-year occupation.

Prof Dugard said although Israel and apartheid South Africa were different regimes, "Israel's laws and practices in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories] certainly resemble aspects of apartheid." His comments are in an advance version of a report on the UN Human Rights Council's website ahead of its session next month.

After describing the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, with closed zones, demolitions and preference given to settlers on roads, with building rights and by the army, he said: "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose of such action is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report."

He dismissed Israel's argument that the sole purpose of the vast concrete and steel West Bank barrier is for security. "It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of settlers," he said.

Gaza remained under occupation despite the withdrawal of settlers in 2005. "In effect, following Israel's withdrawal, Gaza became a sealed-off, imprisoned and occupied territory," he said.

Prof Dugard said his mandate was solely to report on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories and he described as a violation of international humanitarian law the firing of rockets by Palestinians from Gaza into Israel. "Such actions cannot be condoned and clearly constitute a war crime," he said. "Nevertheless, Israel's response has been grossly disproportionate and indiscriminate and resulted in the commission of multiple war crimes."

[Steve Gardner]

Source: BBC

Palestinian militants have escalated rocket fire from Gaza and Israel says it will keep up military and economic pressure, after days of bloodshed.

At least seven were killed on Thursday in more Israeli raids on the territory controlled by militant group Hamas, a total of over 30 deaths in three days.

Hamas has fired salvoes of unguided rockets causing injuries in Israel.

The sharp rise in violence in the Gaza Strip comes after a recent US-led push for progress in peace talks.

In Israel's air strikes on Gaza on Thursday:

• A militant leader and his wife were killed as they drove their car
  
  
• One or two militants from the group Islamic Jihad were killed in another strike; a mother and her young son, riding on a donkey cart close by, were also killed
  
  
• In the latest strike, at least two Hamas militants travelling in a car were also killed.

On Wednesday, Israeli air attacks killed five people, including at least three civilians. At least 31 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air assaults since Tuesday.

Israel says its military action is intended to stamp out daily rocket and mortar fire into Israel by Palestinian militants.

In recent months, Hamas has been observing an informal moratorium on attacking Israel, but over the past two days it has launched over 100 rockets into Israel.

Two Israeli civilians were lightly injured in the latest salvoes, after 10 people in the Israeli town of Sderot were lightly wounded on Wednesday.

Shops, businesses and government offices have been closed across Gaza and the West Bank in protest at the latest Israeli military action.

UN 'troubled'

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was "troubled by the heavy bloodshed", said his spokesperson in a statement.

He urged an "immediate halt to Palestinian sniper and rocket attacks, as well as maximum restraint by the Israeli Defence Forces".

But in a speech quoted by Reuters, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a "war is going on in the south, every day, every night.

"We cannot and we will not tolerate this unceasing fire at Israeli citizens... so we will continue to operate."

But reports suggested a ground assault on Gaza was not imminent.

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon said there was no need to end the siege on the impoverished Mediterranean strip, or end the boycott of Hamas, which has been shunned by Israel and its allies as a terrorist organisation.

"The military and economic pressure as well as the international isolation of the Gaza Strip will end up producing results," Mr Ramon said in a radio interview.

The US State Department urged Israel to avoid harming civilians, but said it had a right to act in self-defence.

Peril to peace

Last week, a hopeful US President George W Bush was predicting the recently relaunched peace process could result in a deal within a year.

But on Thursday, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned of "serious consequences" for the talks if the Israeli strikes continued.

Mr Abbas' spokesman also told news agency AFP "the raids and military escalations aim to deliver a blow" to the negotiations.

Mr Abbas leads the rival Fatah movement, which Hamas ousted from Gaza in June to become the undisputed ruler of Gaza, having previously been part of a unity government with Fatah.

Earlier, Hamas's Damascus-based leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, called on Mr Abbas to sever the talks.

Mr Abbas telephoned senior Hamas figure Mahmoud Zahhar on Wednesday to offer his condolences on the killing of his son by Israeli forces on Monday.

Correspondents said it was the first such contact since the factional schism, which left Fatah in charge of Palestinian areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.