Israel Update for October 2009

David Dolan

The Israeli government and media were focused on their separate but closely related topics during October-the lack of substantial progress in American attempts to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, the Goldstone Commission report on last winter's conflict between IDF and Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip, and Iran's ongoing nuclear programme. Meanwhile Turkey canceled a joint military exercise with Israel, objecting to the possibility that Israeli Air Force jets set to take part over Turkish skies might have participated in last winter's armed conflict with Hamas forces.

Later in the month, attention shifted to Geneva where Palestinian Authority officials demanded that the United Nation's Human Rights Council, which commissioned the Goldstone report earlier this year, endorse its demand for a fresh Security Council condemnation of Israel, including punitive measures. Noting that UN member states had not issued even one resolution calling for the radical Palestinian movement to cease firing rockets at Israeli civilian communities over the past eight years, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu blasted the PA move as both cynically unfair and yet another major blow to the Obama administration's efforts to force the stalled peace process back on track.

Without revealing any details, Netanyahu later told a visiting Spanish official that the stand off with Washington over Israeli settlement construction had been resolved. Meanwhile violence erupted in and around Jerusalem between Israeli security personnel and Palestinians egged on by Hamas, which called for a new attrition war against the detested Jewish state. Although clashes occurred in several locations during the week-long Feast of Tabernacles, the radical group's call for a "day of rage" featuring massive unrest on Friday October 9 did not materialize; partly due to tough Israeli security measures. However clashes broke out again on the Temple Mount toward the end of the month, spurred on by fabricated Palestinian claims that Israel was planning to harm or take over the holy site.

Iran's extremist Shiite Muslim regime continued to issue portentous threats of horrendous retaliation if Israeli leaders dare to order military strikes on the country's far-flung nuclear facilities. This came as Iran resisted fresh western attempts to get them to stop enriching uranium inside their country. They did not immediately respond to an offer to move their enrichment process to Russia, where quantities and quality of weapon's grade uranium could be more closely monitored and supervised. Israeli officials expressed concern that Tehran's acceptance of the UN-backed offer might allow the rogue regime to avoid punitive sanctions and a possible military strike on its enrichment facilities while secretly continuing efforts to produce nuclear warheads.

Human Rights Council Blasts Israel

The United States government urged Palestinian Authority leaders to postpone their planned formal request that the UN Human Rights Council send the Goldstone Commission report about last winter's Gaza Strip conflict to the full UN General Assembly for a debate and ratification vote. Initially, PA President Mahmoud Abbas reluctantly agreed to the deferment, which set off a firestorm of indignant protests from Hamas leaders, regional Muslim governments and Arab media outlets.

Hamas took full advantage of the angry anti-Abbas sentiments, despite the fact that the Goldstone report not only accused Israel of committing serious war crimes during the three week conflict, but also pointed a finger at reprehensible Hamas actions as well. The Iranian-backed group launched a furious campaign of public invective and denunciations against the PA Fatah leader, featuring the throwing of shoes at ubiquitous pictures of Abbas-a particularly pungent insult in Middle East Muslim culture. As a result of the hostile Hamas campaign, Fatah officials called off announced plans to sign an Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation accord with the Islamic group in Cairo, which would have possibly brought Hamas members back into the Fatah-led PA government.

Many political analysts saw the Hamas action as a precursor to the upcoming campaign for the next round of Palestinian legislative and presidential elections, which Abbas announced would be held next January 24. The 74 year old PA leader accused Hamas of not wanting fresh elections at all, maintaining that when the radical Muslim group won the previous vote in January 2006, it assumed it would be the last national election ever held-leaving the group forever entrenched in power.

Under intense internal pressure from his Fatah party colleagues and cabinet ministers, Abbas quickly reversed his heavily criticized Goldstone postponement decision, which subsequently triggered a special session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on October 15. Supported by the US, UK and France, Israeli officials attempted in vain to prevent the session from taking place, arguing it would only create another serious roadblock in the path of American-led attempts to restart the frozen peace process. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell stated that the Obama administration considered the Goldstone report "one sided and deeply flawed," while adding that Obama's efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations would continue "notwithstanding the report."

In the end, the Council voted 25 to 6 to adopt the commission's controversial conclusions, which were mainly focused on alleged Israeli military violations. The action sent the report to the UN General Assembly for discussion and possible endorsement. Among nations supporting the move were three containing more than half the people on earth-China, India and Russia. Voting against were the US, Holland and Italy, along with three former Soviet satellites, Ukraine, Slovakia and Hungary. Eleven countries represented on the Council abstained. The UK and France did not show up for the vote.

Adding insult to injury, the resolution that the Human Rights Council put forth for consideration by the General Assembly included a condemnation of Israeli home building in Jerusalem, blaming the Jewish state for the recent violence there that was actually instigated by Hamas and its allies. More ominously, the Palestinian-backed resolution demands that the Goldstone report be referred to the UN Security Council, which has the power to send it on to the UN's Criminal Court in the Netherlands for possible prosecution of Israeli political and military leaders and Hamas officials if the two sides do not launch their own internal investigations of the alleged war crime abuses.

Most tellingly, South African Supreme Court Judge Richard Goldstone, who chaired the four member commission that issued the damning report, told the AFP news agency he was "saddened" by the content of the council resolution, and especially that it entirely ignored sustained Hamas rocket launchings this decade upon Israeli civilian centers which triggered the IDF military operation just after Christmas last December. Ironically, this is the exact same criticism that has been leveled at his commission's report.

Goldstone's comment served to add weight to widespread sentiment in Israel and abroad that the Jewish jurist was entirely naïve to lend his prestigious name to the one-sided Human Rights Council's mandate which established the commission. The official mandate did not even mention Hamas provocations, but instead blatantly stated that council members "strongly condemn the Israeli military operation which has resulted in massive violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people."

Possibly backed by the UK, France, and other countries, the United States is expected to block any Security Council attempt to send the controversial Goldstone report to the international UN court. Still, even the threat of possible judicial action has been enough to send chills through the Israeli government and military establishment, with senior officials being advised by the Attorney General to stay away from Britain and other countries where legal petitions have already been filed by anti-Israel individuals and groups demanding their arrest, detention and subsequent prosecution.