Mission & Justice

Yuval Azoulay;14/8/08, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1011862.html

Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem on Thursday relayed that since the start of 2007, it had asked the Israel Defense Forces to investigate 99 incidents in which 189 Palestinians were killed - but the army only actually launched probes in four of the instances. B’Tselem also Thursday harshly criticized the Military Advocate General, Brig. Gen. Avihai Mandelblit, over his decision to close the investigation into the death of a Reuters cameraman in the Gaza Strip last April. The army cleared the IDF tank crew that killed the journalist of any wrongdoing and said the soldiers will not face any disciplinary action. B’Tselem branded this decision as extremely unreasonable. The army found that troops acted properly when they opened fire on Fadel Shana, suspecting he was a militant preparing to fire a missile after he set up a tripod in a Gaza battle zone in which three IDF soldiers were killed.

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Shlomo Shamir; 14/8/08

The United Nations said on Thursday that it has managed to clear wide swaths of south Lebanon of half of all cluster bombs fired by Israel during the Second Lebanon War two years ago. In a report released on Thursday, the world body warned that the remaining ordnances still pose a threat to the local population, particulary in the southern Lebanon village of Kafer Sir. “We’ve managed to clean up about half of the known cluster munition strike sites in this village. We hope to have the whole village completely cleared by the end of the year,” the UN Mine Action Coordination Center of South Lebanon said on Thursday. “This whole village was covered with unexploded cluster munitions. They were on people’s rooftops, hanging from trees, even in playgrounds.”

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Ben White; 14/8/08

On Tuesday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published what seemed like a significant development in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, reporting that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had presented Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president “with a detailed proposal for an agreement in principle on borders, refugees and security arrangements between Israel and a future Palestinian state.” The “offer” is nothing too different to what we’ve seen before: Israel keeps the main settlement blocs, including around Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, Maaleh Adumim, and, the Haaretz article suggests, Efrat and Ariel too. There is no mention of arrangements for the Jordan Valley, crucial territory that Olmert has previously declared his intention to annex. While Israel apparently keeps seven percent of the West Bank, the Palestinians are “compensated” with land from the Negev Desert and a road connecting the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In fact, the overall borders are by and large determined by the separation wall, which the report rightly notes has created a “new physical reality”.

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Joan Chittister; 14/8/08

It was a touching, powerful and embarrassing piece of media. In fact, it was enough to make the average, newspaper-reading U.S. citizen blush. There stood the president of the United States speaking passionate words into a Rose Garden microphone. He was excoriating Russia’s “dramatic and brutal escalation” of violence toward Georgia, “a sovereign neighboring state,” in retaliation for Georgia’s suppression of Ossetia, its breakaway province. The action, George Bush said with properly restrained indignation, has “substantially damaged Russia’s standing in the world.” It was a stupefying moment. In response to Russia’s troop movements into Georgia in defense of South Ossetia ,a province on Russia’s southern border, George Bush, architect of the invasion of the still embroiled and desperately damaged “sovereign nation of Iraq” declared to the world that ” such action [as Russia took] is unacceptable in the 21st century.” Yo, George! Aren’t you forgetting something?

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Tony Cheng; 14/8/08

With the eyes of the world on the Olympics in Beijing, a lockdown is in force across China’s western Xinjiang province. After three separate attacks in recent days, the Chinese government is unsure who they can trust in this restless region, more than 2,000 km from the Chinese capital. At a checkpoint outside the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, a short distance from the site of Tuesday’s fatal stabbing of three security officials, we found police relaxed, but no one was allowed to pass unchecked.

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Aluf Benn; 13/8/08

The American administration has rejected an Israeli request for military equipment and support that would improve Israel’s ability to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. A report published last week by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) states that military strikes are unlikely to destroy Iran’s centrifuge program for enriching uranium. The Americans viewed the request, which was transmitted (and rejected) at the highest level, as a sign that Israel is in the advanced stages of preparations to attack Iran. They therefore warned Israel against attacking, saying such a strike would undermine American interests. They also demanded that Israel give them prior notice if it nevertheless decided to strike Iran. As compensation for the requests it rejected, Washington offered to improve Israel’s defenses against surface-to-surface missiles.

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Hisham Abu Taha; 13/8/08

Israel has offered a peace deal to the Palestinians under which it would annex 7.3 percent of the West Bank and keep the largest settlements. In compensation, the Palestinians would be given land equivalent to 5.4 percent of the West Bank in the Negev Desert but it is not specified where. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has presented Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with the proposal for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, to take place after Abbas’ forces have retaken Gaza, as part of an agreement in principle on borders, refugees and security arrangements between Israel and a future Palestinian state, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

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13/8/08

Three female international aid workers and their Afghan driver have been killed in an ambush in southern Afghanistan, according to a provincial governor. The three women were driving in a car when the attack occurred in the province of Logar, south of Kabul, Abdullah Wardak said on Wednesday. “Three foreign women employees of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and their local driver were killed in this ambush by the opposition forces,” he said.

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13/8/08

Al Jazeera’s Tom Ackerman reported from the Guantanamo Bay trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver. Here he examines what motivated Charles Swift, the US lawyer who defended him. After his sentencing, for the first time Salim Hamdan broke into a smile, hugged his lawyers, waved to the court observers and in his meagre English, said: “Bye-bye everybody.” That is how the first Guantanamo detainee to stand trial left the courtroom, heading off to an isolated wing of the prison, still unsure when he would ever see freedom. But the lawyers for Osama bin Laden’s former driver were ecstatic. The jury of six senior US military officers, having heard all the evidence, sentenced Hamdan to spend just five-and-a-half months more in prison. For the defence team, which had pleaded for more than three-and-a-half years for an appropriate punishment, the result was far better than they had hoped for.

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13/8/08

The US government has spent at least $85 billion on private contractors during the 2003 Iraq war and its aftermath, a government review has said. About 20 per cent of money spent for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said. At present there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq and in neighbouring countries, a ratio of about one per US service member, the report said. The report sparked heavy criticism by US Democrats, with Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the US senate budget committee, saying the reliance on contractors “restricts accountability and oversight; opens the door to corruption and abuse and … may significantly increase the cost to American taxpayers”. The study did not include figures for 2008 and therefore the total paid to contractors for work in Iraq since the invasion could be even higher, possibly topping $100 billion by the end of this year, the report said.

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