Dr M To Deliver Address At Forum - BERNAMA
KUALA LUMPUR, March 19 (Bernama) — Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad will deliver a keynote address at the Forum and Exhibition on Gaza Genocide: Palestine Solution in London on March 31.
A joint effort by the foreign ministry and Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War, the event will be officiated by the minister, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.
“There is not enough in press reports to show what is happening (in Gaza). Thus, we feel we should make a special effort to expose the events in Gaza, through this forum,” Dr Mahathir told a media briefing on the event Thursday.
Influential speakers who have agreed to share their thoughts in the event are Cynthia McKinney (ex-candidate for the United States presidency), Sir Gerald Kaufman (British elected representative who is against the Gaza genocide) and Rabbi Cohen (a prominent rabbi who is vocally against Israel’s policy).
Others include Lauren Booth (a human rights activist) and Tony Benn (former British cabinet minister).
Meanwhile, Dr Rais who was also at the briefing, said this was one way to educate the world that the issue of Gaza should not be forgotten.
According to a statement issued by the ministry, the forum would be followed by a panel discussion chaired by Dr Rais on finding a permanent solution to the conflict.
Israel’s dirty secrets in Gaza - The Independent
Army veterans reveal how they gunned down innocent Palestinian families and destroyed homes and farms
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Israel was last night confronting a major challenge over the conduct of its 22-day military offensive in Gaza after testimonies by its own soldiers revealed that troops were allowed and, in some cases, even ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians.
The testimonies ? the first of their kind to emerge from inside the military ? are at marked variance with official claims that the military made strenuous efforts to avoid civilian casualties and tend to corroborate Palestinian accusations that troops used indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower in civilian areas during the operation. In one of the testimonies shedding harsh new light on what the soldiers say were the permissive rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead, one soldier describes how an officer ordered the shooting of an elderly woman 100 metres from a house commandeered by troops.
Another soldier, describing how a mother and her children were shot dead by a sniper after they turned the wrong way out of a house, says the “atmosphere” among troops was that the lives of Palestinians were “very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers”.
A squad leader said: “At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and ? I call it murder ? to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn’t run away.”
The accounts, which also describe apparently indiscriminate destruction of property, were given at a post-operation discussion by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course at the Oranim Academic College in northern Israel. The transcript of the session in front of the head of the course ? details from which were published by the newspaper Haaretz ? prompted the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) military advocate general Avichai Mendelblit yesterday to announce a military police investigation into the claims. Haaretz said the airing of the “dirty secrets” would make it more difficult for Israelis to dismiss the claims as Palestinian propaganda. The course principal, Danny Zamir, told the newspaper that after being “shocked” by the testimonies on 13 February he told the IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi he “feared a serious moral failure” in the IDF.
In one account, an infantry squad leader describes how troops released a family who had been held in a room of their house for several days. He said: “The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay… The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him. He shot them straight away. I don’t think he felt too bad about it, because, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to, the lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers.”
A second squad leader, who described the killing of the elderly woman, says he argued with his commander over loose rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, soldiers had complained that “we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist.” The squad leader said: “To write ‘death to the Arabs’ on walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics.”
Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, said: “I say to you that from the chief of staff down to the last soldier, the most moral army in the world stands ready to take orders from the government of Israel. I have no doubt that every incident will be individually examined.”
But Israeli human rights organisations, including B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, called for an independent investigation and complained that the military police inquiry had only been announced after Haaretz published the story, “three weeks after the relevant materials reached the Chief of the General Staff. This tardiness follows a pattern of failures to investigate suspicions of serious crimes”.
Amos Harel, the paper’s respected military correspondent who broke the story, wrote that Mr Zamir was sentenced in 1990 for refusing to guard a settlers’ ceremony at Joseph’s tomb in the West Bank. But he added that a reading of the transcript shows that Mr Zamir “acts out of a deep concern for the spirit of the IDF”.
In their own words: Soldiers’ stories
Squad leader Aviv
“At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and to ascend floor by floor and ? I call it murder ? to go from floor to floor and to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn’t run away. This frightened me a bit. I tried to influence it as much as possible, despite my low rank, to change it. In the end the directive was to go into a house, switch on loudspeakers and tell them ‘you have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn’t will be killed’.”
Soldier Ram
“There was an order to free the [confined] families. The platoon commander set free the family and told them to turn right. A mother and two children didn’t understand and turned left. [Officers] had forgotten to tell the sniper on the roof that they were being set free and that everything was okay and he should hold fire. You can say that he acted as he was supposed to, in accordance with the orders. The sniper saw a woman and children approaching him, past lines that no one was to be allowed to cross. He fired directly at them. I don’t know if he fired at their legs but in the end he killed them.”
Gaza: Lest We Forget
By Ahmad Barqawi
March 12, 2009
Source — “Information Clearing House”
Something happened in Gaza that shook the very core of my foundation & being; something that has fundamentally altered my perception of mankind in the 21st century; if this is what the “progress” & “evolution” of the human species have yielded so far; then I don’t even want to imagine what our fated future is holding in store for us. It gives me shudders to think that I am living in a day & age where rationalizing the bombing of unaided infants & children audaciously live on T.V. is just as effortless as opening a soda can, all you have to do is throw in broad & ambiguous justifications… -the most common one of course being “Fighting Terrorism”- & you’re automatically immune against the slightest form of protest, condemnation or even friendly critique.
The Viva Palestina convoy arrived to its final destination after a long & heroic journey leaving us emotionally jam-packed with feelings of gratitude not only as Arabs or supporters of the Palestinian cause but also as human beings for the flicker of hope this convoy has symbolized; that there is still goodness in humanity after all amid the never-ending injustice & cold materialism that seem to have become the most common characterization of our world as of late; a world that has gone a stray for more than 60 years turning its back on hundreds of thousands of all sort of massacres & atrocities in our region & elsewhere; a world that’s growing even more vile & prejudiced with each & every new American administration; with all do respect for president Obama & his promises of “hope & Change” (which I can assure you do not even remotely concern us & our righteous issues); but real hope & change can be found in everyone who contributed to the success of this convoy; from the organizers to the donors; the drivers; the loaders & even those who prayed for it to reach the people of Gaza; that’s real hope & change if you ask me.
This convoy left me wondering though; what about the Arab convoys? The Gaza aid conference held in Cairo is of course respectable & beneficial in theory & in its essence (& God knows better) but one can’t help but feel doubtful; that the declarations of pledged billons of dollars worth of aid & donations will never materialize; at least not in the foreseeable future, not to mention the problematic issues it raises about the rightful receiving end of these donations & the political conditions & prerequisites tied to it; especially in these times of global financial meltdowns; the notion that any country undergoing a likely long term severe recession & on the verge of a national economic failure will contribute these huge amounts of money for the rebuilding of Gaza without seeking political gains is preposterous & more laughable than laughter itself; especially that some of these donors played a questionable part (to say the least) in the war on the strip.
It’s not too hard nor too impossible for the Arab league to come up with a way to send available aids directly to the people of Gaza just like the Viva Palestina convoy; free of bogus bureaucratic non-sense as it should be; a severe humanitarian crisis ?which is worsening by the hour- calls for little room for dirty politics & more room for? well humanitarian work! sadly it is highly unlikely that this will happen; & that leaves us as Arabs with a feeling of amputation and emptiness as a part of this nation; are we allowed to turn our backs on what’s happening only few kilometers away from where we take our lavish lifestyle for granted? Of course we genuinely sympathize during news broadcasts; but alas it doesn’t go far beyond that most of the time; & we may find blood-tainted solace hidden in those demonic little moments where we secretly relish the fact that we’re not trapped in a land of starvation & conflict cursing those who would be assuming the exact same role we are so contently drowning in right now; People in Gaza everyday go to bed hungry, injured, sick, mutated, homeless, orphaned & widowed; the fact that it’s not always shown on TV does not mean that it’s not real; it is real & it happens on a daily basis but we’ve just become too self-absorbed to the point where we actually need a huge wake up call; one that is sadly as huge as the latest massacre in the strip just to grasp - for a while- the reality of the grave unjust befallen on our people of Palestine only to fall back again & silently wait for the next genocide.
What happened on 27th of last December has left little room for the imagination of what Israel can do packed up by the western camp & along with that; our denial has reached epidemic proportions or what some might call “Our terminal case of just not caring”.
The Arab league should’ve taken the chance & arranged for a similar aid convoy (or could’ve simply urged Egypt to open the Rafah border altogether) but instead we continue to severely imperil our already vulnerable portfolio of past verbal commitments to our cause & expose how helpless they are against forgetfulness.
I still wonder how many children tried to shake their parents awake?
Mr. President, Yes, You Could (An Open Letter to President Obama)
From Alan Hart
March 10, 2009
Dear President Obama,
In the teeth of Zionist lobby opposition, your decision to give veteran diplomat Charles W. Freeman the responsibility for producing the National Intelligence Estimate adds substance to the case for believing that you really do want to prevent this lobby from determining (more or less) your foreign policy agenda as it relates to ending the Israel-Palestine conflict and, beyond that, winning what your predecessor called “the war against global terrorism”. The world, and not least the Jews of the world, needs you to be successful in this effort. In my assessment your chances of success will be greatly improved if you are prepared to look one Great Truth in the face. It is that Israel’s political and military leaders are not interested (and never have been) in peace on any terms the vast majority of Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept.
I emphasized leaders in the sentence above to indicate my belief that, for policy making purposes, a distinction must be made between Israel’s leaders and most if not all of the Jewish citizens of Israel, the voters. A related Great Truth is that they, too, have been brainwashed by Zionist propaganda. I mean that it was not only the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world that was conditioned by Zionism’s spin doctors to believe that poor little Israel has lived in constant danger of annihilation - the “driving into the sea” of its Jews. The Jews of Israel were also fed the same propaganda nonsense by their leaders.
As I document in my book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, (the American edition of Volume One is being published by Clarity Press in April with the sub-title The False Messiah), Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab military force. Not in 1948. Not in 1956. Not in 1967. And not even in 1973. Zionism’s assertion to the contrary was the cover that allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most, in America and Western Europe, with presenting its aggression as self-defense and itself as the victim when actually it was, and is, the oppressor.
Since you, Mr. President, are unlikely to have the time to read my book (even if you had the inclination), I’d like you to be aware of one tiny fragment of its substance. It’s at the end of the Prologue to Volume One which is titled Waiting for the Apocalypse. I quote from a conversation I had in 1980 with then retired Major General Shlomo Gazit, the best and the brightest of Israel’s Directors of Military Intelligence. Over coffee one morning when I was the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, I took a very deep breath and said to Shlomo: “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all a myth. Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger.” Through a sad smile, he replied, “The trouble with us Israelis is that we’ve become the victims of our own propaganda.” Later I tell my readers there were times during the writing of the book when the Gentile me wanted to cry out with the pain of knowing how much the Jews of Israel (as well as the Jews of the world) have been deceived by their leaders.
In my assessment there is not a snowball’s chance in hell of solving the Palestine problem, curing the cancer at the heart of international affairs before it consumes us all, unless and until enough Israelis, by definition a majority of them, are assisted to understand that peace based on justice for the Palestinians and security for all Jews now living in Israel-Palestine is there for the taking. If they could be convinced of that, there would, surely, be a good chance of them insisting that their deluded leaders make peace not war without end.
The question arising is what could you do, Mr. President, to arrange things to give most if not all Jews in Israel-Palestine good reason to believe that peace based on security for them and an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians is available?
You’ve made a good start by authorizing a dialogue with Syria. I say that assuming you’re not running an agenda which is premised on the expectation that in exchange for the return of the Golan Heights, Syria can be prevailed upon to become, like Eygpt and Jordan, an American-and-Israeli stooge. I can tell you that a separate Israel-Syria peace was Arafat’s “nightmare”. In my last conversation with him before he was murdered (do you know that he was most probably the first victim of Israeli biological warfare?), he said that a separate Israel-Syria peace could result in Syria, to please America and Israel, working with Jordan and Eygpt to oblige the Palestinians to accept whatever crumbs the Zionist state was prepared to offer them. And worse still in that scenario, Arafat added, was the probability that if the Palestinians refused to accept the crumbs on offer, Syria would be complicit with Jordan, Eygpt and Israel in eliminating any further possibility of Palestinian resistance to Zionism’s iron fist and will.
That said, I am assuming that you, Mr. President, are wise enough to know that peace, if it is to be real and enduring, must be a comprehensive one. (And therefore that a separate Israel-Syria peace could well create more problems than it solved).
In that context bringing Syria in from the cold is a good start but it’s not enough. You must also bring Iran into the peace making process.
The fact that Damascus has influence with Hamas and Tehran has influence with Hizbollah and Hamas is not really the point. Neither Hamas nor Hizbollah need their arms twisted by their friends to make peace with Israel on terms which any rational government and people in Israel would accept with relief.
As I’m sure Ambassador Freeman will confirm if you don’t already know, Hamas’s real position has been a matter of record for some time. I often put it this way. If tomorrow Israel said and meant that it was ready for final negotiations on the basis of its withdrawal to the borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war (give or take some mutually agreed and minor border modifications), and with Jerusalem an open city and the capital of two states, Hamas’s leaders would say, “Let’s do the business”. And they would mean it because they are not stupid. They know that a genuine and viable two-state solution is still what the vast majority of Palestinians are prepared to settle for. (Though for how much longer that will remain the case is a good question).
Also true (I’m sure Ambassador Freeman could confirm this, too) is that Hizbollah’s real position is known. It is prepared to accept whatever the Palestinians accept.
And that is also what could be described as Iran’s fallback position, fallback because Iran’s preferred solution is the complete de-Zionisation of Palestine, otherwise known as the One State Solution - one secular, democratic state in which Arabs and Jews enjoyed equal political, other civil and human rights. (As you may or may not know, Mr. President, Iran’s Ahmadinejad never called for Israel to be “wiped off the face of the earth”. Those words, which were not the words he used, obviously implied that he did want Israel’s Jews to be driven into the sea. What he actually said was that he wished to see the Zionist colonial entity “vanish from the pages of history” in the same way as the Soviet Union vanished. The notion that he called for Jews now living in Israel-Palestine to be liquidated was and is nothing but Zionist propaganda nonsense which, unfortunately, the mainstream Israeli-occupied American media was happy to promote as truth).
So here, Mr. President, is what I think you should do. Give your diplomats the authority to talk honestly and openly with all parties to the conflict including Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran. By so doing you could establish that what I’ve summarised above is true - that the whole Arab world and Iran is ready, willing and able to make peace with Israel on terms which, to repeat, any rational government and people in Israel would accept with relief.
Once you had established that fact, you could go to Israel and tell its Jewish citizens the truth and that they have a real choice to make.
If I was writing your speech for that occasion, I would have you tell Israel’s Jews that they need to make the right decision not only for their own self-interest but also for the continued wellbeing of the Jews of the world. And I’d have you reinforcing that point by quoting Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest-serving and universally respected Director of Military Intelligence. In his seminal book, Israel’s Fateful Hour, published in 1986, he wrote these warning words:
“Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.”
More than two decades on, I think it could and should be said (and I would seek to persuade you, Mr. President, to say it), that Israel’s “misconduct” has become the prime factor in the rise of anti-Semitism.
In engagements with Israel’s Jews you would have to address their three main fears. They are not rational fears, but they are nonetheless real fears in minds that have been closed to reason by Zionist propaganda.
One fear is in the belief that a Palestinian mini-state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would pose an unacceptable and perhaps unmanageable threat to Israel’s security and even its existence. The reason why this is complete and utter nonsense was given to me by Yasser Arafat. He said, “Alan, we Palestinians are really not that stupid!” What he meant and went on to say was that if a Palestinian mini-state was in existence, and if from it Palestinian rejectors of compromise attacked Israel, there would come a point (if the Palestinian government did not stop the attacks) when the Israeli army would roll over the mini state’s borders and crush it out of existence, and would do so with the understanding if not the full approval of the whole world. Arafat then asked me this question. “Do you really believe that after struggling for so many years against impossible odds to achieve an acceptable minimum of justice, we Palestinians would then give Israel the pretext to take away for all of time what we had gained?” I replied: “No, I don’t believe that, and nor should any person of sound mind.”
Another fear that could be explained away if the minds of Israel’s Jews were open to reason concerns the return of the Palestinian refugees - those and the descendents of those who were dispossessed of their land, their homes and their rights by, mainly, Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing in the months immediately before and after Israel’s unilateral declaration of the independence. Zionism has always insisted that the return of the refugees to all of what was once Palestine is an insurmountable obstacle to peace because it would swamp the Israel of a two-state solution and end its existence as a Jewish state by numbers (by peaceful means). The fact is that the return of Palestinian refugees ceased to be an insurmountable obstacle to peace many years ago. As far back as the early 1980’s, the pragmatism of Arafat and his mainstream PLO leadership colleagues went as far as understanding and accepting that, in territorial terms, the return would have to be limited to the land of the Palestinian mini-state. They even worked out approximately how many refugees would be able to return. The number was not greatly in excess of 100,000. The rest, several millions, would have to settle for financial compensation and, for their heritage and dignity, a Palestinian passport. The problem at the time Arafat and his leadership colleagues decided that they’d got to make this unthinkable concession to the reality of Israel’s existence was that they could not say so publicly - because they knew they could not sell it to their people without some real proof that Israel was going to negotiate a genuine and viable two-state solution in good faith. That never happened. Israel has never negotiated in good faith.
And then, of course, there’s the fear of Israel being annihilated by a nuclear-armed Iran, a fear that is currently being reinforced and exploited to the full by Israel’s deluded leaders and the Zionist lobby in America and elsewhere. I don’t know if Iran wants to possess an atom bomb, but so what if it does and actually succeeds in producing one or some? Israel is and will remain the military and nuclear-armed superpower of the region. It has considerably in excess of 300 nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them, and hundreds of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons. In my view only leaders deluded to the point of clinical madness could imagine that a nuclear-armed Iran would initiate a first strike on Israel. To do so would be to invite the certain destruction of all of Iran. None of its present leaders are, and none of its future leaders will be, so stupid. The real problem for Israel’s political and military leaders is that Iran’s possession of an atomic bomb would greatly limit and perhaps end their ability to impose Zionism’s will on the region.
Mr. President, what I’ve been trying to say comes down to this. The only real obstacle to peace in the Middle East is in the fact that Israel’s Jews, most but not all of them, are beyond reason. Against the ever present background of the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, it’s the way they’ve been conditioned to be by their Zionist leaders. You, Mr. President, are uniquely placed to gather and then present to Israel’s Jews the evidence that could open their minds to reason - to an understanding that peace is there for the taking if they are prepared to insist that their leaders negotiate in good faith.
Can you do that, Mr. President? Yes, you could. If you did and brought the longest running conflict in all of human history to an end, you would not only save Israel from itself and stop the countdown to Armageddon, you would go down in history, (even if the American economy collapsed around you, which would not be your fault), as the greatest of all American presidents.
So no more “Yes, we can” or even “Yes, I can”. Let’s have “Yes, I will.” As Winston Churchill used to say, carpe diem. (I think the American equivalent is step up to the plate).
With truly respectful best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Alan Hart
source: Information Clearing House (http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22188.htm)
Gaza greets George Galloway as a hero - Times Online
George Galloway was given a triumphant welcome today as he led an aid convoy into the impoverished Gaza Strip after a month-long journey across Europe and North Africa to the Hamas-ruled enclave.
Having been made to wait for a day at the southern Rafah border crossing by Egyptian authorities, the staunchly pro-Palestinian independent MP for Bethnal Green was finally allowed into the blockaded territory, where he was handed flowers and kissed by Palestinian well-wishers.
Mr Galloway and his companions fell to their knees and bowed to the ground as they walked in.
“I have entered Palestine many times but the most emotional of these is after the 22-day genocidal aggression against the Palestinian people,” he said, referring to Israel’s offensive to end Palestinian rocket fire and smash Hamas.
The Scottish politician had been stuck on the border at Rafah as he haggled with Egyptian authorities who had refused to allow entry to ambulances, a fire engine and food aid he was bringing in with his Lifeline to Gaza convoy.
Egypt has signed an agreement with Israel to keep tight controls on the border, and in any case is no friend of Hamas, which is linked to its own Muslim Brotherhood opposition, or of Mr Galloway, who has publicly called for the army to overthrow Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s authoritarian president.
One of the convoy organisers said the £1 million aid shipment had been stoned and vandalised at the Egyptian town of Al Arish, close to the Gaza border, and several of its members injured. “It’s an absolute disgrace,” Yvonne Ridley said. “The power was
cut. During cover of darkness members of our convoy were attacked with stones. Vandals also wrote dirty words and anti-Hamas slogans.”
Gaza is in desperate need of aid, and despite pledges of billions of dollars in aid made by the international community at a donors’ conference last week, only the bare minimum of survival rations are being allowed in by Israel and Egypt.
In the Gaza suburb of Hay al-Salaam, one of the worst hit areas in the Israeli offensive, some families are living in ragged shacks on the rooftops of their crumpled apartment blocks, looking out over a wasteland of tents where their relatives and
neighbours now live in absolute poverty.
“I lost 30 years of my life in this house,” said Ziad Khadr, 45, who built a hovel of tarpaulin, planks and cardboard boxes on top of the four-storey apartment block he built for himself and his children.
The building, including the supermarket that provided the family livelihood, is now a pile of rubble.
“All my savings I put in this house,” he said, looking out over the neighbourhood of crushed apartment blocks and tents. Even the mosque was destroyed, now replaced by a long tent. Pointing to a small plastic tub where his children wash, he said that his
middle-class family had once had a Jacuzzi and private bathrooms. “Now they are lucky if they wash once a week,” he said.
His family has nowhere else to go, and is tied to the site by a lifetime of memories. They sit outside the hut on plastic chairs, shaded from sun and rain by a broken satellite dish turned into an umbrella
“They take your past, your present and your future,” said Mr Khadr.
Other destroyed houses nearby have been abandoned, their owners’ names and mobile phone numbers spray painted on the smashed concrete to allow aid agencies to contact the refugees for handouts.
Gaza was once a vast refugee camp after the 1948 war of Israel independence: those tent cities gradually solidified into shanty towns. Now the Israeli offensive has reduced some areas back to their grim origins.
Not far from Mr Khadr’s smashed house, huge swathes of industrial sites and factories have been systematically destroyed by Israeli warplanes and sappers, leading many Palestinians to accuse Israel of waging economic warfare against Gaza.
Across Gaza City, policemen have returned to duty but sit in the ruins of their police stations.
Despite the aid pledges, almost no cement has been allowed into Israel for close to two years. Ihab al-Ghusain, an interior ministry spokesman, said that even if materials were allowed, Hamas probably would not bother rebuilding its police stations. “We
know the Israelis will come and target it again,” he said.
Hamas officials say that they won the war, since Israel has failed in its stated war aims of ending militant rocket fire and toppling the Islamist regime. And a poll released today showed that Hamas’ popularity has only grown since the fighting,
with its leader Ismail Haniyah receiving the support of 47 per cent of Palestiniansto just 45 percent for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah leader.
America’s Fiscal Collapse
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 2, 2009
“We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger”
(President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address 24 Feb 2009)
“Those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account?to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day?because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.” President Barack Obama, A New Era of Responsibility, the 2010 Budget)
“Strong economic medicine” with a “human face”
“Promise amid peril.” The stated priorities of the Obama economic package are health, education, renewable energy, investment in infrastructure and transportation. “Quality education” is at the forefront. Obama has also promised to “make health care more affordable and accessible”, for every American.
At first sight, the budget proposal has all the appearances of an expansionary program, a demand oriented “Second New Deal” geared towards creating employment, rebuilding shattered social programs and reviving the real economy.
Obama’s promise is based on a mammoth austerity program. The entire fiscal structure is shattered, turned upside down.
To reach these stated objectives, a significant hike in public spending on social programs (health, education, housing, social security) would be required as well as the implementation of a large scale public investment program. Major shifts in the composition of public expenditure would also be required: i.e. a move out of a war economy, requiring a movement out of military related spending in favour of civilian programs.
In actuality, what we are dealing with is the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history, leading to social havoc and the potential impoverishment of millions of people.
The Obama promise largely serves the interests of Wall Street, the defence contractors and the oil conglomerates. In turn, the Bush-Obama bank “bailouts” are leading America into a spiralling public debt crisis. The economic and social dislocations are potentially devastating.
Obama’s budget submitted to Congress on February 26, 2009 envisages outlays for the 2010 fiscal year (commencing October 1st 2009) of $3.94 trillion, an increase of 32 percent. Total government revenues for the 2010 fiscal year, according to preliminary estimates by the Bureau of Budget, are of the order of $2.381 trillion.
The predicted budget deficit (according to the president’s speech) is of the order of $1.75 trillion, almost 12 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product.
War and Wall Street
This is a “War Budget”. The austerity measures hit all major federal spending programs with the exception of: 1. Defence and the Middle East War: 2. the Wall Street bank bailout, 3. Interest payments on a staggering public debt.
The budget diverts tax revenues into financing the war. It legitimizes the fraudulent transfers of tax dollars to the financial elites under the “bank bailouts”.
The pattern of deficit spending is not expansionary. We are not dealing with a Keynesian style deficit, which stimulates investment and consumer demand, leading to an expansion of production and employment.
The “bank bailouts” (involving several initiatives financed by tax dollars) constitute a component of government expenditure. Both the Bush and Obama bank bailouts are hand outs to major financial institutions. They do not not constitute a positive spending injection into the real economy. Quite the opposite. The bailouts contribute to financing the restructuring of the banking system leading to a massive concentration of wealth and centralization of banking power.
A large part of the bailout money granted by the Us government will be transferred electronically to various affiliated accounts including the hedge funds. The largest banks in the US will also use this windfall cash to buy out their weaker competitors, thereby consolidating their position. The tendency, therefore, is towards a new wave of corporate buyouts, mergers and acquisitions in the financial services industry.
In turn, the financial elites will use these large amounts of liquid assets (paper wealth), together with the hundreds of billions acquired through speculative trade, to buy out real economy corporations (airlines, the automobile industry, Telecoms, media, etc ), whose quoted value on the stock markets has tumbled.
In essence, a budget deficit ( combined with massive cuts in social programs) is required to fund the handouts to the banks as well as finance defence spending and the military surge in the Middle East war. Obama’s budget envisages:
1. defense spending of $534 billion for 2010, a supplemental 130 billion dollar appropriation for fiscal 2010 for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a supplemental $75.5 billion emergency war funding for the rest of the 2009 fiscal year. Defence spending and the Middle East war, with various supplemental budgets, is (officially) of the order of 739.5 billion. Some estimates place aggregate defence and military related spending at $ 1 trillion+.
2. A bank bailout of the order of $750 billion announced by Obama, which is added on to the 700 billion dollar bailout money already allocated by the outgoing Bush administration under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The total of both programs is a staggering 1.45 trillion dollars to be financed by the Treasury. It should be understood that the actual amount of cash financial “aid” to the banks is significantly larger than $1.45 trillion. (See Table 2 below).
3. Net Interest on the outstanding public debt is estimated by the Bureau of the Budget) at $164 billion in 2010.
The order of magnitude of these allocations is staggering. Under a “balanced budget” criterion –which has been a priority of government economic policy since the Reagan era–, almost all the revenues of the federal government amounting to $2.381 trillion would be used to finance the bank bailout (1.45 trillion), the war ($739 billion) and interest payments on the public debt ($164 billion). In other words, no money would be left over for other categories of public expenditure.
TABLE 1 Budgetary allocations to Defence (FY 2009 and 2010), the Bank Bailout and Net Interests on the Public Debt (FY 2010)
$ Billions
Defence including Supplementary allocations; $534 billion (FY 2010), $130 billion supplemental (FY 2010), $75.5 billion emergency funding (FY2009)
739.5
*Bank bailout (TARP plus Obama) 1450.0
Net Interest 164.0
TOTAL 2353.5
Total Individual (Federal) Income Tax Revenues (FY 2010) 1061.0
Total Federal Government Revenue (FY 2010) 2381.0
Source: Bureau of the Budget and official statements. See A New Era of Responsibility: The 2010 Budget
See also Office of Management and Budget
* The officially announced bank bailouts to be financed from Treasury Funds. The timing of disbursements could take place over more than one fiscal years fiscal years. The actual value of bank bailout cash injections is substantially higher.
The Budget Deficit
These three categories of expenditure (Defence, Bank Bailout and Interest on the Public Debt) would virtually swallow up the entire 2010 federal government revenue of 2381.0. billion dollars
Moreover, as a basis of comparison, all the revenue accruing from individual federal income taxes ($1.061 trillion), (FY 2010) namely all the money households across America pay in the form of federal taxes, will not suffice to finance the handouts to the banks, which officially are of the order of 1.45 trillion. This amount includes the $ 700 billion (granted during FY 2009) under the TARP program plus the proposed $ 750 billion granted by the Obama administration.
While TARP and Obama’s proposed bailout are to be disbursed over Fy 2009 and 2010, they nonetheless represent almost half of total government expenditure (half of Obama’s $3.94 trillion budget for fiscal 2010), which is financed by regular sources of revenue ($2381 billion) plus a staggering $1.75 trillion budget deficit, which ultimately requires the issuing of Treasury Bills and government bonds.
The feasibility of a large short-term expansion of the public debt at a time of crisis is yet another matter, particularly with interest rates at abysmally low levels.
The budget deficit is of the order of 1.75 trillion. Obama acknowledges a 1.3 trillion-dollar budget deficit, inherited from the Bush administration. In actuality, the budget deficit is much larger .
The official figures tend to underestimate the seriousness of the budgetary predicament. The $1.75 trillion dollar budget deficit figure is questionable because the various amounts disbursed under TARP and other related bank bailouts including Obama’s announced $750 billion aid program to financial institutions are not acknowledged in the government’s expenditure accounts.
“The aid hasn’t been requested formally, but appears in a line item “for potential additional financial stabilization efforts,” according to the budget overview. The budget office calculated a $250 billion net cost to taxpayers this year, because it anticipates it would eventually recoup some, though not all, of the money expended to help financial companies.
The funds would come on top of the $700 billion rescue package approved last October by Congress. The White House budgets no money for fiscal 2010 and beyond for such aid.” (Bloomberg, February 27, 2010)
Fiscal Collapse
A major crisis of the federal fiscal structure is occurring. The multibillion dollar allocations to the War Budget and to the Wall Street Bank Bailout program backlash on all other categories of public expenditure.
The Bush administration’s $ 700 billion bailout under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was approved by Congress in October. TARP is but the tip of the iceberg. A panoply of bailout allocations in addition to the $ 700 billion were decided upon prior to Obama assuming office. In November, the federal government’s bank rescue program was estimated at a staggering 8.5 trillion dollars, an amount equivalent to more than 60% of the US public debt estimated at 14 trillion (2007). (See table 2 below)
Meanwhile, under the Obama budget proposal, 634 billion dollars are allocated to a reserve fund to finance universal health care. At first sight, it appears to be a large amount. But it is to be spent over a ten year period, — i.e. a modest annual commitment of 63.4 billion.
Public spending will be slashed with a view to curtailing a spiralling budget deficit. Health and education programs will not only remain heavily underfunded, they will be slashed, revamped and privatized. The likely outcome is the outright privatization of public services and the sale of State assets including public infrastructure, urban services, highways, national parks, etc. Fiscal collapse leads to the privatization of the State.
The fiscal crisis is further exacerbated by the compression of tax revenues resulting from decline of the real economy. Unemployed workers do not pay taxes nor do bankrupt firms. The process is cumulative. The solution to the fiscal crisis becomes the cause of further collapse.
Structure of The Public Debt
This large scale appropriation of liquid money assets under the bank bailouts by a handful of financial institutions serves to increase the public debt overnight.
When the US Treasury allocates 700 billion dollars to the Troubled Assets Relief Program, this amount constitutes a budgetary outlay which inevitably must be financed from within the structure of government revenues and expenditures.
Unless all other categories of public expenditure including health, education and social services are slashed, the various outlays under the bank bailout will require running a massive budget deficit which in turn will increase the US public debt.
America is the most indebted country on earth. The US (federal government) public debt is currently of the order of $14 trillion. This does not include mounting public debts at the state and municipal levels.
This US dollar denominated (federal) debt is composed of outstanding treasury bills and government bonds. The public debt, also called “the national debt” is the amount of money owed by the federal government to holders of U.S. debt instruments.
US debt instruments are held by American residents as part of their savings portfolio, companies and financial institutions, US government agencies, foreign governments, individuals in foreign countries. but does not include intergovernmental debt obligations or debt held in the Social Security Trust Fund. Types of securities held by the public include, but are not limited to, Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, United States Savings Bonds, and State and Local Government Series securities.
The proposed solution becomes the cause of the crisis. The 700 billion bailout under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) combined with the proposed Obama $750 billion aid to financial services industry is but the tip of the iceberg. A panoply of bailout allocations in addition to the 700 billion have been decided upon.
Table 2
The Bush Administration’s ” Bank Bailout”
The government’s bank rescue program under the Bush administration was estimated at a staggering 8.5 trillion dollars, an amount equivalent to 60% of the Total Gross Federal debt of 14.078 trillion (2010) (See Table 2 above). This amount does not include the “aid” to financial institutions proposed by the Obama administration, including an additional 750 billion dollars in Obama’s February 2009 budget proposal. The size of these allocations of liquid assets endangers the very structures of the fiscal and monetary system.
The total of Bush bank bailouts (8.5 trillion) can be broken down into funds granted by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Authority.
The handouts to the financial institutions financed out of Treasury are government expenditures, to be met either through tax revenues or through the emission of public debt instruments.
The disbursements under TARP are categorized by the Bureau of the Budget as part of “a mandatory program” under an Act of the US Congress.. The Treasury’s liability, which includes the controversial Troubled Assets Relief Program, was estimated in November 2008 at 1.1 trillion dollars. (See Table 2) Further Treasury allocations, which serve to heighten the burden of the public debt have been envisaged by the Obama administration
Spiralling Public Debt Crisis
Is the Treasury in a position to finance this mounting budget deficit officially tagged at 1.75 billion through the emission of Treasury bills and government bonds?
The largest budget deficit in US history coupled with the lowest interest rates in US history: With the Fed’s ” near zero” percent discount rate, the markets for US dollar denominated government bonds and Treasury bills are in straightjacket. Moreover, the essential functions of savings (which is central to the functioning of a national economy) is in crisis. .
Who wants to invest in US government debt? What is the demand for Treasury bills at exceedingly low interest rates?
Table 3 Interest Rates in Percent
Treasury securities Updated 2/25/2009
This week Month ago Year ago
One-Year Treasury Constant Maturity 0.64 0.43 2.10
91-day T-bill auction avg disc rate 0.300 0.150 2.160
182-day T-bill auction avg disc rate 0.495 0.350 2.070
Two-Year Treasury Constant Maturity 0.95 0.77 2.04
Five-Year Treasury Constant Maturity 1.79 1.58 2.89
Ten-Year Treasury Constant Maturity 2.75 2.56 3.85
One-Year MTA 1.633 1.823 4.326
One-Year CMT (Monthly) 0.44 0.49 2.71
Source Bankrate.com
The market for US dollar denominated debt instruments is potentially at a standstill, which means that the Treasury lacks the ability to finance its mammoth budget deficit through public debt operations, leading the entire budgetary process into a quandary.
The question is whether China and Japan will continue to purchase US dollar denominated debt instruments. Washington is running a public relations campaign to lure Asian investors into buying T-bills and US government bonds. .
With the markets for US dollar denominated debt (both domestically and internationally) in crisis, further pressure will be exerted on the Treasury to slash (civilian) public expenditure to the bone, exact user fees for public services and sell off public assets, including State infrastructure and institutions. In all likelihood, this crisis is leading us to the privatization of the State, where activities hitherto under government jurisdiction will be transferred into private hands.
Who will be buying State assets at rock bottom prices? The financial elites, which are also the recipients of the bank bailout.
Consolidation of the Banks
A massive amount of liquidity has been injected into the financial system, from the bailouts but also from pension funds, individual savings, etc.
The stated objective of the bank bailout programs is to alleviate the banks’ burden of bad debts and non-performing loans. In actuality what is happening is that these massive amounts of money are being used by a handful of institutions to consolidate their position in global banking.
The exposure of the banks, largely the result of derivative trade, is estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars, to the extent that the amounts and guarantees granted by the Treasury and the Fed will not resolve the crisis. Nor are they intended to resolve the crisis.
The mainstream media suggests that the banks are being nationalized as a result of TARP, In fact, it is exactly the opposite: the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized. The establishment of a Worldwide unipolar financial system is part of the broader project of the Wall Street financial elites to establish the contours of a world government.
In a bitter irony, the recipients of the bailout under TARP and Obama’s proposed $750 billion aid to financial institutions are the creditors of the federal government. The Wall Street banks are the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt, although they hold only a portion of the debt, they transact and trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments Worldwide.
They act as creditors of the US State. They evaluate the creditworthiness of the US government, they rank the public debt through Moody’s and Standard and Poor. They control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board and the US Congress. They oversee and dictate fiscal and monetary policy, ensuring that the State acts in their interest.
Since the Reagan era, Wall Street dominates most areas of economic and social policy. It sets the budgetary agenda, ensuring the curtailment of social expenditures. Wall Street preaches balanced budgets but the practice has been lobbying for the elimination of corporate taxes, the granting of handouts to corporations, tax write-offs in mergers and acquisitions etc, all of which lead to a spiralling public debt.
Circular and Contradictory Relationship
The Federal Reserve system is a privately owned central bank. While the Federal Reserve Board is a government body, the process of money creation is controlled by the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, which are privately owned.
The shareholders of the Federal Reserve banks (with the New York Federal Reserve Bank playing a dominant role) are among America’s most powerful financial institutions.
While the Federal Reserve can create money “out of thin air”, the multibillion outlays of the Treasury (including the TARP program) will require the emission of public debt in the form of Treasury Bills and government bonds.
US financial institutions oversee the US public debt. They are involved in the sale of treasury bills and government bonds on financial markets in the US and around the World. But they also hold part of the public debt. In this regard, they are the creditors of the US government. Part of this increased public debt required to rescue the banks will be financed or brokered by the same financial institutions which are the object of the bank rescue plan.
We are dealing with a pernicious circular relationship. When the banks pressured the Treasury to assist them in the form of a major bank rescue operation, it was understood from the outset that the banks would in turn assist the Treasury in financing the handouts of which they are the recipients.
To finance the bank bailout, the Treasury needs to run a massive budget deficit, which in turn requires a staggering increase of the US public debt.
Public opinion has been misled. The US government is in a sense financing its own indebtedness: the money granted to the banks is in part financed by borrowing from the banks.
The banks lend money to the government and with the money they lend the government, the Treasury finances the bailout. In turn, the banks impose conditionalities on the management of the US public debt. They dictate how the money should be spent. They impose fiscal responsibility, they dictate massive cuts in social expenditures which result in the collapse and/or privatization of public services. They impose the privatization of urban infrastructure, roads, sewer and water systems, public recreational areas, everything is up for privatization.
The recipient banks are the beneficiaries as well as the creditors. As creditors, they will oblige the government a) to slash expenditures b) to run up the public debt through the issuing of treasury bills and government bonds.
This public debt crisis is all the more serious because the US federal government does not control monetary policy. All public debt operations go through the Federal reserve, which is in charge of monetary policy, acting on behalf of private financial interests. The government as such has no authority over money creation. This means that public debt operations essentially serve the interests of the banks.
Continuity from Bush to Obama
The Obama stimulus program constitutes a continuation of the Bush administration’s bank bailout packages. The proposed policy solution to the crisis becomes the cause, ultimately resulting in further real economy bankruptcies and a corresponding collapse of the standard of living of Americans.
Both the Bush and Obama bank bailouts are intended to come to the rescue of troubled financial institutions, to ensure the payment of “inter-bank” debt operations. In practice, large amounts of money transit through the banking system, from the banks to the hedge funds, to offshore banking havens and back to the banks.
The government and the media tend to focus on the ambiguous notion of ” inter-bank debts”. The identity of the creditors is rarely mentioned.
Multi-billion dollar transfers are conducted electronically from one financial entity to another. Where is the money going? Who is collecting these multibillion debts, which are in large part the consequence of financial manipulation and derivative trade?
There are indications that the financial institutions are transferring billions of dollars into their affiliated hedge funds. From these hedge funds they can then channel money capital towards the acquisition of real assets.
Through what circuitous financial mechanisms were these debts created? Where is the bailout money going? Who is cashing in on the multibillion dollar government bailout money? This process is contributing to an unprecedented concentration of private wealth.
Concluding Remarks
Financial manipulation is an integral part of the New World Order. It constitutes a powerful means to accumulate wealth.
Under the present political arrangement, those responsible for monetary policy are quite deliberately serving the interests of the financiers, to the detriment of working people, leading to economic dislocation, unemployment and mass poverty.
This article has focussed on how financial manipulation has served to shatter the structure of US public expenditure.
More generally, this restructuring of global financial markets and institutions (alongside the pillage of national economies) has enabled the accumulation of vast amounts of private wealth ? a large portion of which has been amassed as a result of strictly speculative transactions.
This critical drain of billions of dollars of household savings and state tax revenues paralyses the functions of government spending and spurs the accumulation of a public debt, which can no longer be be financed through the emission of US dollar denominated debt.
What we are dealing with is the fraudulent transfer and confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the fraudulent appropriation of tax revenues to finance the bank bailouts, etc. To understand what has happened: follow the money trail of electronic transfers with a view to establishing where the money has gone.
The monetary system, which is integrated into the State budgetary process has been destabilized. The fundamental relationship between the monetary system and the real economy is in crisis.
The creation of money “out of thin air” threatens the value of the US dollar as an international currency. Similarly, the financing of a mammoth US budget deficit through dollar denominated debt instruments is impaired as a result of exceedingly low interest rates. Moreover, the process of household savings is undermined with interest rates close to zero.
What we have dealt with in this article is one central aspect of an evolving process of global financial collapse.
The international payments system is in crisis. The economic prospects are terrifying. Bankruptcies in the US, Canada, the European Union are occurring at an alarming rate. Country level exports have collapsed, leading to a contraction of international trade Reports from the Asian economies indicate a massive increase in unemployment. In China’s Pearl River basin in Southern Guangdong province’s industrial export processing economy, some 700,000 workers were laid off in January. (China Morning Post, Feb 6, 2009). In Japan, industrial output has collapsed by more than 20 percent since December. In the Philippines, a country of 90 million people, exports collapsed by more than 40 percent in December.
Financial Disarmament
There are no solutions under the prevailing global financial architecture. Meaningful policies cannot be achieved without radically reforming the workings of the international banking system.
What is required is an overhaul of the monetary system including the functions and ownership of the central bank, the arrest and prosecution of those involved in financial fraud both in the financial system and in governmental agencies, the freeze of all accounts where fraudulent transfers have been deposited, the cancellation of debts resulting from fraudulent trade and/or market manipulation.
People across the land, nationally and internationally, must mobilize. This struggle to democratise the financial and fiscal apparatus must be broad-based and democratic encompassing all sectors of society at all levels, in all countries. What is ultimately required is to disarm the financial establishment:
-confiscate those assets which were obtained through fraud and financial manipulation.
-restore the savings of households through reverse transfers
-return the bailout money to the Treasury, freeze the activities of the hedge funds. .
- freeze the gamut of speculative transactions including short-selling and derivative trade.
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ANNEX
Documents
Budget of the United States Government
Fiscal Year 2010 The Budget Documents
A New Era of Responsibility: The 2010 Budget
The tables contained in Annex can also be consulted by clicking:
Summary Tables
See also:
http://www.budget.gov
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/fy10-newera.pdf
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The Economic Depression was predicted in this 2002 best-seller
The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
by Michel Chossudovsky
In this new and expanded edition of Chossudovsky’s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty.
This book is a skillful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.
In this new enlarged edition ?which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction– the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation.
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Published in 13 languages. More than 150,000 copies sold Worldwide.
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Israel may face war crimes trials over Gaza
Peter Beaumont and agencies
The Guardian, Monday 2 March 2009
The international criminal court is considering whether the Palestinian Authority is “enough like a state” for it to bring a case alleging that Israeli troops committed war crimes in the recent assault on Gaza.
The deliberations would potentially open the way to putting Israeli military commanders in the dock at The Hague over the campaign, which claimed more than 1,300 lives, and set an important precedent for the court over what cases it can hear.
As part of the process the court’s head of jurisdictions, part of the office of the prosecutor, is examining every international agreement signed by the PA to decide whether it behaves - and is regarded by others - as operating like a state.
Following talks with the Arab League’s head, Amr Moussa, and senior PA officials, moves have accelerated inside the court to deliver a ruling on whether it may be able to insist on jurisdiction over alleged war crimes perpetrated in Gaza, with a decision from the prosecutor’s office expected within “months, not years”.
The issue arises because although the ICC potentially has “global jurisdiction” to investigate crimes which fall into its remit no matter where they were committed, Israel - despite having signed the Rome statute that founded the court and having expressed “deep sympathy” with the court’s goals - is not a party.
The ICC, which has 108 member states, has not so far recognised Palestine as a sovereign state or as a member.
The latest moves in The Hague come amid mounting international pressure on Israel and a growing recognition in Israeli government circles that it may eventually have to defend itself against war crimes allegations. The Guardian has also learned that a confidential inquiry by the International Committee of the Red Cross into the actions of Israel and Hamas during the recent conflict in Gaza is expected to accuse Israel of using “excessive force” - prohibited under the fourth Geneva convention.
The Red Cross has been collecting information for two parallel inquiries, one into the conduct of Israel and a second into Hamas, both of which will be presented in private to the parties involved.
In the case of Israel, the Red Cross is expected to highlight three areas of concern: the Israeli Defence Forces’ “use and choice of weapons in a complex and densely populated environment”; the issue of “proportionality”; and concerns over the IDF’s lack of distinction between combatants and non-combatants during Operation Cast Lead. Hamas is likely to be challenged over its use of civilian facilities as cover for its fighters; its summary executions and kneecappings of Palestinians during the campaign; and its indiscriminate firing of rockets into civilian areas.
Meanwhile, sources at the ICC say it is considering two potential tracks that would permit it to investigate what happened in Gaza. As well as determining whether the PA is recognised internationally as a sufficiently state-like entity, the head of jurisdictions in the office of the international criminal court’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is looking at whether the court can consider war crimes allegations on the basis of the dual nationality of either victims or alleged perpetrators whose second passport is with a country party to the court.
The court’s deliberations follow more than 220 complaints about Israel’s actions in Gaza. “It does not matter necessarily whether the Palestinian National Authority is in charge of its own borders,” said a source at the court. “Right now the court is looking at everything from agreements it has signed on education to the constitution of its legal system.”
Yesterday, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, warned Palestinian militants their continuing rocket attacks on Israel would not go unpunished. He said further strikes would “be answered with a painful, harsh, strong and uncompromising response from the security forces”. More than 100 rockets and mortars have exploded in Israel in the six weeks since it ended its air and ground assault on Gaza, to which the government has responded with airstrikes.
Olmert’s warning came as Israel’s attorney general notified the prime minister that he was considering indicting him on charges of allegedly taking cash-stuffed envelopes from a Jewish-American businessman. Five corruption cases are pending against Olmert, although he has denied all wrongdoing. His spokesman said yesterday the charges against the prime minister would “disappear in the end”.