Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumUN chief visits war-scarred Gaza Strip
GAZA CITY (AFP) -- United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon made a brief visit Tuesday to war-ravaged Gaza, two days after donor states pledged $5.4 billion in aid to rebuild after a devastating Israeli offensive.He was driven through the ruins of Gaza City's Shejaiya neighbourhood and the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp, the scenes of some of the heaviest shelling in Israel's military assault.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians were displaced by the destruction, and on Tuesday people camping outside their ravaged homes were seen waving at the convoy of white UN vehicles as it passed.
After meeting members of the newly convened Palestinian consensus government, Ban told reporters that the devastation he had seen was far worse than that caused in the previous Israel-Gaza conflict of winter 2008-2009.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=733123
oberliner
(58,724 posts)No doubt they will be of great assistance here.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)Gaza is not occupied, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, rebutting accusations from visiting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that Israel was to blame for this summers conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
Ban made a whirlwind trip to Jerusalem, meeting with its top politicians to call for a renewal of the frozen peace process with the Palestinians, to urge Israel to lift restrictions on the Gaza Strip and to halt settlement activity and Jewish building in east Jerusalem. He also met in Ramallah with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and is scheduled to visit Gaza on Tuesday.
Im very concerned about the recent announcement of plans to advance settlements in east Jerusalem, which are in clear violation of international law, Ban told Netanyahu. This does not send the right signals, and I urge the government of Israel to reverse these activities.
There were polite moments during Bans visit. The soft-spoken secretary-general was careful to drop Hebrew words such as toda for thank-you and hag sameah for happy holidays. He acknowledged the harm caused to Israel by Hamas rocket attacks against it.
But the sharp policy differences between Israel and the UN were evident, particularly during Bans meeting with Netanyahu, where both men accused each other of harming the renewal of the peace process.
The Palestinians have asked the United Nations to take charge of ensuring that Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 lines rather than proceed with US-brokered negotiations to set a permanent border between them and Israel.
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Netanyahu-to-Ban-Gaza-is-not-occupied-378807
Is Gaza Still Occupied and Why Does It Matter?
In view of Israel's assertions that it has not occupied the Gaza Strip since 2005, Jadaliyya re-posts an analysis of this claim authored by Lisa Hajjar, initially published in 2012.]
Yes, the Gaza Strip is still occupied. Despite official Israeli remonstrations that the unilateral disengagement of 2005, which removed Israeli military bases and Jewish settlers, transformed Gaza into no longer occupied territory, neither those changes nor anything that has transpired since has ended the occupation.
Occupation is a legal designation of an international nature. Israels occupation of Gaza continues to the present day because (a) Israel continues to exercise effective control over this area, (b) the conflict that produced the occupation has not ended, and (c) an occupying state cannot unilaterally (and without international/diplomatic agreement) transform the international status of occupied territory except, perhaps, if that unilateral action terminates all manner of effective control.
Sui Generis Nonsense
The irony of Israels assertion that Gaza is no longer occupied can be best appreciated when one considers Israels earlier position that Gaza and the West Bank were not occupied in 1967. Israeli officials claimed that the status of these areas was sui generis because, at the time of conquest, they were controlled by but not sovereign to Egypt and Jordan, respectively. Occupation, according to Israel, only pertains to areas that were recognized sovereign territory of the displaced states. Hence the premise, never accepted by the international community, was: no sovereignty, therefore no occupation. Rather, Israel insisted that Gaza and the West Bank were administered territory. The other premise of the original not occupied position was that Israel could lay claim to all or parts of these lands because they compose the remainder of Eretz Israel to which the Jewish people have historic and/or biblical rights.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8807/is-gaza-still-occupied-and-why-does-it-matter
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)Let's be clear: I'm no fan of Hamas, a brutal and anti-Semitic group which has been accused by Amnesty International and other NGOs of human rights abuses against the people of Gaza and of war crimes against the people of Israel. Firing rockets into civilian areas isn't justified under international law, even if it is framed as part of a (legitimate) struggle against foreign military occupation.
Having said that, however, in recent days I've been debating supporters of Israel's latest assault on Gaza on radio and on Twitter and I've been astonished not just by the sheer number of fact-free claims made by those supporters, but also by their confidence, slickness and sheer message discipline. According to the pro-Israel, pro-IDF crowd, Hamas is to blame for everything.
This, of course, is utter nonsense. To quote the late US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."
So, in a Moynihanian spirit, here are fact-filled, evidence-based rebuttals to the 11 main myths, half-truths and self-serving 'talking points' that are repeatedly pushed by various Israeli spokespersons, both on the airwaves and on social media:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/gaza-israel_b_5624401.html?1406545029&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)By Maayan Lubell and Nidal al-Mughrabi
KEREM SHALOM Israel/GAZA Mon Oct 13, 2014 4:47am EDT
(Reuters) - The July-August war in Gaza drew international condemnation for a number of reasons, but one episode proved more deadly than any other: an Israeli air and artillery bombardment on Aug. 1 that killed 150 people in a matter of hours.
Six weeks on from the war, with the toll of destruction still being counted, there is deepening unease about what took place that day, especially over whether too much force was used. Some legal experts say a war crime may have been committed.
The events unfolded just as a three-day ceasefire was supposed to come into force. Hamas militants emerged from a tunnel inside Gaza and ambushed three Israeli soldiers, killing two of them and seizing the third.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/13/us-mideast-gaza-warcrime-insight-idUSKCN0I20FN20141013