By:Air
STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT- The UN is powerless or there is a conspiracy with Israel The United Nations must be disbanded if it does not function to deal with world conflicts.
The report said Israel deliberately attacked civilians, failed to take precautions to minimise loss of civilian life and cited strong evidence that Israeli forces committed “grave breaches” of the Geneva Convention.
judge Goldstone, a former South African judge, said: “The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly in some respects crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defence Force.”
The investigators recommended that the UN Security Council should call on Israel and the Palestinian authorities to launch their own credible investigations into the conflict within three months.
If either side failed to do that, the council should refer the matter to the International Criminal Court prosecutor in The Hague within six months, the report said.
Palestinian violations
The report “concludes there is also evidence that Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity,” by firing rockets into southern Israel.
“The rocket and mortar attacks have caused terror in the affected communities of southern Israel, causing loss of life and physical and mental injury to civilians, as well as damage to buildings and property,” it said.
But only four paragraphs of a seven-page summary of the report were devoted to Palestinian violations, and Goldstone’s team was more sharply critical of Israel.
The report said there were “numerous instances of deliberate attacks on civilians” and civilian objects in Gaza.
The firing of white phosphorous shells and the use of high explosive artillery shells were listed as “violations of humanitarian law”.
Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros, reporting from Gaza, said: “The theme that runs through this new UN report is the idea of excessive force being used [by Israel] and deliberate targeting of civilians.
“There was nothing to warn civilians that there were incoming rockets.
“The Israelis say they provided leaflets and made thousands of calls to Gazan citizens, but after they called them and dropped leaflets, they didn’t give them any option of where to go.
“Even the United Nations shelter was hit.”
Our correspondent said Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza were studying what Goldstone had said and would comment on it in due course.
Israeli response
Israel immediately dismissed the report as one-sided, with Mark Regev, a government spokesman, describing the report as “inaccurate and flawed”.
“Both the mandate of the mission and the resolution establishing it prejudged the outcome,” the foreign ministry said.
Israel said its military had opened more than 100 inquiries into allegations of alleged wrongdoing by its forces, but had closed most of them because the accusations were found to be baseless.
Israel had refused to co-operate with the UN investigation, saying the UN Human Rights Council that ordered it was biased against Israel, something Goldstone and the three other members of the team deny.
Goldstone, the former chief prosecutor of the international courts for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, headed the fact-finding mission which conducted dozens of interviews and investigations.
About 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during the war and about 5,500
people were wounded, the overwhelming majority of them in Gaza.
This is the result of the 2009 investigation until now, the United Nations has not taken any legal action
We attach an international amnesty statement so that readers can draw conclusions:
The Israeli government is committing the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians and must be held accountable, Amnesty International said today in a new report. The research details how the Israeli government enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. Crucially, this report finds that an apartheid system extends not only to Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), but also throughout Israel and to displaced refugees in other countries.
The comprehensive report, Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity, documents human rights violations – including seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians – that together constitute a system of apartheid under international law.
Palestinians experience different levels of oppression depending on their status and where they live. Segregation, dispossession, and exclusion of Palestinians across all territories form part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population.
“Apartheid touches on the most intimate moments of a Palestinian’s life. It separates families and destroys homes. For decades, Palestinians, from Gaza to Hebron, from East Jerusalem to the Negev/Naqab, have been stripped of their rights,” said Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. “The Israeli government’s system of apartheid violated international law, and serious human rights violations committed to maintain the system constitute crimes against humanity. This system does not exist in a vacuum – foreign governments, including that of the United States, facilitate apartheid by supplying the Israeli government with arms and failing to hold Israeli authorities accountable for their systemic human rights violations.”
Among the key findings of the report, Amnesty International’s research shows that dispossession and displacement of Palestinians is a crucial pillar of the Israeli government’s apartheid system. Notably, the report documents how within Israel, Palestinians are effectively blocked from leasing 80% of Israel’s state land as a result of land seizures and a web of racist laws on land allocation, planning, and zoning. Israeli authorities have overall demolished hundreds of thousands of Palestinian homes and other properties across all areas under the government’s authority and effective control. Since May 2021, the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem has seen frequent protests as families struggle to keep their homes under the threat of a settler lawsuit.
“We want to be very clear – it is unacceptable and inappropriate for this report to be used as justification for any recrimination against the Jewish people,” added O’Brien. “We condemn antisemitism in the strongest possible terms. Our focus is squarely on the actions of Israel’s government and the system of oppression and domination imposed on the Palestinian people through Israeli laws, policies, and practices.”
The organization is calling for an end to the brutal practice of home demolitions and forced evictions as a first step. The Israeli government must grant equal rights to all Palestinians in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in line with its obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law. It must recognize the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes where they or their families once lived and provide victims of human rights violations and crimes against humanity with full reparations.
“The Biden administration must call on the government of Israel to end its systemic repression and grossly discriminatory policies,” said Alicia Koutsoulieris, Amnesty International USA Member and Country Specialist for Israel/OPT/State of Palestine. “We also ask that the U.S. State Department, Department of Defense, and Government Accountability Offices investigate and issue a public report on the credible evidence of Israeli forces’ use of U.S.-made weapons, security aid, and Israeli arms bought with U.S. funds to commit grave human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”
Methodology
A system of apartheid is an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination by one racial group over another. It is a violation of public international law and a grave violation of internationally protected human rights. Amnesty International’s extensive research and legal analysis, carried out in consultation with external experts, demonstrates that the Israeli government enforces such a system against Palestinians through laws, policies, and practices which subject them to prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment.
Under international law, specific unlawful acts which are committed within a system of oppression and domination, with the intention of maintaining it, constitute the crime against humanity of apartheid. These acts are set out in the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and include unlawful killing and serious injury, torture, forcible transfer, persecution, and the denial of basic rights and freedoms.
Amnesty International’s findings build on a growing body of work by Palestinian, Israeli, and international NGOs, who have increasingly applied the apartheid framework to their analysis of the situation in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Are you waiting for countries to attack Israel?Islamic Forces Ready to Attack Israel .
United Nations world institutions and international amnesty are very useless and unable to do anything and what needs to be disbanded.
*)The author is an international conflict analyst.
