PALESTINA/IZRAEL:
Another 'Symbolic Victory': Abbas' New Political Gambit
… the PA itself has neither legitimacy nor credibility. Whatever remained of the latter was lost during the Israeli war on Gaza and the publishing of the Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera and the Guardian. The papers showed that the very individuals now championing a Palestinian statehood bid at the UN once regularly collaborated with Israel to crack down on Palestinian resistance. They helped Israel undermine Palestinian democracy, isolate democratically-elected Hamas, give away the refugees’ right of return, and worse, deprive Palestinians from any meaningful sovereignty in occupied East Jerusalem. As for its lack of legitimacy, the matter requires no leaked documents. In fact, Fatah's refusal to concede to 2006 election results led to the circumstances that exasperated a civil war in Gaza. Gaza's besiegement (a direct consequence of the elections and the civil war) continues to serve both Israel and the PA equally. The latter is functioning in the West Bank with no popular mandate, surviving on international handouts and “security coordination” with the Israeli Army. Even Abbas's term as a president of the PA has expired.
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Paradigm Shift: One-sided US Veto
Seeing that the settlers are undermining any future two-state solution, the Palestinians have decided not to wait any longer and are asking the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. This, they intimate, is their last attempt to salvage the two-state route before abandoning it to the dustbin of history. Their argument is straightforward: If the idea behind a two-state solution is dividing land among the two peoples, how can Israel unilaterally continue to settle the contested land while carrying out negotiations? Israeli unilateralism, in other words, has driven the Palestinians to choose the unilateral path. The only difference is that the latter's unilateralism is aimed at advancing a peace agreement, while the former's is aimed at destroying it. ... The US has never considered using its veto power to stop Israel from carrying out unilateral moves aimed at undermining peace. Instead, the US has frequently used its veto to prevent the condemnation of Israeli policies that breach international law. Now the Obama Administration wants to use the veto again, with the moral justification that unilateralism is misguided. But the real question is: Why is unilateralism bad when it attempts to advance a solution, yet warrants no response when unilateralism threatens to undermine a solution?
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'An Important Irritant': The Attack on the Mavi Marmara
The panel claimed that Israel has faced and is facing a threat to its security from militant groups within Gaza. Of course, this is true even if the threat is minimal compared to the threat Israel poses to the security of Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. The panel argues that Israel has the right to self defence against armed attack from outside its territory. As Israel is the only state in the world which has never defined its borders, and as the territory falling within the 1949 armistice lines includes more than 20 per cent of Palestine set aside for the Arab state in the partition resolution of 1947, but seized by zionist militias in 1948, what constitutes Israeli territory remains an interesting but unresolved point. Furthermore, most Gazans are refugees (or the children of refugees) from somewhere else in Palestine. They were driven into Gaza during the ethnic cleansing of 1948. Not far from the fence penning them in, settlements have been built on their land and the ruins of their villages. Their right of return to the place of their birth has been affirmed in numerous UN resolutions specific to Palestine as well as conventions dealing with universal human rights. Israel has never complied with any of these resolutions. Yet it is Israel and not its victims to which Ban Ki Moon's panel grants the right of self-defence. Turkey has rejected this biased report out of hand. It has sent the Israeli ambassador home and will now ask the International Court of Justice to issue a legal opinion on the blockade of Gaza and thus the attack on the Mavi Marmara.
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Ibrahim Zaza: The Gaza Boy Newspapers Omitted
Ibrahim Zaza was merely a 12-year-old boy. He and his cousin Mohammed, 14, were hit by an Israeli missile in Gaza, fired from a manned drone as they played in front of their house. ... Among the dead in the first wave of attacks that targeted 'militants' were two children, one aged three and the other 13. In the media, Palestinian casualties only matter when they amount to a sizable number. Even then, they are placed within a context that deprives the victims of any sympathy, or worse, blames Palestinian militants for indirect responsibility (pushing Israel to resort to violence to defend its security). In fact, the term 'Palestinian security' is almost nonexistent, although thousands of Gazans have been killed in the last three years alone. Even the news of Palestinian children killed in the August strikes was reported with a sense of vagueness and doubt.
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SAD:
Cops turn Violent, NYPD drag girl across the street. #OccupyWallStreet (video)
JEMEN:
Over 40 killed in Yemen gun battles
“Over 40 people were killed in battles that hit neighbourhoods across Sanaa, including Change Square”, epicentre of anti-regime protests since Feb, the activist said. As gun battles raged across the capital, hundreds of thousands set out in a massive demonstration from Change Square, which came under security force gunfire, witnesses said. A dissident military spokesman said 11 of his regiment’s troops were killed and 112 wounded when elite Republican Guard troops, commanded by President Ali Abdullah Saleh's son Ahmed, attacked a camp. At least 173 people were killed in fierce fighting since last week…
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Yemeni president makes call for peace but bloodshed continues in Sana'a
The latest round of bloodshed followed a week of violence in Sana'a in which more than 100 protesters were shot dead, some by government troops using anti-aircraft guns. ... At midday a crowd of 6,000 men and women marched out of the tented protest encampment dubbed Change Square and into the city" As they marched deeper into the streets of Sana'a, a volley of bullets fired by Republican Guard troops dispersed the protesters, who fled back to their camp. "We reached the roundabout and then a group of soldiers under the bridge just started shooting straight at us without warning – they were 10 metres away," said Abulqawy Noman, a professor of chemistry at Sana'a University, as doctors in a field hospital held up an x-ray apparently showing an image of his calf with a bullet lodged below the knee. "One of my friends was shot in the chest; he couldn't speak, blood was pouring from his nostrils and his mouth." In addition to the professor, 17 others were shot, one in the forehead and another in the square of his back. Outside the hospital gates a weeping muezzin gathered protesters for a mass prayer to mourn the death of 10 people on Friday, nine of them pro-opposition tribal fighters and one of them a journalist who died after being shot a few days earlier. ... Sana'a may be sliding out of government control. Many of the city's neighbourhoods are now gripped by street battles and exchanges of shelling between Republican Guards led by Saleh's son and a division of renegade soldiers known as firqa who have been backing the pro-democracy demonstrators. Protesters are caught in the middle as both sides hurl mortars and anti-aircraft missiles at each other in a battle for the capital. ... Many in the anti-Saleh camp accuse both Riyadh and Washington of supporting Saleh, who had once been their ally against al-Qaida's Yemen-based wing. They accuse the west of adopting double standards by supporting the pro-democracy uprising in Libya but not in Yemen. ... Hospitals are struggling to find the floor space, let alone provide care, for the hundreds suffering from bullet wounds and gas inhalation. Tariq Noman, a doctor working in a field hospital, told the Guardian that people were dying because of a shortage of medical supplies. The International Committee of the Red Cross has delivered wound-dressing material to the hospital but claims that it has had equipment confiscated and been denied access to people in need of first aid by government officials.
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SIRIJA:
At least 18 people killed in demonstrations across Syria
At least 18 people were killed Saturday in demonstrations across Syria, while pro-regime protesters in Damascus attacked the French ambassador to Syria, Eric Chevallier, according to witnesses. ... An estimated 2,700 people have been killed, including at least 100 children, since the protests - calling for the ouster of al-Assad - started in mid-March, according to the United Nations. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe on Monday accused the Syrian regime of "crimes against humanity."
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AFGANISTAN:
Army private gets 7 years for murder of unarmed Afghan teen
Another member of the Army "kill team" accused of killing unarmed Afghan civilians for sport pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison Friday for the murder of a 15-year-old villager in southern Afghanistan. ... Five members of the former 5th Stryker Brigade have faced murder charges in connection with what military prosecutors say were staged attacks on Afghan villagers. In the attacks, prosecutors say, U.S. soldiers fired volleys of guns and grenades at innocent people and then planted weapons to make it look as though the victims had shot first. ... Holmes was described by friends and family as a friendly young man who arrived in Afghanistan at the age of 18 and found himself unable to challenge or report his older squad mates, especially his team leader, Spec. Jeremy Morlock. Morlock pleaded guilty earlier this year to involvement in three killings and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. ... Holmes, a resident of Boise, Idaho, pleaded guilty to murder without premeditation, possession of a finger bone taken from an Afghan corpse and illegal marijuana use.
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