Mission & Justice

14/5/08

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has promised to build about 600 housing units in contentious West Bank settlements, a political ally of the prime minister said Wednesday, adding new tensions to peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The announcement came shortly before U.S. President George W. Bush arrived in Israel to take part in the Jewish state’s 60th anniversary celebrations - and to try to nudge forward Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Palestinians want all of the West Bank as part of their future state. They oppose all Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, saying it undermines peace talks.

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14/5/08
A judge in Milan has ruled that Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, can be called to testify in a trial of CIA and Italian spies who are accused of kidnapping a ‘terrorism’ suspect in Milan and flying him to Egypt. Berlusconi is not accused of any crime and would appear as a witness to speak on the issue of state secrets in the case. The 71-year-old billionaire could become the first head of government in the world to testify in criminal proceedings over secret US transfers of “terrorism” suspects, known as renditions. Judge Oscar Magi also ruled that Romano Prodi, Berlusconi’s predecessor, could be called to give evidence.

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13/5/08

The federal government has set aside an extra $2.2 million to fund the inquiry into the police handling of the Mohamed Haneef case. Dr Haneef was arrested at Brisbane airport last year in connection with failed terrorist attacks in the UK. He was later released following a series of investigative bungles by the Australian Federal Police and Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. Budget papers show the total cost of the inquiry is likely to be about $4.2 million, with $2 million of that coming from the existing budget of the Attorney-General’s Department.

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Amin Abbas; 14/5/08

Tomorrow Palestinians - geographically displaced, politically divided and economically distressed - will be marking 60 years since al-Nakbah (the great catastrophe). Their misfortune began in May 1948, on the same day Israel celebrates its 60th birthday. The yin-yang character of the day marks a new beginning for one people and the beginning of the end for the other. Most people think of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one between two warring countries and people. This is no fault of theirs. The terminology describing the place is baffling. Occupied Territories, West Bank and Gaza Strip, 67 green-line borders, 242 borders, armistice borders, UN partition borders: the list goes on. As opposed to Israel, where does Palestine begin and end? Who are its inhabitants?

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Paul Maley; 14/5/08

Senior aid officials in Burma have warned that Australia’s first aid shipment to the stricken country, which arrived yesterday, will almost certainly be rebadged as the property of the Burmese Government, with sizeable portions likely to be siphoned off by corrupt officials. Kevin Rudd yesterday launched a fresh attack on the “demonstrably inadequate” response of the Burmese junta to the May 2 cyclone, which has left up to 100,000 people dead and a further 1.5 million homeless. The Prime Minister told parliament an RAAF C-117 Globemaster aircraft had touched down in Rangoon with 31 tonnes of supplies. On board were water purification tablets, medical supplies, tarpaulins and blankets.

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Ahmad Samih Khalidi; 13/5/08

As Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its establishment, an inescapable counter-reality lingers over the occasion that is inextricably twinned with it. It is the Nakba or catastrophe, the 60th anniversary of the destruction of Arab Palestine in 1948. Despite a public discourse that often claimed the opposite, the Zionist movement set out to build a Jewish state in Palestine with a Jewish majority. This could only come about at the expense of the local inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were Palestinian Arabs — both Muslim and Christian. From this perspective, neither the Zionists’ intentions nor the reactions of the Palestinians are at issue: Israel could not have been built as a Jewish state except on the ruins of Arab Palestine.

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13/5/08

The US military says Air Force fighter jets have dropped eight large bombs to destroy an Al-Qaeda in Iraq training base south of Baghdad. The military says yesterday’s airstrikes by two US Air Force F-16s targeted a large area booby trapped with bombs hidden in the ground and in trees.Associated Press Television News footage showed an area covered in palm trees being leveled by powerful bombs. The military says the area in the district of Arab Jabour was used to manufacture bombs, stash weapons caches and train and launch sniper attacks at US military convoys. Meanwhile, American troops fought street battles with Shiite militia in Baghdad’s Sadr City, killing three people on the first full day of a deal to end fighting in the area, a military official said yesterday.

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13/5/08

Israel yesterday authorised the resumption of fuel deliveries to the besieged Gaza Strip, where shortages caused the only power plant to shut down at the weekend, an Israeli security official said. The Nahal Oz border terminal, which supplies most of the territory’s fuel, reopened yesterday morning, the official said. Gaza’s only electricity plant had shut on Saturday due to lack of fuel, leaving thousands of Palestinians reliant on candles and gas lanterns. The Gaza plant provides 30 per cent of the impoverished territory’s electricity, with most of the remainder directly supplied by Israel and a small amount coming from Egypt.

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13/5/08

The US’s first airlift landed in Burma last night after prolonged negotiations with the military junta that has restricted international efforts to help up to two million cyclone survivors at risk of disease and starvation. In what was seen as a huge concession by the junta, the unarmed US military C-130 cargo plane, packed with supplies, flew from the Thai air force base of Utapao into Rangoon. Two more air shipments were scheduled to land today. Relief workers who remain prohibited from entering Burma warned it could take weeks to reach many cyclone victims because of the nation’s decrepit infrastructure. Such a delay will increase the number of people at risk and raise the possibility of unrest, they said.

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Paul Maley; 13/5/08

A six-month-old baby and a teenage girl were killed during a firefight in Afghanistan between Australian troops and Taliban militants. But a report into the battle, in which Australian soldier Luke Worsley also died, has not recommended the Diggers change their rules of engagement. The Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, yesterday said the baby was in a room from where a man and a woman, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, opened fire on Australian troops on November 23 last year.

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