Gabriel Helou

“ Special Rapporteur Richard Falk rebukes Dexia Bank and Belgian Government for financing illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories Richard Falk describes in his report to the UN General Assembly that the Belgian government can be held responsible for the funding by Dexia Bank of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Richard Falk also welcomed Dutch firm’s decision to pull out of an illegal Israeli project in East Jerusalem .”

“UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday transmitted a recommendation to the General Assembly during its 68th session seeking advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over legal consequences of prolonged occupation of Palestine if diplomacy fails. This was one of recommendations contained in a report by Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, in accordance with a Human Rights Council resolution. Falk recommended that "if current diplomacy fails to produce a solution to the underlying conflict," the Assembly should "request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice as to the legal consequences of the prolonged occupation of Palestine." The ICJ already ruled in 2004 that the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank was illegal and "tantamount to annexation." The ruling did not deter Israel from continuing with its construction. F...

Here is an interesting   article   on "Jerusalem bill". However, the author should have added that Israel must rescind "Jerusalem Basic Law" enacted in 1980. The article: “By a 5-4 majority, a ministerial committee on Sunday approved a bill that proposes to require 80 Knesset members to approve any negotiations about the future of Jerusalem before the issue can even be discussed in peace talks …”

“The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported that Israeli violations against detained Palestinian children are still ongoing, despite an alleged Israeli decision to improve their conditions, and the methods of interrogation . ”

“The Palestinian Ministry Of Detainees issued a press release revealing that Israel is currently holding captive 5200 Palestinians in 17 prisons, detention camps, and interrogation facilities. It said that this year witnessed a sharp escalation in arrests as the soldiers kidnapped 2450 Palestinians, including 476 children and 49 women since the beginning of the   year . ”

Whenever you hear about Palestinian-Israeli “peace talks/peace negotiations”, remember the following lines. In the North Sea Continental Shelf Case [i] , the International Court of Justice ruled that there is an obligation on States to enter “... i nto negotiations with a view to arriving at an agreement … they are under an obligation so to conduct themselves that the negotiations are meaningful , which will not be the case when either of them insists upon its own position without contemplating any modification of it…” Therefore, the ICJ in this Case set out the scope and extent of the obligation to negotiate. Now: are the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations truly engaged into “with a view to arriving at an agreement”? Are they “meaningful”? How many pre-conditions to reaching “peace” has Israel imposed? And has Israel stopped creating irreversible facts on the ground? [i]   North Sea Continental Shelf (Federal Republic of Germany/Netherlands), Judgment...

“If the   politics of deflection   exhibit the   outward   reach of   Israel’s grand strategy of territorial expansionism and regional hegemony, the   politics of fragmentation   serves Israel’s   inward   moves designed to weaken Palestinian resistance, induce despair, and de facto surrender. In fundamental respects deflection is an unwitting enabler of fragmentation, but it is also its twin or complement .”

“ Yesh Din: “A defective legal culture and the absence of legislation prevent the prosecution of soldiers for offenses considered war crimes” The human rights organization Yesh Din today published a report entitled “Lacuna: War Crimes in Israeli Law and in the Rulings of the Military Courts.” War crimes form part of the category of international crimes – crimes that violate the common values of the entire international community, and which are therefore particularly grave. Many countries around the world have already enacted laws intended to define such offenses and punish their perpetrators, as required by international law. Israel has not yet enacted a law defining war crimes, and the military courts judge soldiers who violate the rules of law according to “regular” offenses. The Yesh Din report published today presents the need for Israeli legislation on this subject .”

“ Since 1967 Israel has razed over 800,000 Palestinian olive trees, the equivalent to destroying Central Park 33 times over This week marked the start of the annual Palestinian olive harvest, an ancient tradition on which 80,000 families still rely for their livelihoods. Yet these families face growing economic hardship due to Israeli land confiscations, access restrictions, settler attacks, and not least the widespread uprooting, destruction and theft of the trees themselves. The infographic ‘Uprooted’ focuses on the staggering fact that Israeli authorities have uprooted over 800,000 Palestinian olive trees since 1967, the equivalent to razing all of the 24,000 trees in New York’s central park 33 times .”

“ Trapped between the separation barrier and the Green Line, Palestinians living in the ‘Seam Zone’ are forced to reckon with a Kafkaesque permit regime that appears designed to do one thing and one thing only: make them give up and leave. Israeli NGO Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual   published “The Permit Regime”   earlier this year, a report amazing in its discoveries and the level it details the parallel universe Israel has created in the “Seam Zone,” the area between the separation barrier and the Green Line. The bulk of the information in the report was collected from UN reports (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA) and the State of Israel’s responses to 76 Supreme Court petitions filed by Hamoked over the years. As expected, the report gained zero media coverage. The following 25 stations, on the journey to the land of permits, were drawn from the report. Refreshment stations, scattered along the way, were taken from sour...

“ The Israeli government wants to prolong its long-term thievery, based on a particularly dirty trick. A few words on the uneven ground upon which the settlement of Beit El rests. The first is a seizure order signed by Brig. Gen. Binyamin Eliezer on July 18, 1979; the second is a map of the seized land, taken from the lands of the village Dura Al Qara; the third is a document issued by Major Amnon Shasha a day later. Please pay attention to paragraphs 6a and 8 in Shasha’s document: in the first, Shasha stipulates that the “seizure order is not to be published to the locals,” and in the second, that “no publicity is to be given to the order.” Why am I boring with paperwork from 1979, a time so unenlightened its favorite music was disco? Ah: because it shows us how the system of theft works in the West Bank …”

“During my period as the UN Special Rapporteur for   Human Rights in Palestine   on behalf of the Human Rights Council I have been struck by the persistent efforts of Israel and its strong civil society adjuncts to divert attention from the substance of Palestinian grievances or the consideration of the respective rights of Israel and Palestine under international law. I have also observed that many, but by not means all of those who represent the Palestinians seem strangely reluctant to focus on substance or to take full advantage of opportunities to use UN mechanisms to challenge Israel on the terrain of international law and morality… The recently exhumed direct negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the Government of Israel exemplify this approach: proceeding despite the absence of preconditions as to compliance with international law even during the negotiations, reliance on the United States as the convening intermediary, and the appointment by President Ob...

“Therefore, instead of inventing more new solutions, forms, procedures, steps, tools, terms, maps and documents to bypass the root of the problem, the time has come to address it. The root of the problem is the Palestinians’ uprooting from their land in 1948. The root of the problem is the fact that they were not allowed to return to their homes. The root of the problem was imposing the outcome of this violence as a   fait accompli , as a new board game where Israeli-Jews incarnate sovereignty, and can therefore set the rules. A board game where Palestinians can – and should – be continuously dispossessed and beg for their rights, as if Israelis could have their rights while Palestinians are dispossessed of them… Instead of more “solutions,” the time has come to acknowledge the monumentality of the Nakba :  without fully addressing it, all visions for Israel-Palestine are doomed to fail. The time has come to acknowledge the Nakba as a catastrophe not only for Palestinians bu...

“ Last week, as negotiations continued between Israeli and Palestinian officials, both  Human Rights Watch  and the  United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights  (OHCHR) issued statements condemning Israel’s ongoing destruction of Palestinian homes and other structures, particularly in the occupied West Bank and the Negev desert in southern Israel. Israel’s policy of destroying Palestinian homes, usually under the pretext of demolishing structures built without permission from Israeli authorities, is a highly sensitive subject for Palestinians, as home demolitions have played a central role in Israel’s attempts to dispossess the native, non-Jewish Palestinian population of Israel and the occupied territories since the creation of the state in   1948 .”

“Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (26 Sep.- 02 Oct. 2013)”

“Dan Gillerman, a former Israel ambassador to the United Nations refers to that institution as "The Citadel of Hypocrisy."… Gillerman, who was only the second Israeli after Abba Eban to serve as vice president of the UN General Assembly, said the UN has three standards – one for democracy, one for totalitarian states and another for Israel .” I will tell you why the United Nations is in fact “The Citadel of Hypocrisy”: - A State – like Israel – established in violation of international law, namely the right to self-determination of another people, the Palestinian people in this case, is not entitled to international recognition. Yet, Israel was recognized. - Israel was admitted to membership in the United Nations after almost one year of its establishment in 1948. While Palestine was accorded a mere “non-Member Observer State status ” in the United Nations   after 64 years of Nakba – and the Nakba is still ongoing. - The former Israeli Ambassador complain...