Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Palestine could ‘lose’ millions in annual U.S. aid
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| Lindsey Graham said Palestinians may face the aid cut if they file a lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court. (AP) |
By Allyn Fisher-Ilan | Reuters Occupied Jerusalem
Tuesday, 20 January 2015
The Palestinians could lose annual U.S. aid if they file a lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court which they joined this month over American and Israeli protests, a senior U.S. Republican senator said on Monday.
Lindsey Graham, part of a seven-member delegation of senators visiting Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said existing U.S. legislation "would cut off aid to the Palestinians if they filed a complaint" against Israel.
At a news conference in Jerusalem, Graham called the Palestinian step "a bastardizing of the role of the ICC. I find it incredibly offensive."
"We will push back strongly to register our displeasure. It is already part of our law that would require us to stop funding if they actually bring a case," said Graham, of South Carolina.
U.S. President Barack Obama's Democratic administration has said it does not believe Palestine is a sovereign state and therefore does not qualify to be part of the ICC, but has not explicitly threatened to withhold aid.
Any cut in U.S. funds could make it hard for the Palestinian self-rule authority in the West Bank and Gaza to survive. The U.S. supplies more than $400 million annually to the Palestinian Authority. Israel has frozen a monthly transfer of some $120 million in tax revenues it collects for the Palestinians.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has confirmed the Palestinians will formally become a member of the ICC on April 1, after applying earlier this month.
With jurisdiction dating back to June 13, 2014, the court's prosecutor could investigate the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in July and August 2014, during which more than 2,100 Palestinians, 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas applied to the court after losing a vote at the U.N. Security Council seeking a deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from land it captured in a 1967 war and where Palestinians seek to establish a state.
Israel and the United States deplore Palestinian moves at the U.N. as unilateral steps that undermine diplomacy, which has made little progress in years and collapsed most recently in April.
Graham urged the Palestinians to re-evaluate ICC membership, saying he supported their aspirations for statehood but opposed joining the court as a "provocative step" against Israel.
Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, charged that a U.S.-led campaign against Islamist militants in Syria and Iraq was moving too slowly, arguing that aerial attacks had to be backed up by "more boots on the ground." He did not say which country should provide the troops.
Last Update: Tuesday, 20 January 2015 KSA 07:42 - GMT 04:42
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Israel lobbies foreign powers to cut ICC funding
(Reuters) - Israel is lobbying member-states of the International Criminal Court to cut funding for the tribunal in response to its launch of an inquiry into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, the country's foreign minister said on Sunday.
The ICC did not immediately respond to the news, but experts thought it unlikely that the lobbying effort was likely to persuade the countries that contribute most to the court to reduce their funding.
Israel, which like the United States does not belong to the ICC, hopes to dent funding for the court that is drawn from the 122 member-states in accordance with the size of their economies, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.
"We will demand of our friends in Canada, in Australia and inGermany simply to stop funding it," he told Israel Radio. Officials told Reuters the lobbying effort would also target Japan, whose Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting Israel.
"This body represents no one. It is a political body," Lieberman said, adding that he would raise the matter with visiting Canadian counterpart John Baird on Sunday.
A loss of funding would exacerbate the court's already serious financing problems. Last week, Reuters reported that the unexpected arrival of an indicted defector from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda would put prosecutors under severe financial strain.
The overwhelming bulk of the court's funding comes from the advanced economies of Europe and North Asia. Japan is the largest contributor, giving 20.4 million euros in 2014, followed by Germany which gave 13.5 million.
France, Britain and Italy are also major contributors to the ICC's budget, which will rise 7 percent to 141 million euros in 2015. Canada contributed 5.6 million.
But even countries that were traditionally close to Israel were unlikely to renege on their treaty commitments to fund the ICC, said Kevin Jon Heller, professor of law at London's School of Oriental and African Studies.
"Germany is probably the least likely country in the world to go against the ICC no matter how supportive of Israel it has traditionally been," he added. "It was one of the very leading states in the creation of the ICC."
ICC prosecutors said on Friday they would examine "in full independence and impartiality" crimes that may have occurred in the Palestinian territories since June 13 last year.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Spanish Foreign Minister arrives in Gaza
EXCLUSIVE IMAGES
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo arrived Tuesday in the Gaza Strip through Erez crossing with Israel on a few hours' visit to the embattled enclave, a Palestinian official said.
Garcia-Margallo "aims to get acquainted with the impact of the recent Israeli offensive in the coastal enclave and hold talks with chief of UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA Pierre Krahenbuhl," Maher Abu Sabha, head of the Palestinian border authority, told The Anadolu Agency.
The top diplomat arrived in Ramallah on Monday, where he met with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.
The visit comes as part of a regional tour for the Spanish minister to get familiar with the "status quo" in the Middle East, a statement by the Spanish Foreign Ministry said earlier.
In November, the Spanish parliament called for recognizing Palestine as a state.
MEMO Photographer: Mohammad Asad
JEWISH SETTLERS STORMED SECONDARY SCHOOL IN OCCUPIED JERUSALEM
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Approximately ten Israeli settlers stormed Wednesday a secondary school in Tur neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem and fired tear gas and sound bombs into it under Israeli police protection.
Head of the follow-up committee in Tur neighborhood Mufid Abu Ghannam confirmed that ten Jewish settlers stormed the school Wednesday afternoon while the students were leaving their classes.
The students panicked at the attack and started shouting and screaming, forcing the settlers and soldiers to withdraw from the school amid heavy fire of tear gas bombs.
Israeli forces, in their turn, fired heavy volleys of live bullets into the air to scare the students, he added.
Beit Orot settlers have twice tried to break into the school on previous days; however the local residents confronted them and forced them to withdraw, Abu Ghannam pointed out.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces stormed under heavy tear gas bombs the nearby girls' elementary school under the pretext of looking for a wanted person.
Source : http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=69650
Israel campaigns to block UN human rights findings on Gaza onslaught
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| Horror in Gaza |
Press TV 14 Jan — Israel has launched a campaign to block a UN inquiry into Tel Aviv’s human rights violations during its 50-day bloody war on the blockaded Gaza Strip last summer. Israel is directing its diplomats to ensure that a majority of 47 countries on the UN Commission of Inquiry on Gaza do not support an investigation into the latest Israeli offensive against the Palestinian land, the Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday. The campaign aims to get “as many countries as possible – with the hope that at least 24 will not approve the committee’s findings – to either vote against, abstain or not show up [for the vote],” the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs told the representatives abroad in a cable. Part of the campaign against the UN commission is to discredit its head, Canadian lawyer William Schabas, who has accused Israel of war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression against Palestinians. The UN body is due to present its findings on the Gaza war to the UN Human Rights Council in March. A vote on the findings will be held a few days after the report is submitted.
See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/campaigns-findings-onslaught#sthash.YmlNda4u.7fVUzbFS.dpuf
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