Lebanon has a cabinet!

Well, well, Lebanon has a cabinet. Akhiran! After almost five months of wrangling and talking and foot-dragging. It seems that the task of Hariri jr, the prime minister became somewhat easier after king Abdullah visted Damascus a while ago and Syria and Saudi-Arabia became closer.
It's a national cabinet, consisting of 30 ministers according to the formula: 15-10-5, which means that 15 of them belong to the 14 March coalition of Saad Hariri, 10 to the oppositional  8 March coalition, and 5 have been nominated by president Sleiman.
Two things were  worth to be mentioned: The christian Kataeb party of Amin Gemayel (14 March) was not happy with the fact that it got only one ministry (Social Affairs) and that it wasn't Education. It threatened to withdraw from the coalition but didn't do it after all (at least not yet).
Th other thing was that among the ten ministers of the 8 March coalition there are two ministers belonging to Hezbollah, while also one of the ministers appointed by president Sleiman is close to Hezbollah. This is important. There is a clause that one third plus one of the ministers is able to block unwelcome proposals. Ten opposition ministers plus one appointed one might, for instance, block a proposal to view Hizbollah differently than as a force that embodies the resistance in the South against Israel and as such has the right to carry arms.
Apart from these facts it's also worth mentioning that Hariri's 14 March coalition in fact no longer constitutes a majority,  after the Druze PSP defected to the other side some three months ago. This is not a factor that promises stability. But for a learned opinion about the rest it is better to pay a visit to the site of Qifa Nabki.  He also has a list of names.

Anti-Jewish slogans on captured Saudi army trucks

It took me some time to figure out what this was. It apparently is a Saudi army vehicle that has been captured by the Northern Yemenite Houthi -rebels (why does everybody spell their name as Houti, it is more logical to write Hawthi). On the side they have attached a Houthi sign. It reads:
      God is great,
      death to America,
      death to Israel,
      curse the Jews,
      Islam is the victor.
I don't know why they are anti-Jewish. Sa'ada, the main city the rebels stem from, used to have quite a number of Jewish inhabitants (artisans and antique dealers, mostly). I visited some of them and their leaders in 1994 and wrote about the fact that they were secretly evacuated by the Americans and the Mossad. At the time I regretted that, because it meant the loss of the last remnants of a very special culture.
It appears in the meantime that the Saudi's are still fighting the Houthi's.

Netanyahu meets Obma: no big deal

"The President and Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed a number of issues in the U.S.-Israel bilateral relationship," the bland White House read-out of the meeting says. "The President reaffirmed our strong commitment to Israel’s security, and discussed security cooperation on a range of issues. The President and Prime Minister also discussed Iran and how to move forward on Middle East peace."
That was all the communiqué mentioned after Netanyahu finally met with president Obama on Monday night, Laura Rozen tells us. No big deal, it seems. It wasn't, though Laura Rozen adds something.The reason why it took several days before the White House agreed to a meeting, she writes, was that the White House wanted something in return. And that something was, as the Wall Street unveiled, a committment on Netanyahu's part that he would express stronger support for negotiations on a Palestinian state in his speech for the (big) general assemblee of United Jewish Communities on Tuesday. Which he did, he appealed to Mahmoud Abbas to come sit an negotiate. Again: big deal. Or?     

Saudi's still fighting with Yemeni Houthi rebels

Saudi Forces are still fighting with Yemeni Houthi rebels in the Jizan border area between the two countries. On Saturday prince Khaled bin Sultan bin Abdel-Aziz, the Saudi assistant minister of Defense and Aviation, who is in the Jizan area, had said that everything was under control. On Monday however, he said that operations continued and that Saudi forces were arresting all people who were connected to the Houthi-rebels in the area. Also he said that an area as wide as 10 km from the border was still being attacked with artillerie and from the air. The whole area ( including several villages)  had been evacuated in the past days, so that anybody who would be found  inside was considered to be an infiltrator with whom would be dealt harsly, he said. (On the pictures, above: arrested Houthi rebels are taken away - don't they look like kids? Down: evacuated inhabitants from the area temporarily live in tents).
 According to medical and official Saudi sources seven Saudi's have been killed in the fighting, among them four women who died when a house was hit by a rocket. Some 78 people were wounded. As for the rebels the number give  varied wildly. Some sources mentioned that 40 had been killed, while scores would have been arrested.

Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, the revel leader contacted the newspaper the Yemen Observer on Thursday by email and told that the Houthi's occupied the Jebel Dukhan area inside Saudi territory also last October, but left after a deal with the Saudi authorities that the Yemeni army would not be allowed to enter that position. 'However, earlier this week the Yemeni army attacked us from there,' he wrote. According to Al-Houthi the rebels after that took control of the area. On Tuesday they clashed with a Saudi bordr patrol during which one Houthi and one Saudi border guard were killed and 11 border guards were wounded. That was the beginning of the present round of fighting.
On Sunday the rebels also reported that they shot down an airplane of the Ye,meni airforce. The plane, a Sukhoi-bomber, was the third one in several weeks. According to the government in Sana'a, however, it went down due to a mechanical malfunction. In Sa'ada, the antique northern city from were the Houti's stem, the government destroyed with artillerie and tank fire a number of houses in which a number of rebels had taken shelter.

The Houthi-rebellion started in 2004 with an police-action to arrest the former parlementarian Hussein al-Houthi. The action soon escalated into a full scale rebellion of the northern region, which is predominatly Zaidi (sevener shiíte), as opposed to the Sunni government in Sana'a. This was the region from where before the 1962 coup the Yemeni rulers came, but nowadays the North feels that it is neglected and under-represented. Early in the fighting in 2004 Hussein al-Houthi was killed but his brother Abdel-Malik took over. For five years the war went off and on, with large scale destruction - sometimes whole villages have been leveled - and huge numbers of displaced persons (human rights organisations estimate their number on 150.000 so far). Since August of this year the fighting entered a new intense fase, after the government started a campaign called scorched earth.    

Question Kirkuk resolved, Iraq has an election law at last

Kirkuk, the citadel and surroundings

The Iraqi parliament has finally adopted an election law which takes away the last obstacles for elections that had been scheduled in januari 2010. The law is a victory for the Kurdish Alliance, because it stipulates that for the elections the 2009 census will be used. That means that a Kurdisch victory is as good as certain and Kirkuk could after the elections be claimed to be part of Kurdistan, since there has been a large influx of Kurds in recent years. Arabs and Tukmens who don't want te become part of Kurdistan, wanted to use the 2004 census in which Arabs constituted a clear majority in the area..
The law was adopted on Sunday evening, with 141 of the 275 members voting in favour. The vote ended weeks of impasse during which parliament was not able to come to an agreement.
Kirkuk, which is the centre of the oil industry in Kurdistan (which in turn is one of the main oil centres in Iraq) was long a disputed area. Under Saddam the city was heavily Arabized and the Kurds were driven out. The Kurds maintain that in recent years most of the Kurds that had been chased away, returned, but this is being disputed. Kirkuk had always been a mixed city with a strong Turkmen and Arab presence and much of the recent Kurdish immigration may have been politically motivated and engineered by the government of the three Kurdish provinces that together constitute Iraqi Kurdistan. For that reason the new law contains a clause that the census lists will be carefully srcutinized and if more than 5% irregularities will be found, any  55 members of parliament may ask for a recount of the vote.
Also the new law stipulated that the voting lists in the wholeof Iraq will be open, which means that the lists will contain the name of each candidate. But candidates will be tied to a party and will not appear as idividuals.
Iraqi president Al-Maliki praised the outcome of the votre. The American president Obama also hailed it and called it 'an ímportant milestone'. Washington's plans for a troop withdrawal are tied to the new elections and so the fact that no further delays have to be feared is welcome news in the White House. In Baghdad, however, there was some uncertainty as to whether 23 January is still feasable as date for the elections after all the delays. The date of 16 April was mentioned als an alternative.  
 

The Wall Must Fall

Picture Ma'an News

Coinciding wit the festivities around the fall of the Berlin Wall, 20 years ago, Palestinians on Monday had their own celebration. Ma'an News reported that some 100 people broke through the Qalandia checkpoint near Ramallah and tore down a slab of the wall that Israel euphemistically uses to call the 'Separation Barrier'. The demonstrators carried Palestinian flags and set fire to a pile of car tires at the other side of the Wall. In order to bring down the concrete slab they used a truck. Israeli military responded by firing at the crowd but there were no reports of casualties.
The demonstrators were right of course. The Berlin Wall was wrong, and this one is no less wrong. Bravo: also this wall must fall.

Tunisian blogger arrested - and freed again

For a few days there was an alarm: Tunisian Fatma Riahi, alias Fatma Arabicca was arrested on 4 November. She is supposedly the woman behind the blog DebaTunisie and supposedly responsible for the terrific cartoons on this blog (in French).
Today Sunday 8 November however the news in the Tunisian blogsophere where Fathma is very popular, was that she has been released. Her lawyer said that as yet there have been brought  no charges against her. One has to be careful, though. Press freedom and freedoms in general aren't really distributd that generously in Ben Ali's Tunisia

In the meantime. take a look  at one of the cartoons of which Fatma supposedly is the author. There are many more of those on the DebaTunisie blog that van be found here.

Tunisia Watch reports that also journalistst have been harrassed. Independent journalist Slim Boukhdir was stopped in the steet on 21 Octover by five men and forced into a car. They drove him to an empty spot, beat him up, took his cell phone, clothes, identity papers, home keys and money and threw him unto the street. A collegue of his, Taoufik ben Brik, was summoned to a police station in connection with a complaint that he would have assaulted a woman in the street. He was arrested and will appear before a judge on 19 November. Both men had in the past written stories critical of  president Ben Ali 

´Israel not a tolerant society´

Al Aqsa mosque: not recognized as a holy site

Israel discriminates against minority groups in the country including Muslims, Jehova's Witnesses, Reform Jews, Christians, women and Bedouin. That is stated in a report by the American State Department´s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

The report says that the 1967 law on the protection of holy places refers to all religious groups in Israel, including in Jerusalem, but "the government implements regulations only for Jewish sites. Non-Jewish holy sites do not enjoy legal protection under it because the government does not recognize them as official holy sites."


At the end of 2008, for example, all of the 137 officially recognized holy sites were Jewish. Moreover, Israel issued regulations for the identification, preservation and guarding of Jewish sites only. Many Christian and Muslim sites are said to be neglected, inaccessible or at risk of exploitation by real estate entrepreneurs and local authorities.The report makes it clear that practices that have become routine in Israel are considered unacceptable in enlightened countries and should be corrected.

General Assembly adopts Goldstone report

The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday endorsed the Goldstone report about the Israel attack on Gaza report on the Gaza war. The 192-member body adopted a resolution to this effect by a vote of 114-18, with some countries absent or abstaining. The resolution calls on the Security Council to act if either side fails to launch credible investigations within three months.

 The resolution endorses the report by the expert panel chaired by South African Judge Richard Goldstone which concluded both Israel and Palestinian militants committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. The resolution calls on Israël to start within three months a credible investigation of allegations that war crimes were committed. Also the 'Palestnian side' is asked to do so. If they fail to do so, the matter will be brought before the UN Security Council. It is exspected however that in that case the US will use its veto. 

 Apart from Israel and the United States, a number of European countries including Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic voted against the resolution. Also the Netherlands voted against, in yet another  clear demonstration that the stated policy of its foreign ministers, Maxim Verhagen, that he puts a strong emphasis on human rights issues, is nothing but empty words. But the European Union was split, with others including Britain and France abstaining. Most developing countries voted in favor.

Israel's Deputy Ambassador Daniel Carmon told the assembly the resolution "endorses and legitimizes a deeply flawed, one-sided and prejudiced report of the discredited Human Rights Council and its politicized work that bends both fact and law." U.S. Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the resolution was flawed in several respects, including its failure to name the Hamas militant movement that rules Gaza. He also said a demand for international supervision of any Israeli and Palestinian investigations was "unhelpful."

Abbas will not run for president

And here is, after Saeb Erakat's small bombshell that the PA may have to abandon the two state solution because of the expansion of the settlements, another - bigger - bombshell. Mahmoud Abbas on thursday announced in a televised speech that he is not going to take part in the January 2010 elections for which he himself recently called.
  
"I informed the central Fatah committee that I am not interested in presenting my candidacy for the upcoming presidency, and this decision is not meant for tactical purposes or manipulation," he said. 

So anothter moment of truth. The question is now who is going to replace Abbas. Fayyad, the prime minister? He is not a member of Fatah, so it's unlikely. But then it's unlikely that there will be elections anyhow. Hamas is not going to take part and not going to allow them being hold in the Gaza Strip. And that would make them rather useless. It was a strange decision after all to call fo elections before the Egyptian brokered reconciliation was a fact. It's still a question mark who wrecked the process and why, as the agreement was in fact finalized and okayed by both, before Hamas asked for a dealy of days in order to get some clarifications and Abbas pushed this election date through, in spite of the fact that the agreement stipoulated elections in June or July.
Anyhow, for the moment it seems that the Palestinians aren't 'a partner for peace' anymore and this  time for real. Not for what is called  'the peace process' that is.

Moment of truth for Mahmoud Abbas and the PA?

  Saeb Erakat, Palestinian chief negotiator, wednesday at a press conference in Ramallah: 


 Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements and the United States does not stop it. It may be  time for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas  to "tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option," Erekat told a news conference.  (...) Erekat said (US Secretary of State) Clinton -- who praised as unprecedented Netanyahu's offer to temporarily limit construction in West Bank settlements to 3,000 additional housing units -- was only opening the door to more settlements in the next two years. The alternative left for Palestinians is to "refocus their attention on the one-state solution where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live as equals," Erekat said. "It is very serious. This is the moment of truth for us."

Is this a threat? Or is it genuine? In any case this language is unheard of from the mouth of the Palestinian Authority that has been  so cooperative with the US and Israel in the past. 

House of Representatives should be ashamed of itself

As exspected the American House of Representatives has with 344 - 36 adopted a non-binding resolution in which it ask the administration to ignore the Goldstone report about the December January attack on Gaza.


 According to Haaretz:

The report "paints a distorted picture," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. It "epitomizes the practice of singling Israel out from all other nations for condemnation."
The Ros-Lehtinen/Berman resolution defines the report as "biased and unworthy of further consideration," U.S. Representative Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, said recently at the Jerusalem Conference.
Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey, Chairwoman of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, warned lawmakers that further consideration of the Goldstone report could seriously harm Middle East peace negotiations.


From the comments, and the resolution itself, it was clear that the House respresentatives had not read the Goldstone Report. Nevertheless, it seems that 36 voting against (and 22 voting 'present' which is a mild form of critique) is a step in the right direction. These members gave AIPAC a cold shoulder.


To show how wrong the House was in throwing Goldstone away (and with him B'tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and the whole Human Rights community of this world), hereby the letter that Goldstone wrote more than a week ago, to the members that inititated the resolution:

The Honorable Howard Berman
Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Ranking Member, House Committee on Foreign Affairs

October 29, 2009

Dear Chairman Berman and Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen,

It has come to my attention that a resolution has been introduced in the United States House of Representatives regarding the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which I led earlier this year.

I fully respect the right of the US Congress to examine and judge my mission and the resulting report, as well as to make its recommendations to the US Executive branch of government. However, I have strong reservations about the text of the resolution in question – text that includes serious factual inaccuracies and instances where information and statements are taken grossly out of context.

I undertook this fact-finding mission in good faith, just as I undertook my responsibilities vis à vis the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, the International War Crimes Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Panel of the Commission of Enquiry into the Activities of Nazism in Argentina, the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, and the Volker Committee investigation into the UN’s Iraq oil-for-food program in 2004/5.

I hope that you, in similar good faith, will take the time to consider my comments about the resolution and, as a result of that consideration, make the necessary corrections.

Whereas clause #1: “Whereas, on January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed Resolution A/HRC/S-9/L.1, which authorized a `fact-finding mission’ regarding Israel’s conduct of Operation Cast Lead against violent militants in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009;”

This whereas clause ignores the fact that I and others refused this original mandate, precisely
because it only called for an investigation into violations committed by Israel. The mandate given to and accepted by me and under which we worked and reported reads as follows:

“. . .to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after”.

Whereas clause #2: “Whereas the resolution pre-judged the outcome of its investigation, by one-sidedly mandating the `fact-finding mission’ to `investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by . . . Israel, against the Palestinian people . . . particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression’”

This whereas clause ignores the fact that the expanded mandate that I demanded and received clearly included rocket and mortar attacks on Israel and as the report makes clear was so interpreted and implemented. It was the report carried out under this broadened mandate – not the original, rejected mandate – that was adopted by the Human Rights Council and that included the serious findings made against Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups.

Whereas clause #3: “Whereas the mandate of the `fact-finding mission’ makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel’s defensive measures;”

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. As noted above, the expanded mandate clearly included the rocket and mortar attacks. Moreover, Chapter XXIV of the Report considers in detail the relentless rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel and the terror they caused to the people living within their range. The resulting finding made in the report is that these attacks constituted serious war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

Whereas clause #4: “Whereas the `fact-finding mission’ included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel’s actions `war crimes’;”

This whereas clause is misleading. It overlooks, or neglects to mention, that the member concerned, Professor Christine Chinkin of the London School of Economics, in the same letter, together with other leading international lawyers, also condemned as war crimes the Hamas rockets fired into Israel.

Whereas clause #5: “Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate gave serious concern to many United Nations Human Rights Council Member States which refused to support it, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;”

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. The mandate that was given to the Mission was certainly not opposed by all or even a majority of the States to which reference is made. I am happy to provide further details if necessary.

Whereas clause #6: “Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate troubled many distinguished individuals who refused invitations to head the mission;”

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. The initial mandate that was rejected by others who were invited to head the mission was the same one that I rejected. The mandate I accepted was expanded by the President of the Human Rights Council as a result of conditions I made.

Whereas clause #8: “Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead;”

This whereas clause is factually incorrect. The findings included in the report are neither “sweeping” nor “unsubstantiated” and in effect reflect 188 individual interviews, review of more than 300 reports, 30 videos and 1200 photographs. Additionally, the body of the report contains a plethora of references to the information upon which the Commission relied for our findings.

Whereas clause #9: “Whereas the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself, admit that `we did not deal with the issues . . . regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers `in the fog of war.’;”

This whereas clause is misleading. The words quoted relate to the decision we made that it would have been unfair to investigate and make finding on situations where decisions had been made by Israeli soldiers “in the fog of battle”. This was a decision made in favor of, and not against, the interests of Israel.

Whereas clause #10: “Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward, Richard Goldstone, the head of the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’, is quoted as saying, with respect to the mission’s evidence-collection methods, `If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.’”

The remark as quoted is both inaccurate and taken completely out of context. What I had explained to The Forward was that the Report itself would not constitute evidence admissible in court of law. It is my view, as jurist, that investigators would have to investigate which allegations they considered relevant. That, too, was why we recommended domestic investigations into the allegations.

Whereas clause #11: “Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to self- defense, and never noted the fact that Israel had the right to defend its citizens from the repeated violent attacks committed against civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations operating from Gaza;”

It is factually incorrect to state that the Report denied Israel the right of self-defense. The report examined how that right was implemented by the standards of international law. What is commonly called ius ad bellum, the right to use military force was not considered to fall within our mandate. Israel’s right to use military force was not questioned.

Whereas clause #12: “Whereas the report largely ignored the culpability of the Government of Iran and the Government of Syria, both of whom sponsor Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations;”

This whereas clause is misleading. Nowhere that I know of has it ever been suggested that the Mission should have investigated the provenance of the rockets. Such an investigation was never on the agenda, and in any event, we would not have had the facilities or capability of investigating these allegations. If the Government of Israel has requested us to investigate that issue I have no doubt that we have done our best to do so.

Whereas clause #14: “Whereas, notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim;”

This is a sweeping and unfair characterization of the Report. I hope that the Report will be read by those tasked with considering the resolution. I note that the House resolution fails to mention that notwithstanding my repeated personal pleas to the Government of Israel, Israel refused all cooperation with the Mission. Among other things, I requested the views of Israel with regard to the implementation of the mandate and details of any issues that the Government of Israel might wish us to investigate.

This refusal meant that Israel did not offer any information or evidence it may have collected regarding actions by Hamas or other Palestinian groups in Gaza. Any omission of such information and evidence in the report is regrettable, but is the result of Israel’s decision not to cooperate with the Fact-Finding mission, not a decision by the mission to downplay or cast doubt on such information and evidence.

Whereas clause #15: “Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did not consider the admission of a Hamas official that Hamas often `created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against [the Israeli military]’ specifically to `constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack.’;”

This whereas clause is misleading, since the quotation is taken out of context. The quotation is part of a section of the report dealing with the very narrow allegation that Hamas compelled civilians, against their will, to act as human shields. The statement by the Hamas official is repugnant and demonstrates an apparent disregard for the safety of civilians, but it is not evidence that Hamas forced civilians to remain in their homes in order to act as human shields. Indeed, while the Government of Israel has alleged publicly that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields, it has not identified any cases where it claims that civilians were doing so under threat of force by Hamas or any other party.

Whereas clause #16: “Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission’s report by selecting and prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others, as the report acknowledges when it notes that `those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups . . . from a fear of reprisals’;”

The allegation that Hamas was able to shape the findings of my report or that it pre-screened the witnesses is devoid of truth. I challenge anyone to produce evidence in support of it.

Sincerely,

Justice Richard J. Goldstone