Middle East Watch

475 Article

• The day the bulldozers came...

  27 October 2009,

  West Bank farmer Mahmoud al-’Alam won’t forget the day Israeli army bulldozers cut off his water supply... and destroyed his livelihood.
  The village of Beit Ula, where Mahmoud lives, is not connected to the Palestinian water network. Instead the community, located north-west of Hebron, relies on rainwater, which it collects and stores in pots dug in the ground, known as cisterns.
  The nine new cisterns built in 2006 as part of a European Union-funded project to improve food security (…)

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• Israel rations Palestinians to trickle of water

  27 October 2009,

  Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies.
  These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.
  “Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the (…)

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• A Tsunami Called Goldstone

  26 octobre 2009, par Uri Avnery

  According to a Chinese saying, if someone in the street tells you that you are drunk, you can laugh. If a second person tells you that you are drunk, start to think about it. If a third one tells you the same, go home and sleep it off.
  Our political and military leadership has already encountered the third, fourth and fifth person. All of them say that they must investigate what happened in the “Molten Lead” operation.
  They have three options :
  - to conduct a real investigation. (…)

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• Israël demande à l’ONU d’enterrer le rapport Goldstone

  23 octobre 2009,

  Avigdor Lieberman, le ministre des affaires étrangères israélien, demande au secrétaire général de l’ONU, Ban Ki-moon, de ne pas transmettre le rapport Goldstone à l’Assemblée générale des Nations unies ou au Conseil de sécurité. Ce document, qualifié d’"inique, saugrenu et unilatéral" par les Israéliens, doit être examiné par l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU d’ici à la fin décembre.
  Mandaté par l’ONU, le juge sud-africain Richard Goldstone a rédigé un rapport très critique sur l’offensive (…)

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• A Profile In Courage: Turkey Takes A Stand For Justice

  16 October 2009, by Dr. Alan Sabrosky

  There is always something compelling about a "David and Goliath" confrontation. Most of us prefer winners to losers, and almost everyone feels a thrill when the underdog takes a stand and prevails.
  This is the surprising situation now unfolding in the rising drama of the Goldstone Report on Gaza. Goliath — in this instance, Israel plus the US in its usual role of Bibi Netanyahu’s "Uncle Tom" — assumed that broad threats and a predictable US veto on the UN Security Council would kill that (…)

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• Turkey confirms it barred Israel from military exercise because of Gaza war

  12 October 2009, by Julian Borger

  Turkey’s foreign minister said yesterday that his government cancelled a planned joint military exercise with Israel in protest against that country’s offensive on Gaza ten months ago.
  The move is a clear sign the offensive, in which over 1,100 Palestinians were killed is still causing the Jewish state diplomatic damage.
  The Nato air exercises with Israel were due to begin today in Turkey’s Anatolian region, but days earlier Ankara told the Israeli military it was no longer invited to (…)

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• Qu’attendre du rapprochement Paris-Damas ? La politique syrienne de la France, de Jacques Chirac à Nicolas Sarkozy

  mars 2009, par Judith Cahen

  En 2008, la présence à Paris du président syrien Bachar al-Assad pour le lancement de l’Union pour la Méditerranée (UpM) et pour le défilé du 14 juillet a marqué un spectaculaire tournant dans les relations francosyriennes. Quelques semaines de discussions préalables entre hauts fonctionnaires français et syriens avaient permis de relancer des contacts mis entre parenthèses depuis trois ans, et d’ouvrir sans doute une brèche dans l’ostracisme qui entourait la Syrie depuis quelques années. (…)

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• Moscou opposé à un examen du rapport Goldstone à l’ONU

  19 octobre 2009,

  La Russie a assuré les responsables israéliens qu’elle s’opposerait à l’examen du rapport Goldstone au Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, selon un haut diplomate israélien lundi qui a requis l’anonymat. L’ambassadeur de Russie en Israël, Peter Stegnï, a transmis à la fin de la semaine dernière au ministère des affaires étrangères israélien un message écrit du chef de la diplomatie russe, Sergueï Lavrov, en ce sens. "Le message de M. Lavrov affirme que Moscou n’a pas l’intention de soutenir (…)

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• UN human rights chief endorses Goldstone Gaza report

  15 October 2009, by Andrew Morgan

  UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Thursday reiterated her support for the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. In a statement to the 12th Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council on human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Pillay said that she agrees with the report’s findings, describing it as a "call for urgent action to counter impunity":
  I encourage the Council and the broader international community to (…)

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• UN: US Block on Goldstone Report Must Not Defer Justice

  2 October 2009,

  The decision at the UN Human Rights Council to defer a vote on the Goldstone Gaza report until March 2010 obliges the United States and other governments blocking action at the council to press Israel and Hamas to commence credible investigations, Human Rights Watch said today. The fact-finding mission found evidence of violations of the laws of war during the Gaza conflict that should trigger credible investigations of the conduct of both sides.
  Given its responsibility for forcing a (…)

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