Middle East Madness -- Signs of the Times News

Middle East Madness

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Imran Garda
Al Jazeera
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:09 EST

The Goldstone report on last winter's Gaza war has become something of a fixture in the media since its publication in September.

But for South Africans, it is another investigation carried out by the distinguished judge Richard Goldstone - a commission that exposed the brutality of Apartheid security forces in the early 1990s - that looms large in their minds.

That investigation, which came as South Africa moved towards democracy, gave Goldstone hero status in the country.

Comment: Israel was the only supporter of South Africa during its apartheid days. Harldy a character reference. For a more sobering look at the relationship between two psychopathic regimes, see: Ethnic Specific Weapons

It is to present-day South Africa's credit that they are moving ahead with prosecuting those who were party to war crimes in Gaza, a task the West is apparently too morally bankrupt to accomplish.

Rami Almeghari
The Electronic Intifada
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:17 EST

© Rami Almeghari
Workers in Gaza remove rubble from last winter's attacks. With no construction materials being allowed into the besieged territory, much of Gaza remains devasted

Azzam Salim used to be one of the leading construction contractors in the central Gaza Strip. Today, however, he spends most of his days idly chatting with other unemployed friends near a bank that he helped build several years ago.

"As a human first and foremost, I need to live normally like before. This situation is unprecedented -- before the siege was enforced here, I didn't have time to sit. But now things have changed, now we are professional talkers."

What prevents Salim from returning to work is the lack of raw building materials in the Gaza Strip, due to Israel's crippling Israeli blockade of the territory since June 2007. In March 2009, international donors including the US, Europe and Saudi Arabia met in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh pledging at least $4 billion to reconstruct Gaza following last winter's 22-day Israeli invasion of the territory. However, the promised funds have yet to reach Gaza as the international community continues to boycott the governing Hamas party.

Al Jazeera
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:09 EST

The United Nations General Assembly is debating a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.

The Goldstone report, which accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, has already been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, which sponsored the fact-finding commission.

The draft under debate at the UN calls on both Israel and the Palestinians to investigate accusations of human-rights violations during the 22-day conflict in December and January. The resolution, if adopted, would call upon Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, to take the report to the UN Security Council.

Aron Heller
Associated Press
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:49 EST

Open crates from a cargo ship seized Wednesday by Israel revealed dark green missiles inside. Containers from the vessel bore writing in English that said "I.R. Iranian Shipping Lines Group."

Israel alleged that the shipment of hundreds of tons of rockets, missiles, mortars, grenades and anti-tank weapons - the largest it ever seized - was headed for Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Israel stopped the ship, named the Francop, off the coast of Cyprus and towed it to the port of Ashdod. It carried orange, red, white and blue containers piled three deep on its deck. Rows of crates from the vessel were displayed on the dock, and inside were rockets, hand grenades, mortars and ammunition. At least 3,000 missiles were on board, the Israeli military said.

Report: Palestinians denied water

BBC News
Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:23 EDT

Israel is denying Palestinians access to even the basic minimum of clean, safe water, Amnesty International says.

In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

It says that in Gaza, Israel's blockade has pushed the already ailing water and sewage system to "crisis point".

Israel says the report is flawed and the Palestinians get more water than was agreed under the 1990s peace deal.

Jeffrey Heller
Reuters
Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:04 EST

© Reuters/Thaer Ganaim/PPO/Handout
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) stands with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during their meeting in Abu Dhabi October 31, 2009, in this picture released by the Palestinian Press Office (PPO)

Pointing an accusing finger at the United States, the Palestinians on Sunday said Washington's backing for Israeli refusal to halt Jewish settlement expansion had killed any hope of reviving peace negotiations soon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, buoyed by new-found support from the Obama administration, urged the Palestinians to "get a grip" and drop their settlement freeze precondition for restarting talks suspended since December.

On a one-day Middle East visit on Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsed Israel's view that settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank should not be a bar to resuming negotiations -- contradicting the Palestinian position.

Video: Iraq oil wealth eludes poor

Owen Fay
Al Jazeera / YouTube
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:00 EST

The Iraqi government has been busy signing a series of billion-dollar deals with major international oil companies who are attempting to gain access to Iraq's vast oil wells. But in poverty-stricken areas of the oil-rich southern city of Basra, residents say they have not seen any of the wealth generated by the deals.

James Hider
Times Online
Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:36 EST

The Palestinian leadership accused the US of caving in over Israeli settlements after Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, praised Israel for making concessions.

Having failed to force Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, to meet US demands for a total settlement freeze, Mrs Clinton switched tack during a one-day visit to Jerusalem when she called on both sides to resume peace talks.

"What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements . . . is unprecedented," Mrs Clinton said.

She did not give details of the concessions but even under the Oslo peace talks in the 1990s Israel never halted the expansion of settlements. The first serious reversal came in 2005 when Ariel Sharon forced thousands to leave the Gaza Strip.

Comment: This action was hardly a reversal. Read From Occupation to Invasion: The Siege of Gaza, to understand the nefarious rational behind that particular chess move.

Comment: The one thing obvious throughout the decades, is every Israeli leadership's total lack of support and effort towards a peace agreement with the Palestinians, running parallel with a pathological hunger for destruction, war and death.

Unless the Israelis face and deal with the fact that they have been ponerized, and make a collective choice to be represented by conscience-bound, human-loving individuals, and until the global community sees through the mask of sanity of the Israeli ruling elite, peace will never be allowed to settle in the Middle East, and by proxy, the rest of the world.

Stop the Wall
Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:46 EDT

With the olive harvest beginning this month, farmers and their families across the West Bank will spend their days picking, cleaning and sorting olives. They will also face settler attacks and restricted access to their groves, which are often isolated behind the Wall, in settlements or adjacent to military bases and closed zones.

Despite restrictions, several villages in the Bethlehem area were able to successfully pick some of their olives on Saturday. 35 farmers and international supporters harvested olives in al-Ma'sara, but were unable the 3,500 dunums isolated by the Wall and settlements.

The following day, 70 farmers and their supporters undertook another successful harvest in Um Salamuna, near al-Ma'sara, where they managed to cover 200 trees. The land is located near the Afrat settlement, and soldiers stationed in the area questioned farmers about the work and remained in the area to monitor the situation throughout the day.

Ma'an News Agency
Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:32 EDT

Eight-year-old Alexandra Darby cycled through the West Bank with her mother

Eight-year-old Alexandra Darby, the niece of Quartet envoy Tony Blair, toured the West Bank this week on a bicycle, peddling an estimated 200 kilometers from Amman to Jerusalem.

Asked what she will tell her school friends about the Peace Cycle journey, Alex reflected, "I'll tell them that the people here are very nice, not like they say in the newspapers."

The West Bank is not a usual vacation site for most eight-year-olds. But, as mother, journalist and activist Lauren Booth explained, "She's been asking me for the last five years why she can't go to Palestine, and despite the fact that the Israelis can make it bloody trying to get in and out, the greeting here I knew would be so sensational for her that I didn't have a reason not to bring her."

Why doesn't Alex think other kids get to come to Palestine? "Because, of course, the telly, which says Palestinians are not like us, that they are a revolting people, a violent people, a nasty people, it's mad. In fact it's the exact opposite, it's the Israelis."

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