Gaza, Goldstone and Gallstones

There is no doubt that the Goldstone Commission Report will have political ramifications for Israel, but very little legal effect.

From a legal perspective Israel is not subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, nor do the provisions of the Geneva Convention apply to Gaza since it is not part of the territory of any state signatory - called a "High Contracting Party" - to the Convention.

Under international law, Gaza is still a "no-man's land" where sovereignty is yet to be decided.

It should be remembered that officially, Israel only evacuated Gaza in 2005. It has not ceded any claim to Gaza or parts of Gaza under the rights conferred on the Jewish people pursuant to the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in any part of that territory.

Israel had the inherent right of self defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter if an armed attack was made on it. It absorbed 7000 rocket and mortar attacks after evacuating Gaza before undertaking the invasion of Gaza last December. Such indiscriminate attacks on civilian population centers would not have been endured for such a lengthy period by any other member of the United Nations.

There may well be some rotten eggs in Israel's basket. War is a great dehumaniser and soldiers can act in inhuman ways under the stress of war - they can be trigger-happy, especially when the enemy they're confronting does not wear uniforms and hides among the civilian population. Israel has and is still continuing its ongoing investigations into the invasion of Gaza and will no doubt bring to justice those whose conduct is found to be unacceptable. The Goldstone Commission's dismissal of these investigations as "pusillanimous" is backed by not a scintilla of evidence.

However, as part of an ongoing campaign by the 56 members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to delegitimize Israel, the Report will be extensively used and quoted to beat Israel over the head in a multitude of UN forums and in the General Assembly.

The Report will be used to support new calls for:

(i) Economic and political boycotts of Israel

(ii) Disinvestment in Israel

(iii) Outlawing Israel as a pariah state in the international community

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Dear Senator George Mitchell

The author is head of the Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine and associate director at Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem and head of World Genocide Situation Room at GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW (GPN). The opinions are those of the author alone and do not represent those he is affiliated with.  

Dear Senator Mitchell

I am a medical researcher whose background includes more than 30 years of work in epidemiology and environmental toxicology and injury prevention with Palestinians, Jordanians, and Egyptians and the design and supervision of joint projects in asthma in Gazan refugee camps. I have worked with the US CDC and USAID MERC on these projects. Currently, I am doing work to apply the tools of prediction and prevention to genocide and genocidal terror, with an emphasis on the role of state-sponsored hate language and incitement. Sadly, the wars and terror in the region have compelled me to move from the epidemiology of peacetime exposures to those having to do with genocide, genocidal terror, violence, war and mass atrocities.

Like many Israelis who supported the Oslo Accords, I have been mugged by reality. We have discovered that "land for peace" has morphed into "territory for terror." Like many who have thought long and hard about the troubles in our region, I have concluded that we have to stop talking about "the peace process" - a nebulous term, and use something more binding: respect for life, live and let live and human dignity for all. The "peace process" has resulted in thousands of Israeli and Palestinian deaths.

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An open letter to Alan Dershowitz

Dear Alan,

We begin by affirming our high esteem for you, both as a legal scholar and a powerful voice against anti-Semitism. We also appreciate that as a parent of a Hampshire College alumnus, you are part of a community that we hold dear. Nonetheless, we are saddened and frustrated by your recent column in the Jerusalem Post and elsewhere and by your many comments in the press, which present information about the actions of the Hampshire College Board of Trustees that is simply not true. Hampshire College did not divest from Israel or take the action it did because of Israel's relationship with the Palestinians or its presence on the West Bank.

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PR and Gaza - not a pretty picture

Israel is stuck in a PR morass. All of the logical arguments that its spokesmen have been hammering away at leave the foreign press cold.

The Economist's former Israel correspondent, Gideon Lichfield, wrote last week of Israel's PR: "[It] is so sophisticated that there is still no adequate word for it in English." The Palestinians, on the other hand, are so inept, he adds, that they "barely know what a spokesman is."

Hyperbole aside, Lichfield is on target when he explains why Israel's media blitz for Operation Cast Lead has fallen flat on its face: "Partly, of course, it's because the numbers are against it...On television, what looks bad looks bad."

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Bush and the Diplomacy of Inadvertence

A recent Jerusalem Post article quoting documents obtained by Vanity Fair magazine 'Bush approved plot to oust Hamas', gives an insider look into decision-making in the Bush White House. While the article deals only with the Palestinian elections and the resulting Hamas victory, it throws light on how this administration arrives at other decisions such as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, its encouragement of an Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

But let's start with the article's focus, the Palestinian elections and their aftermath. In pursuit of what can only be called his Dogma of Democracy, Bush not only disregarded input from Abbas and Olmert, both of whom clearly foresaw the Hamas victory and warned the president, but he also chose to ignore the advice of Cheney's chief Middle East adviser David Wurmser who, according to the article, "resigned a month after the Hamas takeover." Even Muhammad Dahlan, Abbas' security chief and designee by Bush to carry out the military coup against Hamas is quoted in the article as saying, "Everyone was against the elections, everyone (that is) except Bush. He (Bush) decided, 'I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.'"

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