Middle East Monitor - The Latest from the Middle East

The Goldstone recommendations on Israel/Palestine have been adopted by the European Parliament today on March 10 2009. The resolution was adopted with 335 votes in favour, 287 against and 43 abstentions and the following recommendations were agreed on:

1. All parties should respect human rights
2. Independent and impartial investigations within the next five months should take place within the next five months
3. The Goldstone recommendations should be implemented and monitored
4. There should be no restriction of NGO activities and the authorities should stop refraining their activities

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Mustafa Barghouthi: the Arabs gave Netanyahu timeout four months; he gave four hours
Nablus

The Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative has called for the reversal of the decision to reopen negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has announced the construction of 112 housing units in an illegal settlement on the occupied West Bank. Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi said that the Palestinians were giving Netanyahu a "timeout" for four months with regards to settlement building, but he did not even give the Palestinians four hours. In what Dr. Barghouti calls "acts of provocation", the Israeli government has announced in quick succession the proposed new settlement building, similar units in occupied Jerusalem, the decision to incorporate important West Bank mosques as "Israeli national heritage sites" and brutal acts of repression against Palestinians demonstrating against the occupying authority's actions.

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Palestine's Mufti condemns Israeli plan to Judaize Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood
The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories and rector of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed Hussein, condemned the right wing deputy mayor of Jerusalem, David Hadari for touring the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood which included a visit to the Palestinian houses that were seized to be used as his new office.

Sheikh Hussein said, "This policy, pursued by the Israeli occupation authorities, seeks the Judaization of the Palestinian neighbourhood as a whole, and the expulsion of civilians from their homes so that the settlers could build thousands of housing units in the neighbourhood and impose new facts on the ground." He criticized the recently announced Israeli decision pertaining to building hundreds of housing units in the Betar Illit settlement situated on the Palestinian land in Bethlehem.

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A civil servants’ syndicate in the Gaza Strip denounced on Tuesday the Palestinian government in Ramallah for blocking the salaries of about 500 staff from the Gaza Strip and dozens of staff in the West Bank during the past three months.

Speaking at the syndicates headquarters yesterday the teachers’ head, Mohamed Siyam, said "the salaries of 323 workers in Gaza, including 14 detained prisoners, were stopped due to the wage cutting policy adopted by the Fayyad government."

Siyam stressed that the job discrimination and staff wage cutting policy "adopted by" Fayyad's government is "an insult to the Palestinian people and an infringement on the rights and career prospects of the public servants."

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UN’s Richard Falk under attack again – from the Palestinian Authority
By Omar Radwan

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, has come under renewed attack in recent days.  Professor Falk’s remit is to monitor Israeli violations of human rights in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for the UN Human Rights Council.  He submits periodic reports to the UNHRC on the human rights situation in the West Bank and Gaza, but his mandate only covers Israel’s human rights record.  He was appointed to the position of Special Rapporteur in March 2008.  Professor Falk has pulled no punches in his criticism of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians, particularly the blockade of Gaza; his appointment was met by furious objections from Israel and the United States.  When he first tried to visit the Palestinian territories in his capacity as Special Rapporteur, in December 2008, Israel detained him for 30 hours at Ben Gurion Airport in humiliating conditions before expelling him. This was a flagrant violation of diplomatic protocol and a calculated snub to the United Nations; it was perhaps no coincidence that this happened just two weeks before Israel’s war against Gaza. He has not been allowed to enter the occupied territories since then.

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Following the issue of an arrest warrant in December against former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Gordon Brown announced last week that Britain will "legislate as soon as possible" to prevent people "motivated purely by political gesture" from seeking and obtaining arrest warrants against foreign dignitaries. He acknowledged that it is Britain's international duty to prosecute alleged war criminals, but added that the evidential basis on which arrest warrants can be allowed should be tougher and the right to prosecute should cover a narrower range of crimes falling under universal jurisdiction and be left to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) alone. Ironically, it is Brown himself who has politicised the process by reducing what is a longstanding common law right to the discretion of the CPS.

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Reports in the Israeli media claim that the Israeli security forces have threatened to increase their incursions into the West Bank unless the Palestinian Authority (PA) suppresses popular protests against settlements and Judaisation policies.

According to the head of Shin Bet (Israel's internal security service chief), Yuval Diskin, he has conveyed several messages to the PA Prime Minister, Ismail Fayad and other senior officials. Together with the head of the Israeli Army Middle Zone, Diskin told the PA that it "must contain the popular protests that have recently erupted in the West Bank and keep them from turning violent, and the PA itself must reduce incitement regarding the Temple Mount [sic] and Jerusalem".

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While Desmond Travers argues for prohibition of certain weapons, ex-head of Shin Bet says forget the past and move on!

On Monday 8 March, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) hosted a public discussion on the UN's Goldstone Report and the Peace Process. The panel included Ami Ayalon (former member of the Israeli Knesset and ex-head of the Israeli secret service, Shin Bet), Professor Christine Chinkin (Professor of International Law at the LSE, barrister and co-author of the Goldstone Report), Dr. Karma Nabulsi (lecturer at Oxford University and former PLO representative at the UN) and Colonel Desmond Travers (retired Irish Army officer, member of the Board of Directors at the Institute for International Criminal Investigations and co-author of the Goldstone report).

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