Category: International Law

Israeli army used flechettes against Gaza civilians

Latest report from Amnesty International’s fact-finding team in Gaza:

A flechette embedded in a wall in a Bedouin villlage in Gaza
A flechette embedded in a wall in a Bedouin villlage in Gaza

Monday January 26: The Israeli army’s use of white phosphorus in densely populated civilian areas of Gaza has captured much of the world’s media interest. However, the Israeli forces also used a variety of other weapons against civilian residential built-up areas throughout the Gaza Strip in the three-week conflict that began on 27 December.

Among these are flechettes – tiny metal darts (4cm long, sharply pointed at the front and with four fins at the rear) that are packed into120mm shells. These shells, generally fired from tanks, explode in the air and scatter some 5,000 to 8,000 flechettes in a conical pattern over an area around 300 metres wide and 100 metres long.

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Veolia loses 3,5 billion EUR contract in Sweden

On a more positive note, the biggest success of the BDS campaign to date. The French company Veolia lost one of the most lucrative public procurement contracts in the EU, partly due to its violations of international law in Jerusalem.

As late as the day before the decision the community council received lists with thousands of signatories from people demanding the county council to choose an operator who should not be associated with violations of international humanitarian law.

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Finkelstein: Seeing Through the Lies

In The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza Norman Finkelstein lucidly demonstrates that Israeli rejectionists are blocking peace in the Middle East.  With his focus on the international consensus for a two state solution, and Hamas’ adoption of this position, it becomes obvious which agent is refusing to compromise in finding a resolution to the conflict.   While this is a useful argument in understanding the nature of the conflict it, conveniently for Israel, ignores the core injustice perpetrated against the Palestinians, namely the ethnic cleansing of 1948.  What makes the borders drawn in blood in 1948 any more legitimate than those drawn in 1967?  Or if that is too radical why not the borders drawn up by the UN partition plan?  What about that disputed territory?  A one state solution seems the only logical solution, and the main stumbling block to that is the ethnocentricity and racism of Zionism.

The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point—and now I’m quoting the official Israeli website—Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.

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Israel’s Bombardment of Gaza is a War Crime

The following is a letter signed by attorneys and academics which appeared in The Sunday Times titled “Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defence – it’s a war crime”. As Israel has illegally occupied Palestinian territory since 1967 (there is no good reason why international consensus dates the injustice to ’67; it has its roots in the ethnic cleansing of ’48) it is not defending itself, in the legal sense, and is the aggressor.  Diana Buttu put it succinctly when she said, “Israel has the right to protect  itself  it doesn’t have the right to protect its occupation.”

ISRAEL has sought to justify its military attacks on Gaza by stating that it amounts to an act of “self-defence” as recognised by Article 51, United Nations Charter. We categorically reject this contention.

The rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence. Under international law self-defence is an act of last resort and is subject to the customary rules of proportionality and necessity.

The killing of almost 800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and more than 3,000 injuries, accompanied by the destruction of schools, mosques, houses, UN compounds and government buildings, which Israel has a responsibility to protect under the Fourth Geneva Convention, is not commensurate to the deaths caused by Hamas rocket fire.

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