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Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:38

Commentary

Andrew Gilligan, Dispatches and "Islamic terrorism"

Gilligan’s Island" was a sixties sitcom with an eponymous hero who was "bumbling, dim-witted [and] accident-prone". Andrew Gilligan had nothing to do with that programme, but one can’t help thinking about him as he seems to be everywhere at the moment; the London Evening Standard, the Daily Telegraph and, this week, Channel 4’s Dispatches.

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News Flash

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.

In Pictures

AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (MIDDLE EAST)

US family seeks Israeli damages
Case concerns Rachel Corrie's death during protest against Palestinian home demolitions.
US condemns Israeli expansion
Biden denounces move to build 1,600 illegal homes that could derail talks with Palestinians.
Al-Azhar head dies in Saudi Arabia
Tantawi, Sunni Islam's most senior religious figure, stirred controversy with ban on niqab.

Open Letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown | Israel "blackmails Gaza’s patients to turn them into collaborators" | Official calls for Egyptian gas to run Gaza’s power plant instead of Israeli diesel More peaceful demonstrations in the Gaza Strip

Sunday, 07 February 2010 15:00

Haniyeh: Reconciliation must not entail security coordination with Israel
Any reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah must not entail security coordination with Israel, according to Ismail Haniyeh. The Prime Minister of Gaza made this announcement during a ceremony to honour the heads of the National Security, Police and Protection Departments held in his office in Gaza City last week. In his speech, Mr. Haniyeh pointed out that since 2007 and the decisive move against the planned military coup, these departments have been truly “national”, without any requirement to coordinate activities with the Israeli authorities.

"We have eliminated the Oslo Convention, which was built on security coordination and protection of the [Israeli] occupation and the settlers,” he said. “Today, we are consolidating the doctrine of cutting security ties with the Zionist occupation in our security apparatus.”

According to Haniyeh, the national consensus for reconciliation will be far removed from any will imposed by the Israeli occupation. The discussions between Hamas and Fatah have been focusing on protecting the resistance and building a purely Palestinian security service, he added.

The political leader of Hamas in Gaza stressed that the Ministry of Interior has been asked to impose the severest sanctions on anyone found undermining the security of Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip.

"We will not allow the return of security chaos in the Gaza Strip, under any circumstances. Our aim is to provide security, protection and stability to the Palestinian people."