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Human Rights Watch called on Israel on Thursday to investigate seven incidents in which it said Israeli troops shot and killed Palestinian civilians who were flying white flags during the war in the Gaza Strip in January.
Expressing disappointment with Israel's response so far to a range of allegations of war crimes made by international bodies, the New York-based lobby group said governments should press for prosecutions under international law if Israel and its enemies in Gaza's Islamist authorities did not act themselves.
Israel must investigate the "unlawful" killing of 11 civilians carrying white flags during its Gaza operation earlier in 2009, Human Rights Watch has said.
Five women and four children were among those killed in seven incidents detailed by the US-based rights group.
Researchers said the soldiers at best failed to protect civilians, and at worst deliberately shot at them.
Israel has launched investigations into five "white flag" incidents, but says Hamas exploited civilians with flags.
The head of a delegation of US Democratic members of Congress blamed the Palestinians on Thursday for failing to hold talks with Israel, calling it the "largest thing" impeding the peace process.
"I think the largest thing impeding the negotiations at this point is simply the unwillingness of (Palestinian president Mahmud) Abbas to sit down (with the Israelis)," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters in Jerusalem.
Armed Palestinians shot and lightly wounded two Israelis driving in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the Israeli army said.
A military spokesman and the Zaka rescue service said the shooting occurred after dark near the Jewish settlement of Maaleh Levonah, situated between the cities of Ramallah and Nablus, and that troops were searching for suspects.
"Two Israeli civilians were lightly wounded when terrorists opened fire at a vehicle" in the West Bank, the military spokesman said. He said both were taken to hospital.
Residents of the Bnei Adam outpost have agreed to evacuate voluntarily three caravans in their West Bank settlement, after being advised to do so by leading rabbis of the national religious movement.
The High Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that the outpost would be evacuated within five days, after hearing a petition from Bnei Adam residents who oppose the move.
Earlier in the week, Binyamin Regional Council head Avi Roeh visited the outpost and negotiated with the IDF over the voluntary evacuation.
Informed Egyptian sources have confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that significant progress has been made in the Israeli – Palestinian negotiations mediated by Egypt towards reaching a prisoner exchange agreement. These sources revealed that this progress is not dramatic, but that it has taken place as a result of the positive steps taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The sources clarified that Netanyahu has agreed to resume negotiations with Hamas from the point that the previous negotiations undertaken by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had ended.
Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal said there is no real progress in talks for the release of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, despite recent reports to the contrary.
In an interview to Qatari newspaper al-Watan, that will be published in full on Sunday, with parts of it published on the Hamas website Thursday, Mashaal said mediation efforts in the matter were ongoing, but that no real progress has been made.
He said this was due to "the manner in which the Zionist enemy's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is handling the matter.'
Israel has recently been putting up more obstacles for foreign nationals who enter the country if they have family, work, business or academic ties in the West Bank. It now restricts their movements to "the Palestinian Authority only." The people concerned are citizens of countries that have diplomatic ties with Israel, mainly Western countries.
In imposing such restrictions, Israel is in breach of the Oslo Accords.
"The forgeries in Iran were much smaller than what we had in Palestine," said former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qureia, who was not elected for the Fatah movement's Central Committee in elections this week.
The results were published Wednesday, and in response, Qureia said large question marks hovered over the election process and the counting of the votes.
Some Israeli citizens are challenging the Jewish state over its practice of demolishing Palestinian houses.
They have taken up trowels and buckets to rebuild two houses that were knocked down in a Palestinian town straddling East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Younes Sbaih says he has been moved by the generosity of about 20 volunteers who are rebuilding his house from a pile of rubble.
The group - some who cart sand and cement while others work with saws and jackhammers - will take just two weeks to build the house from scratch.
Boston Consul-General Nadav Tamir set off a media firestorm last week when he sent a diplomatic cable to the Foreign Ministry warning that the government's public opposition to the Obama administration's policies were diminishing US popular support for Israel and causing American Jews to feel torn between the two countries.
Amid the brouhaha, which resulted in Tamir being summoned to Jerusalem, swirling questions of the propriety of drafting such a letter and rampant speculation on who was behind its leaking, a more fundamental issue arises: was Tamir's assessment correct?
Israel deliberately brought the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure to the brink of collapse before its military offensive in the enclave in December and January and has since blocked any efforts of its rehabilitation as part of a strategy to defy Hamas, a report by an Israeli rights group claimed this week.
The article entitled Spain funds 'summer camp' for foreign volunteers to rebuild demolished illegal Palestinian homes, which merited the front page of The Jerusalem Post (August 10), would seem somewhat of a non-story. After all, Israel and the US funded NGOs assisting Jews in the Soviet Union.
In addressing one of its most pivotal foreign policy challenges in the Middle East, the Obama administration needs to moderate its lexicon in framing the negotiations and expectations on the Peace Process. Using words such as “normalize” in addressing the responsibilities of Arab governments and sending mixed signals on its call for a “complete” settlement freeze from Israel, is creating misperceptions in the Arab Street of the administration’s efforts and undermining its objectives.
After a week of contentious, sometimes raucous deliberations, Fatah, the foremost Palestinian nationalist movement, has managed to elect a new leadership committee. This is no small feat for an organisation that most Palestinians see as fractious, corrupt and without compass. Indeed, the Sixth General Congress was mired in controversy and infighting that threatened to erode further the credibility of a party arguably on the wane.
Slowly, but surely, more and more evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza is beginning to surface.
On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch - which has previously censored Israel for its use of white phosphorus shells over civilian areas, as well as Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza - issued a new report on the killing of civilians in Gaza after they had surrendered to Israeli forces.
Fateh, the key Palestinian guerilla movement within the Palestine Liberation Organisation, moved one step closer to becoming a political party.
Having held its sixth congress for the first time in the occupied territories, it would be hard to continue pretending to be a liberation movement. Officially, however, the over 2,000 delegates, representing former Fateh fedayyin (guerillas) and Intifada activists, voted to continue the resistance and the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Resistance, however, was explained in a much wider perspective than the military struggle.
Poets as diverse as William Blake and Yehuda Amichai have sung the praises of the heavenly Jerusalem, a land without strife or rancor, war or bitterness, envy, acquisitiveness or hatred. Israel, Fatah and Hamas have the historic opportunity to take a giant step toward making the present day Jerusalem acquire, at least in some of its aspects, the earthly prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem. For once we can see whether the work of imams, rabbis and priests can bear fruit.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/8369
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/8369
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/8369
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/donate_online
[6] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1107286.html
[7] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8198863.stm
[8] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iuoSlOL-Rf9BORdpAyr4ssYEbXFw
[9] http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/08/12/world/international-uk-palestinians-israel-shot.html
[10] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1107331.html
[11] http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=17743
[12] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3761296,00.html
[13] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1107223.html
[14] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3761369,00.html
[15] http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/13/2655353.htm
[16] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418590093&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[17] http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090813/FOREIGN/708129882/1002
[18] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418590065&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[19] http://www.daralhayat.com/portalarticlendah/46766
[20] http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090813/OPINION/708129922/1033
[21] http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=19154
[22] http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=19153
[23] http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=125424&d=13&m=8&y=2009
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