The Palestine thread

[give her dixie]

I see Gods chosen ones are back doing what they do best as they launch airstrikes on Syria, just north of Damascus......

[seafoid]

So the Jewish state boycotts the UN human rights yoke.
Wow. Is that the price of keeping the occupation going? Human rights out the window.
No need anyway with the IDF. 

[Ball DeBeaver]

I see Gods chosen ones are back doing what they do best as they launch airstrikes on Syria, just north of Damascus......

Coming to the aid of the Syrian people?  Preventing Assad from using Russian rockets, possibly filled with chemical weapons against his own people, or anyone else?
Should Israel have asked permission from Hamas before attacking?

Exactly what do you think they should have done?

It's easy to sit back and criticise from your armchair, but slightly more difficult to deal with the reality.

[Dougal Maguire]

I love the irony where a person with the moniker Baldy Beaver spends their time defending a nation run by cnuts

[Ball DeBeaver]

I love the irony where a person with the moniker Baldy Beaver spends their time defending a nation run by cnuts

If one person on this board chose the perfect usermane, it was you.

[muppet]

See below for the classic argument in favour of Israel, except it isn't. It doesn't argue at all. It simply sets out to undermine any criticism using various diversions. Statements such as 'Being Irish means being anti-Israel' are simply put in without serious examination. He refers to schoolchildren a women from Israel met and a teacher who was 'as ignorant regarding the conflict as his young students' but gives no information on how this was ascertained.

The thrust if the argument condemning the Irish begins with this ridiculous statement: "In Ireland, as in most places, you can't approach a fifty-five year old taxi driver in a pub and have a discussion with him about the slaughter of hundreds of Rohingya Muslims by Buddhists in Western Burma."

After meandering through lots of further decoys such "Between 2006 and 2007, the United Nations officially condemned Israel 22 times while ignoring Sudan, a country which was then engaged in genocide in Darfur.' without even addressing the question, why the world, through the UN, would do that. The Sudan genocide, not to belittle it in any way, ran from 2003 to 2010. The UN issued many resolutions on Sudan between 2003 and the present, including this one in 2006 http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8821.doc.htm.   

Having started with the ridiculous Dublin taxi driver statement above he then finished with the equally stupid: "It comes down to this: the day I meet a supporter of Palestine who can discuss in detail various global conflicts and has taken a side in each one giving moral and historical reasons for doing so, I will take their opinions on Israel/Palestine at face value."

He lambasts Irish people for seeing in Palestine their own struggle 'despite the two conflicts being nothing alike' and yet he burdens anyone with an opinion of having to be able to 'discuss in details various global conflicts and has taken a side in each one giving moral and historical reasons for doing so'.

Imagine saying to a Celtic tracksuit and a fleg warrior going at each other in West Belfast that their opinions are irrelevant unless they can 'have a discussion with him about the slaughter of hundreds of Rohingya Muslims by Buddhists in Western Burma'.

http://derekhopper.tumblr.com/post/41707493960/ignorance-ancient-hatreds-and-unwanted-limelight


28TH JAN 2013
Anyone who sympathises with Israel will be used to pro-Palestine activists feigning offence when accused of anti-Semitism. Their predictable response is that criticism of Israel does not equate to anti-Semitism, and in some cases that is true. No country is a utopia and no state is all-benevolent or collectively omniscient. Israel has made mistakes and for those it should be criticised, as it regularly is, by its own citizens, politicians and media. But there is something untoward in the completely disproportionate criticism directed at the Middle East's only democracy.

A few days ago the Jerusalem Post published a depressing article by an Israeli woman who described coming across a group of Irish schoolchildren in Co. Kerry. The children were collecting money for a well-known Catholic charity. The language used by the children was shocking, more reminiscent of medieval Germany or Ukraine in the early twentieth century than Ireland in 2013: 'What do you have against Palestinians? What have they done to you? They [the Palestinians] are only against Jews. Jews are evil'; 'They [the Jews] crucified our Lord'. The teacher was approached by the author but proved to be as ignorant regarding the conflict as his young students. This is unsurprising. Being Irish means being anti-Israel. It is simply the default position.

In Ireland, as in most places, you can't approach a fifty-five year old taxi driver in a pub and have a discussion with him about the slaughter of hundreds of Rohingya Muslims by Buddhists in Western Burma. Similarly, the conversation will be very one-sided when trying to discuss with a twenty-one year old anarchist the subject of Morocco's treatment of the ninety thousand Sahrawi people it has forced to live in a collection of refugee camps in Algeria since 1975, denying them access to their homelands in Western Sahara by a wall 2,700km in length. Because he won't have heard of it. It is probable that the Marxist-Feminist reading club in your university won't be able to tell you a thing about the Armenian Genocide, the M-23 Rebellion in Congo, or the mass slaughter in Syria.

One thing all the above people will be experts on, however, is Israel.

Israel is a small country and by global standards its conflict with the Palestinians is obscure, almost irrelevant. Relatively speaking, very few people actually die; around 6,500 Palestinians in the period 1987 to 2011. By contrast, 40,000 people have died in Syria in the last year. And despite what the propaganda says, malnutrition (unlike in Western Sahara) isn't a problem for Palestinians. According to the World Heath Organisation obesity is. Palestinians are among the top ten fattest peoples on Earth.

There are precious few protests outside Russian embassies even though it was responsible for crushing Grozny, leaving thousands dead and homeless. Turkish diplomats live largely untroubled, peaceful lives despite their country's occupation of North Cyprus and their treatment of the Kurds. Even leaving aside the obvious crimes of the 'axis of evil' states, the world is full of cases that deserve our attention. The Naxalite-Maoist insurgency in India, the Nigerian Sharia conflict, the insurgency in Yemen; all saw more people killed in 2012 than the Israel-Palestine conflict. If it is sympathy for the suffering of others that so inflames passions among pro-Palestine supporters then why are so many of them listless when presented with the death tolls of other conflicts?

Too many Irish people are simply misinformed. They see in Palestine our own struggle for independence, despite the two conflicts being nothing alike. Their arguments are the usual canards: 'the Israelis stole the land from the Palestinians', 'Israel is an apartheid state', and so on. Ignorance of a decades-long conflict in Balochistan is one thing, but confidence bordering on arrogance doesn't usually accompany it. When it comes to the Levant everyone thinks they're right, even if they've never read anything more demanding on the topic than a Noam Chomsky op-ed in the New York Times.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights states that 'requiring of [Israel] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation' is anti-Semitism. Between 2006 and 2007, the United Nations officially condemned Israel 22 times while ignoring Sudan, a country which was then engaged in genocide in Darfur. Sudan is not democratic, of course, but this statistic reveals the United Nations' immoral, rotten core. That people in Ireland continue to cite UN resolutions in arguments against Israel reveals epistemological breakdown on a mass scale.

Irish supporters of Palestine continue in their crusade against tiny, democratic Israel. They nefariously encourage boycotts economic, cultural and academic, (though it will always be Ireland that loses out in such an arrangement given Israel's scientific brilliance and technological prowess). LGBT banners fly beside Hamas flags in Dublin protests against the only country in the region where one can be gay. The godless infidels who make up the Irish left march against the only country in the Middle East where it is safe to be an atheist and an apostate. The scene is so strange, its callowness so disconcerting, it is as if the world has become a utopia except for one pocket of the Middle East where human suffering exists on an unimaginable scale, a world where everyone focuses their energy on freeing the benighted peoples of Palestine (life expectancy: 75 years).

It comes down to this: the day I meet a supporter of Palestine who can discuss in detail various global conflicts and has taken a side in each one giving moral and historical reasons for doing so, I will take their opinions on Israel/Palestine at face value. Until that day I will assume that the shrill scrutiny they subject Israel to represents a primitive obsession with Jews, one that exists subconsciously in the fabric of our civilisation, the vestigial but ever-present remains of over a thousand years' worth of European Jew-hatred. 

[Ball DeBeaver]

Ask 10 random people what they know about Israel/palestine, and 9 of them will trot out the same garbage they heard on the news the night before. They won't be able to give any sort of background to what they had heard, or give you any personal view on it. This board is a prime example of that ignorance.

[seafoid]

Ask 10 random people what they know about Israel/palestine, and 9 of them will trot out the same garbage they heard on the news the night before. They won't be able to give any sort of background to what they had heard, or give you any personal view on it. This board is a prime example of that ignorance.

That is because Israeli PR is finished. The situation was very different in the 70s.

[give her dixie]

Why Palestine Should Take Israel to Court in The Hague

By GEORGE BISHARAT

LAST week, the Palestinian foreign minister, Riad Malki, declared that if Israel persisted in its plans to build settlements in the currently vacant area known as E-1, which lies between Palestinian East Jerusalem and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, "we will be going to the I.C.C.," referring to the International Criminal Court. "We have no choice," he added.

The Palestinians' first attempt to join the I.C.C. was thwarted last April when the court's chief prosecutor at the time, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, declined the request on the grounds that Palestine was not a state. That ambiguity has since diminished with the United Nations' conferral of nonmember state status on Palestine in November. Israel's frantic opposition to the elevation of Palestine's status at the United Nations was motivated precisely by the fear that it would soon lead to I.C.C. jurisdiction over Palestinian claims of war crimes.

Israeli leaders are unnerved for good reason. The I.C.C. could prosecute major international crimes committed on Palestinian soil anytime after the court's founding on July 1, 2002.

Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, the Israel Defense Forces, guided by its military lawyers, have attempted to remake the laws of war by consciously violating them and then creating new legal concepts to provide juridical cover for their misdeeds. For example, in 2002, an Israeli F-16 dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in a densely populated Gaza neighborhood, killing a Hamas military leader, Salah Shehadeh, and 14 others, including his wife and seven children under the age of 15. In 2009, Israeli artillery killed more than 20 members of the Samouni family, who had sought shelter in a structure in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City at the bidding of Israeli soldiers. Last year, Israeli missiles killed two Palestinian cameramen working for Al Aksa television. Each of these acts, and many more, could lead to I.C.C. investigations.

The former head of the Israeli military's international law division, Daniel Reisner, asserted in 2009: "International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."

Colonel Reisner is right that customary international law is formed by the actual practice of states that other states accept as lawful. But targeted assassinations are not widely accepted as legal. Nor are Israel's other attempted legal innovations.

Israel has categorized military clashes with the Palestinians as "armed conflict short of war," instead of the police actions of an occupying state — thus freeing the Israeli military to use F-16 fighter jets and other powerful weaponry against barely defended Palestinian populations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It has designated individuals who fail to leave a targeted area after a warning as "voluntary human shields" who are therefore subject to lawful attack, despite the fact that warnings may not be effective and escape routes not clear to the victims.

And it has treated civilian employees of Hamas — including police officers, judges, clerks, journalists and others — as combatants because they allegedly support a "terrorist infrastructure." Never mind that contemporary international law deems civilians "combatants" only when they actually take up arms.

All of these practices could expose Israeli political and military officials to prosecutions for war crimes. To be clear, the prosecutions would be for particular acts, not for general practices, but statements by Israeli officials explaining their policies could well provide evidence that the acts were intentional and not mere accidents of war.

No doubt, Israel is most worried about the possibility of criminal prosecutions for its settlements policy. Israeli bluster notwithstanding, there is no doubt that Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal. Israeli officials have known this since 1967, when Theodor Meron, then legal counsel to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and later president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, wrote to one of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's aides: "My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention."

Under the founding statute of the I.C.C., grave violations of the Geneva Conventions, including civilian settlements in occupied territories, are considered war crimes.

The next step for the Palestinians is to renew a certificate of accession to the I.C.C. with the United Nations secretary general. Assuming that I.C.C. jurisdiction is accepted, investigations of alleged Israeli war crimes would still not begin automatically, because the I.C.C. must next find that Israel's own courts are failing to adequately review those charges. Palestinians, by inviting I.C.C. investigations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, also run the risk that their own possible violations — such as deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians — could come under I.C.C. scrutiny.

If Palestinians succeed in getting the I.C.C. to examine their grievances, Israel's campaign to bend international law to its advantage would finally be subjected to international judicial review and, one hopes, curbed. Israel's dangerous legal innovations, if accepted, would expand the scope of permissible violence to previously protected persons and places, and turn international humanitarian law on its head. We do not want a world in which journalists become fair game because of their employers' ideas.

If the choice is between a Palestinian legal intifada, in which arguments are hashed out in court, and an actual intifada, in which blood flows in the streets, the global community should encourage the former.

Indeed, Palestinians would be doing themselves, Israelis and the global community a favor by invoking I.C.C. jurisdiction. Ending Israel's impunity for its clear violations of legal norms would both promote peace in the Middle East and help uphold the integrity of international law.

George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/opinion/why-palestine-should-take-israel-to-court-in-the-hague.html?_r=0

[seafoid]

"Ending Israel's impunity for its clear violations of legal norms would both promote peace in the Middle East and help uphold the integrity of international law."

Unfortunately GHD international law is antisemitic (see below) and Israel is above the law since the Jews were chosen by God.  And the Palestinian obesity stats mean nothing can be done. with thanks to BDB for the insight.

According to the World Heath Organisation obesity is. Palestinians are among the top ten fattest peoples on Earth.
It comes down to this: the day I meet a supporter of Palestine who can discuss in detail various global conflicts and has taken a side in each one giving moral and historical reasons for doing so, I will take their opinions on Israel/Palestine at face value. Until that day I will assume that the shrill scrutiny they subject Israel to represents a primitive obsession with Jews, one that exists subconsciously in the fabric of our civilisation, the vestigial but ever-present remains of over a thousand years' worth of European Jew-hatred

[give her dixie]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/31/us-israel-palestinians-settlements-idUSBRE90U0EI20130131


U.N. human rights inquiry says Israel must remove settlers

(Reuters) - United Nations human rights investigators called on Israel on Thursday to halt settlement expansion and withdraw all Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that its practices violated international law.

"Israel must, in compliance with article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, cease all settlement activities without preconditions. It must immediately initiate a process of withdrawal of all settlers from the OPT (occupied Palestinian territories)," said a report by the inquiry led by French judge Christine Chanet.

The settlements contravene the 1949 Geneva Conventions forbidding the transfer of civilian populations into occupied territory, which could amount to war crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), it said.

In December, the Palestinians accused Israel in a letter to the United Nations of planning to commit further "war crimes" by expanding Jewish settlements after the Palestinians won de facto U.N. recognition of statehood and warned that Jerusalem must be held accountable.

Israel has not cooperated with the probe set up by the Human Rights Council last March to examine the impact of settlements in the territory, including East Jerusalem. Israel says the forum has an inherent bias against it and defends its settlement policy by citing historical and Biblical links to the West Bank.

The independent U.N. investigators interviewed more than 50 people who came to Jordan in November to testify about confiscated land, damage to their livelihoods including olive trees, and violence by Jewish settlers, according to the report.

"The mission believes that the motivation behind this violence and the intimidation against the Palestinians as well as their properties is to drive the local populations away from their lands and allow the settlements to expand," it said.

"CREEPING ANNEXATION"

About 250 settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been established since 1967 and they hold an estimated 520,000 settlers, according to the U.N. report. The settlements impede Palestinian access to water resources and agricultural lands, it said.

The settlements were "leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination," it said.

After the General Assembly upgraded the Palestinians status at the world body, Israel said it would build 3,000 more settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - areas Palestinians wanted for a future state, along with the Gaza Strip.

The U.N. human rights inquiry said that the International Criminal Court had jurisdiction over the deportation or transfer by the occupying power of its own population into the territory.

"Ratification of the (Rome) Statute by Palestine may lead to accountability for gross violations of human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law and justice for victims," the U.N. report said, referring to the treaty setting up the Hague-based U.N. tribunal which prosecutes people for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

[Ball DeBeaver]

Op-Ed: Abbas' Moment in the Sun


Published: Monday, December 03, 2012 10:57 PM

Abbas may have opened Pandora's Box by claiming a pyrrhic victory on "statehood" without understanding the consequences of his actions.




Mark Silverberg, Ariel U. Policy Research Center
Mark Silverberg is a foreign policy analyst for the Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), a Contributing Editor for Family Security Matters, Intellectual Conservative and the New Media Journal and a member of Hadassah's National Academic Advisory Board. His book "The Quartermasters of Terror: Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Jihad" and his articles have been archived under www. marksilverberg .com and www. analyst-network .com.
► More from this writer




The two decades that have passed since the signing of the Oslo Accords have proven that the "two-state solution" is an impossibility and that peace with a Palestinian state (west of the Jordan River) is an oxymoron.


This belief was reinforced once again on November 29th when the overwhelming majority of members of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) passed a politically-motivated resolution upgrading the status of the Palestinian Authority (PA) from an "observer entity" to an "observer state" thereby granting it its most significant upgrade in diplomatic status in decades.


Although the UNGA has never had the power or authority to establish genuine legal states other than though non-binding recommendations, even so, by passing such a status-upgrade resolution, both the PA and the UNGA have effectively nullified any chance that may have existed to establish a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.


In doing so, they may also have laid the groundwork for nullifying the Oslo Accords that created the PA and the Paris Protocols - the section delineating economic agreements between Israel and the PA.


According to Article XXXI, Sec. 7 of the Oslo II Interim Agreement from 1995: "Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of permanent status negotiations."


Separate and apart from the fact that the Accords have been honored by the PA more in their breach than their observance for almost two decades, even the act of requesting and receiving a change of status from the UN General Assembly from "non-member observer entity" to "non-member observer state" may well have rendered those Accords null and void should Israel wish to do so.


Neither recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, nor negotiating Israel's security needs, nor any desire to end the conflict with Israel appears in the resolution. In response, the Israelis have several options, the most dramatic of which (as suggested by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman) could involve nullifying the Accords, dismantling the Palestinian Authority (PA) - unlikely as that may be - and annexing the Jewish cities and towns of Judea and Samaria into Israel proper.


To the UN General Assembly, it would seem that the legal conditions required for statehood by the Montevideo Convention (1933) are irrelevant. According to that Convention, a state must possess a defined territory, a government, a capacity to enter into relations with other states, and a permanent population. The Palestinian Authority possesses none of these requirements, although these "minor facts" did not prevent the UNGA from voting for it.


"Palestine" lacks a "defined territory" (which has yet to be negotiated with Israel); a central "government" (40% of its population is ruled by a terrorist organization and the other 60% by an unelected administrative entity that has not held an election in seven years and has no intention of doing so).

It has no "capacity to enter into relations with other states" (Hamas in Gaza is not bound by Abbas's directives, nor is his authority recognized by it, nor is he allowed entry into Gaza, nor can he bind "Palestine" to anything, nor has he honored his commitments in Phase I of the Roadmap which required him to dismantle Hamas and other terrorist groups), and his "state" lacks a "permanent population" since most Palestinians consider themselves not citizens of a new state but temporary residents ("refugees" according to UNRWA) awaiting their return to Israel (as "Palestine").


As Stephen Rosen wrote recently, this new "state" comprised of Hamas-controlled Gaza and the PA areas has: "two incompatible presidents, two rival prime ministers, a constitution whose most central provisions are violated by both sides, no functioning legislature, no ability to hold elections, a population mostly not under its control, borders that would annex territory under the control of other powers, and no clear path to resolve any of these conflicts".


Other than grabbing his moment in the sun and moving "Palestine's" UN seat from the Observer section to the "P" section between Panama and Pakistan, Abbas may have opened Pandora's Box by claiming a pyrrhic victory on "statehood" without understanding the consequences of his actions. In doing so, he inauspiciously rebuffed the President of the United States in a manner that will no doubt figure into Obama's future decision-making on his Middle East policies.


But, as in all things, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, the majority of Palestinian Arabs seem to understand very well what's coming up the pipeline. According to a poll published in Ma'an in early November, while an overwhelming majority (84%) of Palestinians supported the UN bid, that support was tempered with 90% believing Israel would enact policies to punish the Palestinians for the maneuver, and over 50% believed that the bid would have a negative effect on the Palestinians in the short-term.


They are absolutely right.


Congress had previously warned the PA that there would be financial consequences in its relationship with the United States should it pursue this issue in the General Assembly. It specifically linked this financial threat to Congressional aid to the PA and to the operation of its office in Washington.


Also at financial risk will be future U.S. funding for every UN agency that "Palestine" joins - funding that, in most cases, amounts to almost 25% of these agencies' budgets. In 2011, the U.S. withdrew funding from UNESCO and others are at risk because of this UNGA vote - including funding for the United Nations itself if Republican Senator Orrin Hatch's amendment to the Defense bill is passed.


Israel also made its decision on how to respond to the UN status upgrade. Construction was announced on 3,000 homes in Jerusalem and the "West Bank" and planning expedited for the area linking Jerusalem and Maaleh Adummim, and this is only the beginning. Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be taking a page from former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's playbook when Rabin, in 1975, approved large construction projects in Judea and Samaria in response to a UN conference equating Zionism with racism.


So far as the Israelis are concerned, if the Palestinians are unprepared and unwilling to negotiate on the fundamental issues of Israel's security needs and acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state, then there's nothing to discuss. If independence is what the Palestinians want, then independence is what they will get.


Israel is in position to exact a high price from the PA for its UN actions. Translated into goods and services, Israel, if it so wishes, can terminate the supply of numerous services it provides to the PA - water, electricity, fuel, postal services, communications, port facilities and tax collection.


It has already delayed the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues it has collected on behalf of the PA and applied it against the massive electricity debt owed by the PA to the Israel Electric Corporation and other bodies. Gaza derives at least 40% of its power from Israel's electrical power grid and the PA-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria derive 100% of their electricity from Israel.


Abbas is about to learn that violating the Accords and agreements that created the PA itself has a price, and that price will translate into financial disaster, economic hardship, and a massive loss of honor.


PA corruption and cronyism and its miniscule private sector together with its bloated public service are completely dependent upon Israeli largesse and international foreign aid, much of which is paid as salaries to thousands of its civil servants and security personnel. In fact, 6% of its annual budget is allocated for payments to convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons and to the families of Palestinian "martyrs", while less than 1% is directed towards higher education.


There are however significant downsides to destroying the PA as punishment for its UN actions. If recent polls are to be believed, Hamas would seize control of the area in a free election. For Israel, its worst nightmare would be the establishment of a genocidal Islamist "state" situated just a few miles from its major population centers. If anything mitigates against the destruction of the PA, this scenario would be it.


Should the IDF withdraw its military forces from the area and should Hamas overthrow the PA in the "West Bank" as it did in Gaza, the Israeli debate would no doubt move from annexation of the Jewish cities and towns of Judea and Samaria into Israel proper, to the re-conquest of the area and its return to pre-Oslo Israeli military control.


Another concern is that Abbas' advisers have already recommended using the PA's new UN upgraded "state" status to bring legal challenges before the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli leaders for their alleged policies and practices in Gaza and Judea and Samaria.


On the one hand, it is doubtful that the PA would have the necessary status to bring such an action. In his speech to the General Assembly, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor said that the new status would not enable the PA to join international treaties, organizations or conferences as a state and does "not confer statehood on the Palestinian Authority, which clearly fails to meet the criteria for statehood" (as noted above).


That is, the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) enables only internationally recognized states that are party to the Statute to refer complaints to the court. According to a Ambassador Alan Baker, writing for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA): "In the same way Palestinians failed in 2011 to prove statehood when they attempted to obtain membership in the UN in light of the clear lack of national unity and capability of governance and inability to fulfill international obligations of a state, so now in 2012 it would be highly unlikely, even after an upgrade-resolution, that they will be able to prove to the ICC that they are a genuine legal state entitled to initiate complaints against Israeli officials and officers."


Moreover, the ICC generally does not get involved in countries that investigate themselves through formal, credible judicial reviews as does Israel.


If however, the PA is successful in having the ICC accept jurisdiction, it would likely turn out to be a double-edged sword. Israel could argue with merit that "Palestine" (which nominally includes Gaza as part of its sovereign territory) has committed war crimes against it by preaching genocide against Jews and the Jewish state, sending suicide bombers into Israel over the years, using human shields to avoid retaliatory strikes, and firing missiles into Israeli population centers from Gaza, and that if "Palestine" is a state controlled by the PA, then the PA is responsible for these acts.


That is a case more easily proven than is any case against Israel for having committed war crimes and/or crimes against humanity against Palestinians.


If Abbas chooses to approach the ICC, he had best be careful what he asks for.


In a broader sense, if the Palestinians don't accept that international recognition means they must accept Israel, they should not believe that international recognition means Israel must accept their "state".

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12531

[give her dixie]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21281923#TWEET570894

Syria has formally complained to the United Nations over a reported Israeli attack within its borders.

Syria's army said Israeli jets had targeted a military research centre north-west of Damascus on Wednesday, killing two people and wounding five.

It denied reports that lorries carrying weapons bound for Lebanon were hit.

Russia has called the attack unacceptable, while a Syrian official and Iranian deputy minister have suggested there could be retaliation.

The Syrian army statement about the incident, carried on state media, said Israeli fighter jets had carried out a direct strike on a scientific research centre in Jamraya.

Meanwhile Lebanese security sources, Western diplomats and Syrian rebels say an arms convoy near Lebanon's border was targeted. A US official attested to the strike, saying the lorries were carrying Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles.

Jamraya Centre: Reported scientific research centre responsible for developing chemical weapons
Weapons convoy: Lorries carrying Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah bases in Lebanon

Israel has declined to comment.

The latest developments have struck a country in turmoil. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continues to cling to power despite a 22-month conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people.

Golan agreement:

Syria's foreign ministry summoned the UN commander in the Golan to deliver its formal protest, saying Israel's action violated the 1974 disengagement agreement between the two sides, who remain technically at war.

A UN observer force has been in place in the Golan since 1974, with the task of providing "an area of separation and for two equal zones of limited forces and armaments on both sides of the area".

An Israeli air strike on Syria could cause a major diplomatic incident, analysts say, as Iran has said it will treat any Israeli attack on its ally Syria as an attack on itself.

Iran's foreign minister condemned the alleged air strike as an "overt assault based on the West's policy" to undermine stability in Syria.

Analysis:


Jonathan Marcus
BBC Diplomatic Correspondent

While a good share of Israel's and indeed Washington's attention is taken up by fears about Syria's chemical arsenal falling into the wrong hands, this latest air strike or strikes underscores Israel's equal worry about sophisticated conventional weapons being passed to Hezbollah.

Some four years ago the then Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned it would not tolerate what it called "game-changing" weapons being transferred to Hezbollah.

This Israeli operation can thus be seen as in one sense pre-emptive, but also as a warning to the Syrian authorities and to Hezbollah.

Quite how Hezbollah may respond is unclear. Last July's attack on an airport bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria suggests that if there is to be a response it might be indirect - against Israeli or Jewish targets abroad, rather than across Lebanon's own frontier with Israel.

Ramping up regional tension
"The Zionists got ahead of themselves in trying to cover up the successes of the Syrian government and nation in maintaining the existing government and restoring stability and security," Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted as saying by the semi-official ISNA news agency.

Iran's Fars news agency quoted the Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as saying the raid would have "grave consequences for [the major Israeli city of] Tel Aviv".

Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdul-Karim Ali said Damascus could take a "surprise" decision to retaliate.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said: "If this information is confirmed, then we are dealing with unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the UN Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives to justify it."

Relations between Russia and Israel have been improving in recent years as trade and economic ties have grown stronger, says the BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow.

But Moscow is a close ally of President Assad, which would explain its concern at the reports, our correspondent adds.

Weapons facility
The Syrian army statement said the Jamraya centre - which was focused on "raising our level of resistance and self-defence" - was damaged in the attack, and specifically denied reports that an arms convoy had been hit.

It said "armed terrorist gangs" - a term the government uses to describe rebel groups - had tried and failed repeatedly to capture the same facility in recent months.


Israeli media reaction

"Israel is closer today to confrontation on the northern front more than it has been at any point since the Second Lebanon War." Alex Fishman, Yedioth Ahronoth

"It could be seen as a hint to other countries, like Turkey and the US, that a military attack on Syria to topple the regime may be an option." Zvi Barel, Ha'aretz

"There have been many signs in recent days that winds of war are blowing in the north. But... an attack, which did or did not take place, will not lead to an immediate round of combat in the north." Amir Rapaport, Ma'ariv

"If Israel acted, as foreign publications say, the ball is in Assad's court. The problem is that in the current situation, he has no court and does not have much to lose. A wounded lion is a dangerous lion." Boaz Bismuth,Yisrael Hayom

Some reports suggest the facility could be Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Centre, known by its French acronym CERS, believed to be the state organisation responsible for developing biological and chemical weapons.

The Lebanese military and internal security forces have not confirmed the reports of an attack on an arms convoy.

But they say there has been increased activity by Israeli warplanes over Lebanon in the past week, and particularly on Tuesday and the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Israel has voiced fears that Syrian missiles and chemical weapons could fall into the hands of militants such as the Lebanese Shia militant group, Hezbollah.

Correspondents say Israel is also concerned that Hezbollah could obtain anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, thus strengthening its ability to respond to Israeli air strikes.

'Unsurprising'
Israel believes Syria received a battery of SA-17s from Russia after an alleged Israeli air strike in 2007 that destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor near Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, analysts say.

The US government said in 2008 that the reactor was "not intended for peaceful purposes".

Hezbollah said Wednesday's target was the Jamraya centre, condemning the attack as "an attempt to thwart Arab military capabilities" and pledging to stand by its ally Mr Assad.

The reported attack came days after Israel moved its Iron Dome defence system to the north of the country.

Israel has also joined the US in expressing concern that Syria's presumed chemical weapons stockpile could be taken over by militant groups.

[Ball DeBeaver]

Go Israel!

[seafoid]

Go Israel!

Israel will be gone soon enough.