1972
Lebanon and Syria
Up to 500 Lebanese and Syrian civilians are killed in air attacks by Israel in response to the killing of 11 athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich (West Germany).
The attacks occur as nine separate but simultaneous air raids by Phantoms and Skyhawks on Lebanon and Syria. In al-Hama, a suburb of Damascus, houses are bombed indiscriminately and people are machine gunned as they run for cover.
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning the air raids.
1973
Israel and the Palestinians, Lebanon, Libya
Israel kills 3 Palestinian leaders in Lebanon.
Israeli forces shoot down a Libyan airliner flying over the Sinai Peninsula (occupied by Israel), killing all 106 passengers.
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution affirming the rights of Palestinians and calling on Israel to withdraw from occupied territories.
1976
Lebanon
Israeli forces besiege and shell the village of Hanin in Lebanon, killing 20 people. Bint Jbeil is shelled killing 23.
The USA vetoes four separate United Nations resolutions. The first condemns Israeli attacks against Lebanese civilians. The second condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories. The third calls for self determination for the Palestinians. The fourth affirms Palestinian rights.
1976
South Africa
Over 170 unarmed demonstrators are killed in South Africa. Over 1,000,000 black South Africans are deprived of citizenship in the Transkei.
The USA, France and UK veto a United Nations resolution critical of South Africa's attempts to impose the apartheid system in Namibia.
1976
USA and Vietnam
The USA vetos a United Nations Security Council resolution to admit Vietnam.Vietnam had been a French colony before World War II. The country had been occupied by the Japanese during the War. France regained control of the southern part of the country after 1945 but were finally ejected in 1954 when the USA took control of the south. After a long and bitter war, the USA were ejected in 1975 and the country re-united. The separate parts of the country had attempted to join the United Nations during 1976 but the USA vetoed 4 resolutions denying them entry.
1977
South Africa (Steven Biko)
Steven Biko is one of many dissidents murdered by police in South Africa. The events surrounding Biko's death are covered in the UK made film Cry Freedom.The USA, France and UK veto 3 United Nations resolutions condemning the apartheid policies in South Africa.
1978
Israel and Lebanon
Israel invades Lebanon to remove PLO bases. Over 700 Palestinians and Lebanese are killed.
At Abbasieh, the mosque is shelled killing 80 people who had taken shelter inside; at Adloun, Israeli soldiers shoot at a car killing 7 people
The United Nations forces Israel to withdraw. Instead of handing control to the United Nations forces sent to the region, Israel gives control to Christian militias which it controls.
The USA vetoes three United Nations resolutions. The first urging the permanent members (USA, USSR, UK, France, China) to insure United Nations decisions on the maintenance of international peace and security. The actual vote is 119 to 2 (Israel also voted against).
The second criticising the living conditions of the Palestinians (110 to 2). The third condemning the Israeli human rights record in occupied territories (97 to 3).
1978
Development
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution calling for developed countries to increase the quantity and quality of development assistance to underdeveloped countries. The vote is 119 to 1.
1979
USA, France and UK Vetos in UN
The USA, UK and France veto three United Nations resolutions concerning South Africa. The first calls for an end to all military and nuclear collaboration with the apartheid regime (The vote is 114 to 3). The second strengthens the arms embargo against the country (132 to 3). The third offers assistance to all the oppressed people of South Africa and their liberation movement (134 to 3).
The USA, UK and France veto a United Nations resolution concerning negotiations on disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race (120 to 3).
The USA vetoes five United Nations resolutions concerning Israel. The first calls for the return of all inhabitants expelled by Israel (121 to 3: the three are USA, Israel andAustralia).The second demands that Israel desist from human rights violations (111 to 2). The third is a request for a report on the living conditions of Palestinians in occupied Arab countries (120 to 2). The fourth offers assistance to the Palestinian people (112 to 3: the three are USA, Israel and Canada).
The fifth discusses sovereignty over national resources in occupied Arab territories (118 to 2).
The USA vetoes six United Nations resolutions concerning economics, women's rights and nuclear arms.The first calls for protection of developing counties' exports (vote 111 to 1). The second calls for alternative approaches within the United Nations system for improving the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms (136 to 1). The third opposes support for intervention in the internal or external affairs of states (104 to 2). The fourth is for a United Nations Conference on Women (121 to 2). The fifth attempts to include Palestinian women in the United Nations Conference on Women (122 to 2). The sixth safeguards rights of developing countries in multinational trade negotiations (112 to 1).
1980
Palestine
3 Palestinian mayors are assassinated. The United Nations calls on states not to assist Israel with its settlements programme. It criticises the arming of Israeli settlers (colonists) who are allowed to terrorise the civilian Arab population.
On 30 July Israel annexes all of Jerusalem. The United Nations confirms that it considers Jerusalem as part of the occupied territories.
The USA vetoes six United Nations resolutions concerning Israel and the Palestinians: The first requests Israel to return displaced persons (the vote is 96 to 3 with Canada being the third country). The second condemns Israeli policy regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian people (118 to 2). Three resolutions condemn Israeli human rights practices in occupied territories (votes: 118 to 2; 119 to 2; 117 to 2). The sixth endorses self determination for the Palestinians (120 to 3 with the third country being Australia).
1980
South Africa
30 protesters are killed in South Africa by police. The USA, UK and France veto a United Nations resolution offering assistance to the oppressed people of South Africa and their national liberation movement. The vote is 137 to 3.
1980
USA, France and UK Vetos in UN
The USA vetoes four United Nations resolutions: The first attempts to establish a New International Economic Order to promote the growth of underdeveloped countries and international economic co-operation. The vote is 134 to 1. The second endorses the Program of Action for Second Half of United Nations Decade for Women. This vote is 132 to 3 with Israel and Canada being the other two countries voting against. The third is a declaration of non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. The vote is 110 to 2. The fourth emphasises that the development of nations and individuals is a human right (120 to 1).
The USA and UK veto a United Nations resolution calling for the cessation of all nuclear test explosions.The USA, UK and France veto a United Nations resolution calling for the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
1981
USA and Tanzania
The USA orchestrates a campaign of economic pressure against Tanzania, demanding persistently behind the scenes that Tanzania change its internal economic policies to suit American companies.
The USA vetoes a number of United Nations resolutions: The first promoting co-operative movements in developing countries (123 to 1 votes). The second affirming the right of every state to choose its economic and social system in accord with the will of its people, without outside interference in whatever form it takes (126 to 1).
1981
USA, UK Vetos in UN
The USA and UK veto two United Nations resolutions: The first condemns activities of foreign economic interests in colonial territories. The vote is 133 to 3. The second calls for the cessation of all test explosions of nuclear weapons (118 to 2).
The USA vetoes a number of United Nations resolutions: Calls for action in support of measures to prevent nuclear war, curb the arms race and promote disarmament (78 to 3 including Canada). Urges negotiations on prohibition of chemical and biological weapons (109 to 1). Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development, etc are human rights (135 to 1). Changes to United Nations accounting methods (127 to 1).
1981
Southern Africa
South Africa attacks dissidents in Angola. A major invasion of the southern part of the country occurs. 11,000 men and several battalions of tanks and armored cars are deployed inCunene province. Over 80,000 people become refugees.
South African commandos raid Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. They begin to create, arm and deploy special military units in Mozambique to attack roads, railways, bridges and other economic targets, as well as to terrorise in rural areas.
South African agents carry out sabotage and assassinations in Zimbabwe.
South Africa (with help from the USA's CIA) attempts to mount a coup against President Kaunda in Zambia. The CIA director, William Casey flies secretly to Lusaka and threatens sanctions against Zambia if the role of the CIA is exposed.
In addition to these military activities, South Africa begins a full scale economic war against Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe.After being elected to the USA presidency, Ronald Reagan states that closer relations with South Africa are a means "to counter Soviet influence in southern Africa". Arms and money are passed by the USA's CIA to groups supported by South Africa in the region.
The USA blocks the implementation of the United Nations plan for a settlement in Namibia, currently under South African rule. It does this by unilaterally linking the Namibian issue with Angola. While the USA continues to state its support for the United Nations plan, the USA Secretary of State, Al Haig, informs the South African Foreign Minister "that the United States would not press South Africa to settle the Namibian question unless Cuban troops were withdrawn from Angola."
The USA vetoes seven United Nations resolutions condemning the actions of South Africa, condemning apartheid and attempting to strengthen sanctions. These votes are 145 to 1, 124 to 1, 136 to 1, 129 to 2 (with UK), 126 to 2 (with UK), 139 to 1, and 138 to 1.
1981
South Africa and the Seychelles
South Africa, backed by the USA CIA, fails in an attempt to mount a coup against the government of the Seychelles. The country's leader, France Albert René, had persued a non-aligned foreign policy, wanted to have a nuclear free Indian Ocean, and objected to a USA satellite tracking station on the islands.The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning the attempt and naming South Africa as the agent.
1981
Israel and Lebanon
Israel raids Palestinian bases in Lebanon.
A residential area in Saida is targeted killing 20 people; in Fakhani, jets raid residential areas killing 150; another 150 people are killed when the Arab University area in Beirut is attacked. In the raids, Israel also strikes at Palestinian and Lebanese refugee camps, ports, Lebanon's main oil refinery, and most bridges.Israel estimates that 106 Israelis have been killed in the north of the country from Palestinian attacks (using small rockets, often home made) originating in Lebanon between 1967 and 1982. According to United Nations figures, 3,500 Lebanese and Syrians were killed between 1967 and 1975 by Israeli attacks as well as an unknown number of Palestinians. The Israeli attacks included the use of air power, artillery, tanks, gunboats using shells, bombs, incendiary bombs, cluster bombs and napalm. Between 1967 and 1977, over 300,000 Lebanese civilians in the south of that country had been forced to abandon their homes.
The Israeli government annexes the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1973. This violates United Nations Resolutions, the cease fire agreement between Israel and Syria and theCamp David Accords.
Israeli jets destroy a nuclear reactor in Iraq.
The USA vetoes 18 United Nations resolutions concerning Israel.
- Demanding that Israel cease excavations in areas of East Jerusalem considered by the United Nations to be part of the occupied territories. The vote is 114 to 2.
- Condemns Israel for bombing Iraqi nuclear installations (108 to 2).
- Two resolutions condemning Israeli policy regarding living conditions of the Palestinian people (109 to 2 and 111 to 2).
- To establish a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East (107 to 2).
- Demanding that Israel renounce possession of nuclear weapons (101 to 2).
- Two resolutions attempting to establish rights for the Palestinian people. The votes are 121 to 2, 119 to 3 (with Canada).
- To clarify the status of Jerusalem (139 to 2).
- Discusses Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip (141 to 2).
- Rights of displaced Palestinians to return to their homes (121 to 3 with Canada).
- Concerning revenues from Palestinian refugees' properties (117 to 2).
- Establishment of the University of Jerusalem for Palestinian refugees (119 to 2).
- Concerning Israeli human rights violations in occupied territories (111 to 2).
- Condemning Israel closing of universities in occupied territories (114 to 2)
- Opposes Israel's decision to build a canal linking the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
- Concerning sovereignty over national resources in occupied Palestine and other Arab territories (115 to 2).
- Affirming the non-applicability of Israeli law over the Golan Heights (121 to 2).
1982
Israel Invades Lebanon
On 6 June, Israel forces invade Lebanon.
According to G H Jansen, correspondent to the UK magazine, The Economist, Israeli forces would surround a town or city "so swiftly that civilian inhabitants were trapped inside and then to pound them from land, sea and air." Robert Fisk, journalist for the UK newspaper, The Independent, observes that the Israelis bombard residential areas with "50 shells at a time.. slaughtering everyone within a 500 yard [460m] radius of the explosions".
During the invasion, over 17,500 people are killed, many of them Lebanese civilians. Beruit is placed under a two month siege, in an attempt to evict Palestinians. The city is attacked with hundreds of cluster bombs (which shred flesh), phosphorus bombs (which are designed to create fires and produce untreatable burns on flesh) and vacuum bombs (which ignite aviation fuel, creating such pressure that buildings implode).An entire apartment building in Beirut is destroyed by Israeli aircraft in an attempt to kill Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders. More than 100 people are killed but thePalestinian leadership had left.
The embassy of the USSR is seized for two days in violation of diplomatic rules. A hospital is bombed killing hundreds of patients. Eight of the nine orphanages in Beirut are destroyed by cluster and phosphorus bombs despite being clearly marked and despite Israeli assurances that they would be spared according to a report by Elain Carey writing in the USA magazine, Christian Science Monitor (4 August 1982).
Chris Giannou, a Canadian surgeon working in a Palestinian hospital testified to the USA Congress that he witnessed "total, utter devastation of residential areas, and the blind, savage indiscriminate destruction of refugee camps by simultaneous shelling and carpet bombing from aircraft, gunboats, tanks and artillery".
The city of Sidon is bombed killing over 2,000 civilians. According to Olof Rydbeck of the United Nations Refugee Agency, 32 years work had been destroyed with virtually all schools and clinics for the refugees "wiped out".Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners are executed by the Israelis and secretly buried in Sidon. Torture is used including severe beatings, attacks by dogs on leashes, the use of air rifles (intense pain but not usually fatal), humiliation and allowing prisoners to go thirsty. Similar techniques would be used by the USA on Iraqi prisoners in 2004.
Palestinian leaders are eventually forced to leave, escorted out of Beirut by USA troops to Tunis (in Tunisia). The USA envoy, Philip Habib, promises that the Palestinian civilians left behind would be protected by the international community and Israeli forces would not be allowed to enter Beirut.A few days later, the Phalangists (a Lebanese Christian militia) massacre over 2,750 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila (in the suburbs of Beirut). Most of the victims are women, old men and children. Many girls (as young as 6) and women are raped by soldiers. During the three day massacre, Israeli troops look on and assist by sealing the camp perimeters and illuminating the camps at night. Bulldozers (supplied by the Israelis) are used to dig mass graves for bodies. A number of houses are also bulldozed to cover up the bodies of the victims.
One of the first journalists to enter the camps writes:"The corpses of the Palestinians had been thrown among the rubble that remained of the Shatila camp. It was impossible to know exactly how many victims there were, but there had to be more than 1,000 dead. Some of the men who had been executed had been lined up in front of a wall, and bulldozers had been used in an attempt to bury the bodies and cover up the aftermath of the massacre. But the hands and feet of the victims protruded from the debris."
Another journalist (Loren Jenkins) from the USA's Washington Post describes the scene at the camps:"The scene at the Chatila camp when foreign observers entered Saturday morning was like a nightmare. Women wailed over the deaths of loved ones, bodies began to swell under the hot sun, and the streets were littered with thousands of spent cartridges. Houses had been dynamited and bulldozed into rubble, many with the inhabitants still inside. Groups of bodies lay before bullet-pocked walls where they appeared to have been executed. Others were strewn in alleys and streets, apparently shot as they tried to escape. Each little dirt alley through the deserted buildings, where Palestinians have lived since fleeing Palestine when Israel was created in 1948, told its own horror story."
Two American journalists, Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone, later give this account to an international enquiry:"When we entered Sabra and Chatila on Saturday, September 18, 1982, the final day of the killing, we saw bodies everywhere. We photographed victims that had been mutilated with axes and knives. Only a few of the people we photographed had been machine-gunned. Others had their heads smashed, their eyes removed, their throats cut, skin was stripped from their bodies, limbs were severed, some people were eviscerated. The terrorists also found time to plunder Palestinian property as well as books, manuscripts and other cultural material from the Palestinian Research Center in Beirut."
A 13 year old Palestinian girl who survived relates her story to a Lebanese officer:"We stayed in the shelter until really late on Thursday night, but then I decided to leave with my girl friend because we couldn't breathe anymore. Then all of a sudden we saw people raising white flags and handkerchiefs and coming toward the kata'ib saying, 'We're for peace and harmony.' And they killed them right then and there. The women were screaming, moaning and begging [for mercy]. As for me, I ran back to our house and got into the bathtub. I saw them leading our neighbors away and shooting them. I tried to stand up at the window to look outside, but one of the kata'ib fighters saw me and shot at me. So I went back to the bathtub and stayed there for five hours. When I came out, they grabbed me and threw me down with everybody else. One of them asked me if I was Palestinian, and I said yes. My nine-month-old nephew was beside me, and he was crying and screaming so much that one of the men got angry, so he shot him. I burst into tears and told him that this baby had been all the family I had left. That made him all the more angry, and he took the baby and tore him in two."
In 2001, evidence would be unearthed that many survivors of the original massacre are taken away by Israeli troops to a football (soccer) stadium. Many are executed and buried in the tunnels under the pitch. The stadium would later be rebuilt.The United Nations General Assembly condemns the massacre and declares it to be an act of genocide. The vote is 147 to 2 (Israel and the USA). The world condemns Israel and 400,000 of its own citizens join a Peace Now demonstration in Tel Aviv.
For the Arab world, the words Sabra and Chatila resonate all the injustices of this conflict. Israel, on the other hand, continues to receive massive military and financial aid from the USA as well as political and media support. In 2002, the anniversary of a terrorist attack on New York is marked in the UK with 2 minute silences in offices and work places as well as television programs about the victims. Less than a week later the 20th anniversary of the Sabra-Chatila Massacre is completely ignored by the West's media, as is the entire invasion.
Between 1982 and 1983, six separate United Nations resolutions condemning the Israeli invasion of Lebanon are vetoed by the USA. In addition, the USA refuses to invoke its own laws prohibiting Israeli use of American weapons except in self-defense.According to Mordechai Bar-on, an education officer in the Israeli military, the aim of the invasion was "to deal a crushing blow to the national aspirations of the Palestinians and to their very existence as a nation endevouring to define itself and gain the right to self-determination".
1982
Palestine
An Israeli soldier shoots 11 Muslims worshipping on the Haram-Al-Sharif in East Jerusalem. The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning the shooting. Another resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights (occupied in 1967) is also vetoed by the USA.
1982
USA and South Africa
USA officials help secure an approved loan from the International Monetary Fund of $ 1,100 million for South Africa. Much of the money is used to destabilise neighbouring countries and to oppress its own non-voting black population.Anthony Lewis, writing in the USA newspaper New York Times (31 January 1983) boasts:
"Externally, the last year has seen South Africa use its military power both covertly and overtly in neighboring black-governed states... without any significant political penalty. The United States has privately urged restraint on South Africa. South Africa's neighbors have in effect been told, without subtlety, that they can have peace and a chance for economic development only on South African terms."
A South African official also quoted in the New York Times (25 January 1983) warns:
"We want to show that we want peace in the region, we want to contribute and we can help a lot. But we also want to show that if we are refused we can destroy the whole of southern Africa."
This view is confirmed by Charles Lichenstein, the Deputy USA Ambassador to the United Nations, quoted in the Johannesburg Financial Mail:
"destabilization will remain in force until Angola and Mozambique do not permit their territory to be used by terrorists to attack South Africa."
The "terrorists" are groups wanting a democratic and non-racist South Africa.
The USA vetoes four United Nations resolutions concerning South Africa and apartheid: The ratification of the convention on the suppression and punishment of apartheid (voted by 124 to 1); Promoting international action against apartheid (141 to 1); Against apartheid in sports (138 to 1); Cessation of further foreign investments and loans for South Africa (134 to 1).
1982
USA Vetos in UN
The USA vetoes 15 United Nations resolutions that a majority of countries approve of.Calling for the setting up of a World Charter for the protection of the ecology (votes 111 to 1); To set up a United Nations conference on succession of states in respect to state property, archives and debts (136 to 1); For a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (111 to 1); Request to USA and USSR to make public their nuclear arms negotiations (114 to 1, the USSR abstained); Prevention of arms race in outer space (138 to 1); Support for a new world information and communications order (131 to 1); Prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons (95 to 1); Development of international law (113 to 1); A resolution preventing the exclusion of certain United Nations employees (129 to 1); Protection against products harmful to health and the environment (146 to 1); Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development are human rights (131 to 1); Implementation of the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States (141 to 1); A declaration about the adequacy of facilities of the Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia (132 to 1); Development of the energy resources of developing countries (146 to 1); Restructuring international economic relations towards establishing a new international economic order (124 to 1).
1983
USA Vetos in UN
The USA vetoes 15 United Nations resolutions that the majority of countries approve of.The right of every state to choose its economic and social system in accord with the will of its people, without outside interference in whatever form it takes (voted by 131 to 1); Resolutions against apartheid South Africa (110 to 1, 149 to 1, 140 to 1, 145 to 1); Prevention of an arms race in outer space (147 to 1); Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development are human rights (132 to 1); International law (110 to 1); Transport and Communications Decade in Africa (137 to 1); Prohibition of manufacture of new weapons of mass destruction (116 to 1); Reversing the arms race (133 to 1), Prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons (98 to 1); Requests a study on the naval arms race (113 to 1); Disarmament and security (132 to 1); Strengthening the United Nations to respond to natural and other disasters (126 to 1).
1984
South Africa
In South Africa 14 anti-apartheid demonstrators are killed by police.
The USA and UK veto two United Nations resolutions concerning South Africa and apartheid: these were voted by 121 to 2 and 146 to 2.
1984
Israel and Lebanon
Israel continues to occupy the south of Lebanon. Tanks and helicopters fire at a crowd in Jibsheet killing 7; at Sohmur, 13 are killed after being ordered by Israeli troops into a mosque.
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli actions in Lebanon and bombards Beirut from the sea.
1984
USA Vetos in UN
The USA vetoes 18 United Nations resolutions:Cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States (voted by 134 to 2 with Israel); Condemns Israeli attack against Iraqi nuclear installation (106 to 2); On the elimination of racial discrimination (145 to 1); Affirming the rights of the Palestinian people (127 to 2); Convening a Middle East peace conference (121 to 3 including Canada); Prohibition of new types of weapons of mass destruction (125 to 1); Prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons (84 to 1); Law of the sea (138 to 2); Israeli human rights violations in occupied territories (120 to 2); Condemns assassination attempts against Palestinian mayors (143 to 2); Condemns Israel for failing to place its nuclear facilities under international safeguards (94 to 2); For a nuclear test ban (123 to 1); To study military research and development (141 to 1); Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (143 to 1); Economic assistance to the Palestinian people (146 to 1); Support for the United NationsIndustrial Development Organsiation (118 to 2); Industrial Development Decade for Africa (120 to 1); Questions regarding the Economic Commission for Western Asia (123 to 2).
In many cases, Israel votes with the USA.
The USA and UK veto a United Nations resolution reaffirming the right of St Helena to independence.
1985
Israel and Lebanon
Israel continues to occupy the south of Lebanon terrorising the civilian population: 7 are killed in Al-Husseinieh, 15 in Maaraka, 22 in Zrariah, 5 in Jibaa, 10 in Yohmur. In Homeen Al-Tahta, 20 villagers are killed after being ordered into the school which is then blown up.
The USA vetoes two separate United Nations resolutions condemning Israeli actions in Lebanon and the use of excessive force in the occupied territories.
A car bomb explodes outside a Mosque in Beirut, timed for when people would be leaving, killing 80 people. The USA's CIA is later implicated in this attack, an assassination attempt onSheikh Fadlallah, a Mulsim cleric.
1985
USA Vetos in UN
The USA vetoes four United Nations resolutions against the wishes of the majority of the world.Indivisibility and interdependence of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights (voted by 134 to 1); Alternative approaches within the United Nations system for improving the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms (130 to 1); Measures to be taken against Nazi, Fascist and neo-Fascist activities (121 to 2 with Israel); International cooperation in the interrelated areas of money, finance, debt, resource flow, trade and development (133 to 1).
1986
USA and Nicaragua
The USA legislature refuse funding for the Contras (anti-Nicaragua mercenaries set up and trained by the USA).President Reagan secretly approves arms sales to Iran in contradiction to official USA policy. The money from these sales is diverted to the Contras. The purpose is to destabilise theSandinista government of Daniel Ortega.
Colonel Oliver North sets up centers in Colombia where cocaine dealing obtains more money to buy arms for the Contras. The drugs trade leads to a crack cocaine epidemic in Western countries.
The USA's policies inflict more than 50,000 casualties in Nicaragua. This includes nearly 3,500 children killed and over 6,000 children orphaned. The USA made film Under Fire covers this period.The USA is criticised by the World Court for its undercover action against the democratically elected government of Nicaragua. The Court orders the USA to pay reparations of $ 17,000 million which the USA refuses to abide by.
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution calling on all governments to observe international law.Alan Tonelson writes in USA magazine New Republic that USA policy in Nicaragua "involves handling the Sandistas and other threats in Central America the way that great powers have always dealt with pesty, puny neighbours: by laying down the law unilaterally and enforcing our will through intimidation and direct uses of military force. If the intimidation is successful - as it easily could be - the actual use of force would be unnecessary". He continues that "Americans should be able to bring Nicaragua to heel without slogging through its jungles - especially if it is clear that good behaviour will bring a postponement of the regime's rendevous with the ash heap of history".
1986
Israel and Lebanon
Israel continues to occupy and terrorise the south of Lebanon: in Tiri, 4 people are killed while 79 have their ears and hands cut off. 20 people are killed after a raid at Al-Naher Al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp.
The USA vetoes two United Nations resolutions. One condemning Israeli actions against civilians in Lebanon and the other calling on Israel to respect Muslim holy places.
Israeli warplanes force an executive jet from Libya to land in Israel, in an effort to capture Abu Nidal, a Palestinian leader. He is not on board and, after interrogation, the passengers are allowed to leave.
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning Israel for sky-jacking.
1986
USA Vetos in UN
The USA vetoes 8 United Nations resolutions against the wishes of the majority of the world.To set up a zone of peace and cooperation in the South Atlantic (voted by 124 to 1); To eliminate existing imbalances in the information and communications fields (148 to 1); Strengthening of international security (126 to 1); Dialogue to improve the international situation (117 to 1); Establishment of a comprehensive system of international peace and security (102 to 2 with France); Declaration on the right to development (146 to 1); Measures to improve the situation and ensure the human rights and dignity of all migrant workers (148 to 1); Protection against products harmful to health and the environment (146 to 1).
1987
Israel and Palestine
The Palestinians begin the intifada (an Arabic word meaning "resistance") to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which had gone on for 20 years from 1967.Israel responds by firing live ammunition at stone throwing demonstrators (killing many, often children), demolishing Palestinian houses, destroying crops, closing schools and universities, collective punishments, deportations, and the arbitrary arrest and torture of suspects. The Israeli Prime Minister, Yitsak Shamir (quoted in Israeli magazine, Hadashot) warns the Palestinians that they would be crushed "like grasshoppers".
During the five year uprising, over 1000 Palestinians would be killed resisting the occupation of their country. Thousands more would be injured.
The USA vetoes two separate United Nations resolutions both urging Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of the Palestinians and to stop the deportations:"The United Nations calls on Israel to abandon plans to remove and resettle Palestinian refugees of the West Bank away from their homes and property". Voted by 145 to 2 (USA, Israel).Little reportage of conditions for the Palestinians had appeared in the Western media. Under military administration, Palestinians were beaten and humilliated at checkpoints and had to show passes on demand. Armed settlers committed numerous, unpunished acts on violence on the Palestinian population.
1987
Israel, Palestine and Lebanon
Israeli jets raid the Ain Al-Hillwee refugee camp in Lebanon, killing 75 Palestinians.
In 1988, the USA vetoes three United Nations resolutions condemning Israeli actions in Lebanon and urging a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon.
Between 1983 and 1987, Israeli forces have killed over 50,000 people in Lebanon.
1987
USA, France and UK Vetos in UN
The USA vetoes 4 United Nations resolutions supported only by Israel:Cooperation between the United Nations and the League of Arab States (votes are 153 to 2); Calling for compliance in the International Court of Justice concerning military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua (94 to 2); Ending the trade embargo against Nicaragua (94 to 2); Measures to prevent international terrorism, study the underlying political and economic causes of terrorism, convene a conference to define terrorism and to differentiate it from the struggle of people from national liberation (153 to 2).
The USA vetoes 2 United Nations resolutions supported only by France and / or the UK:Calling for a comprehensive test ban (143 to 2); Calling for a halt to all nuclear explosions (137 to 3).
The USA vetoes 6 United Nations resolutions as the only country to vote against:Financing the training of journalists and strengthening communications services in the underdeveloped world (140 to 1); Furthering international cooperation regarding the external debt problems (154 to 1); Preparation for a United Nations conference on Trade and Development (131 to 1); Opposing the build up of weapons in space (154 to 1); Opposition to the development of new weapons of mass destruction (135 to 1); Proposal to set up a South Atlantic Zone of Peace (124 to 1).
The following resolution: "A call for a convention on the rights of the child" is passed with 150 votes for, 0 votes against. The USA abstains.
The USA is the only country to boycott a United Nations conference considering how the reduction of armaments might release funds to help economic development of poorer countries.
Little of the USA's voting patterns in the United Nations is revealed in the Western media.
1988
Israel, USA and Palestine
In a meeting in Algeria, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) recognises and accepts the existence of the State of Israel. It accepts all United Nations resolutions going back to 1947 and declares its abandonment its claim to all of historical Palestine.The PLO declares the independence of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The declarations are rejected by Israel and Palestine continues under Israeli occupation.
The USA vetoes two separate United Nations resolutions condemning Israeli practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories. In 1989 three more similar resolutions are vetoed by the USA. The PLO wishes to appeal to the General Assembly of the United Nations but the leader, Yasser Arafat is refused a visa by the USA despite being recognised by over 60 countries. The Assembly meeting is moved to Geneva (Switzerland)
Israel assassinates Abu Jihad, the second in command of the PLO in Tunis (Tunisia). The action was commanded by future Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak from a naval vessel in the Meditteranean.Hamas is founded, dedicated to reclaiming all of historical Palestine for a Muslim nation. The organisation is funded by Israel in an attempt to weaken the secular PLO.
1989
USA and Panama
The USA invades Panama to capture Manuel Noriega, the former USA backed president whom they accuse of drug trafficking. Over 4000 Panamanians are killed in the operation with unknown numbers buried in mass graves or incinerated. Of the invaders, 23 Americans die. The USA, UK and France veto a United Nations resolution condemning the invasion.
During the invasion, residential areas are attacked by helicopters. A tank destroys a bus killing 26 people. Houses are burnt and buldozed. Over 15,000 people lose their homes. Troops shoot at ambulances killing many wounded. Access to the Red Cross is denied by the USA military.The village of Pacora is sprayed with a gas that causes peoples' skin to burn and gives the villagers diarrhea.
Political offices, newspaper offices and radio stations are searched and looted; opposition and union leaders are detained. The office of the Panamanian publishing company ERSA (which owns three newspapers) are occupied by USA security forces who turn it over to a member of the ruling elite who had favoured USA intervention in Panama. The editor of the newspaper La Republica, which had opposed USA intervention and had reported casualty figures, is arrested by the USA military, held for six weeks and imprisoned without trial or charge.
Staff from the Embassy of Cuba are detained. Loud music is blared at the Embassy of the Vatican City after Noriega takes refuge there.The residence of the ambassador of Nicaragua is ransacked by USA troops in violation of the Geneva Convention. The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning the violation of diplomatic privilege; the UK abstains. This was not reported in the USA media.
Noriega is eventually arrested and imprisoned in the USA after having worked for the CIA since the early 1950s. He had spied on fellow students, instructors and officers at theMilitary Acadamy for the CIA and had monitored union activity against the USA company United Fruit. During the 1980s he had been receiving $ 200,000 per year from the USA for his activities.
The Panamanian military is put under the leadership of Colonel Eduardo Herrera Hassan. The USA newspaper, The New York Times writes that Hassan "most energetically shot, gassed, beat and tortured civilian protestors during the wave of demonstrations against Gereral Noriega that erupted [in Panama] in the summer of 1987" but is "a favorite of the American and diplomatic establishment here."Money laundering and drug trafficking continues in the new regime with USA soldiers implicated.
The news agency, Associated Press, reports that the USA Congress passes a resolution (389-26) "commending [President George] Bush for his handling of the invasion and expressing sadness over the loss of 23 American lives".Little mention is made of Panama's civilian casualties in the USA media and no compensation has ever been paid to the thousands of homeless living in refugee camps. The poor neighbourhood of El Chorillo, flattened by the USA action, is to be redeveloped into a posh area as business opponents of Noriega had long desired.
All foreign media is banned by the USA during the invasion.
The USA president, George Bush, is asked if the capture of Noriega was worth the death toll: "I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it".The USA author Noam Chomsky later writes:
"A few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the USA invaded Panama, killing hundreds or thousands of people, vetoing two [United Nations] Security Council resolutions, and kidnapping a thug who was jailed in the USA for crimes that he had mostly committed while on the CIA payroll before committing the only one that mattered: disobedience. The pattern of events was familiar enough, but there were some differences. One was pointed out by Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty to crimes committed when he was a State Department official during the Reagan years, and has now been appointed Human Rights specialist at the [USA] National Security Council. At the time of the invasion, he commented, astutely, that for the first time in many years the USA could resort to force with no concern about Russian reactions. There were also new pretexts: the intervention was in defense against Hispanic narcotraffickers, not the Russians who were mobilizing in Managua, two days march from Harlingen, Texas."
Elliot Abrams observed that "[USA President] Bush probably is going to be increasingly willing to use force [now that] developments in Moscow have lessened the prospect for a small operation to escalate into a superpower conflict".
1989
USA and Libya
USA forces shoot down two Libyan planes off the coast of Libya. The USA vetoes a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the action.
1989
USA Vetos in UN
The USA vetoes a number of United Nations resolutions:Two resolutions calling for all states to observe international law: one condemning USA support for the Contra army in Nicaragua, the other condemning the USA's illegal embargo ofNicaragua (only Israel votes with the USA); opposing the acquisision of territory by force (151 to 3 with Israel and Dominica).
A resolution calling for the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict based on previous United Nations resolutions calling for recognised borders, security and self determination for thePalestinians.
Between 1970 and 1990, the USA used its United Nations veto 58 times. This is more than any other country possessing a veto (USA, The Soviet Union (USSR), UK, France,China). The UK is second in its use of the veto.This is reported in the USA newspaper, The Washington Post, as follows: "During the Cold War years, the Soviet veto and the hostility of many Third World nations made the United Nations an object of scorn to many American politicians and citizens."
The UK television station, BBC, reports that "Time and time again during the Cold war, the Kremlin used its veto to protect its interests from the threat of UN intervention". The Kremlin is the seat of government of the USSR.
1990
Israel and Palestine
In Israel, troops open fire on Palestinian demonstrators in Jerusalem killing 21 and injuring 150.
An Israeli soldier shoots and kills 7 labourers at Oyon Qara; 13 Palestinians are killed while demonstrating against the killings.
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution to send three UN Security Council observers into the area.
The Israeli Ministry of Agriculture publishes a full page advertisement in newspapers saying:"It is difficult to conceive of any political solution consistent with Israel's survival that does not involve complete, continued Israeli control of the water and sewerage systems [of the occupied territories], and of the associated infrastructure, including the power supply and road network, essential to their operation, maintenance and accessibility."
Israeli warplanes bomb a house in Siddiqine (Lebanon) killing 3 people.
A Save The Children report criticises Israel for its treatment of children in the occupied territories. The report documents the "indiscriminate beating, tear gassing, and shooting of children". The average age of the victims was 10 years old. In 80% of cases where children are shot, the Israeli forces prevent the victim from receiving medical attention. It concludes that 50,000 children required medical treatment for gun-shot wounds, tear gas inhalation and broken bones (often multiple fractures). Many children die after being shot by snipers in the head or heart.
1995
Israel and Palestine
Israel and the PLO sign a peace agreement. Palestinians are given limited self rule in selected areas but Israel retains the right to control 145 settlements (colonies), 128 of them armed, with thousands of troops.Under the Agreement, the West Bank (the occupied territories minus Gaza) would be divided into three areas:
- Area A: 3% of the West Bank (made up of Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem and 80% of Hebron) would be controlled by an elected Palestinian Authority.
- Area B: 23% of the West Bank (440 villages and their surrounding lands) would have Palestinian civilian control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security.
- Area C: 74% of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and including the 145 settlements, their access roads and 20% of Hebron would remain under complete Israeli control.
The city of Hebron was to be split into two. 20% of the city (including the best commercial areas) would be reserved for the 450 heavily armed Jewish settlers. The remaining 80% would be for the 130,000 Palestinians, who are often subject to curfews and restrictions of movement.
Between 1992 (when Yitzak Rabin was elected Prime Minister of Israel) and 1995, the settler (colonist) population in the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights (but not includingEast Jerusalem) increased from 78,400 to 136,000. Land for the building of settlements is confiscated from the Palestinians.Israeli policy in the West Bank was splitting the Arab areas into cantons criss-crossed by Jewish-only settlements and their Jewish-only access roads. This, and the need forPalestinians to hold and show passes leads Tanya Reinhart, a professor from Tel Aviv University, to compare the situation in the occupied territories to apartheid in South Africa.
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution confirming that the expropriation of land by Israel in East Jerusalem is invalid and in violation of United Nations resolutions and the Geneva Convention.
1997
Israel and Palestine
The Israel parliament approves building settlements (colonies) in East Jerusalem. This area had been annexed by Israel in 1980 after it had been occupied in 1967. This annexation and the building of settlements are both considered illegal by the United Nations and violate Geneva Conventions on occupied territory.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu outlines a plan in the Israeli newspaper, Jerusalem Post, for annexing 60% of the West Bank including Greater Jerusalem, hills east of the city, the Jordan Valley, the 145 settlements and all roads connecting them as well as the West Bank water supply.Hamas writes a letter to Netanyahu, via King Hussein of Jordan, offering dialogue, with the king as mediator. The Israeli response is an attempted assassination of a Hamas leader in Jordan.
The USA vetoes two United Nations resolutions that call on Israel to cease construction of settlements in East Jerusalem and the other occupied territories. One of the votes was by 130 to 2 (USA and Israel).
1999
USA and Cuba
The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution that calls on it to end its embargo on Cuba. This is the eighth year running that such a resolution has been vetoed by the USA. The actual votes have been:
| Year | Votes | Against |
| 1992 | 59 to 2 | USA, Israel |
| 1993 | 88 to 4 | USA, Israel, Albania, Paraguay |
| 1994 | 101 to 2 | USA, Israel |
| 1995 | 117 to 3 | USA, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1996 | 138 to 2 | USA, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1997 | 143 to 2 | USA, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1998 | 157 to 2 | USA, Israel |
| 1999 | 155 to 2 | USA, Israel |
The USA president, Bill Clinton states that "Cuba is the only non democracy in the Western Hemisphere". This is in spite of the fact that Cuba has none of the systematic death squad activities and military control of USA client states like El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Haiti and Honduras. The USA and the media refer to these countries as"fledgling democracies".In addition, education and health care are better in Cuba than in most other country's in the region. As Clinton admits "both of which work better than in most other countries".
Left alone, without years of USA destabilisation and economic sabotage, Cuba may have been a beacon to other countries in the region. This is the real threat of Fidel Castro'sregime.
2001
USA Veto in UN
On 28th March the USA vetoes a United Nations resolution calling for the deployment of unarmed monitors to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
This is the 73rd use of the veto in the United Nations by the USA since 1945. The vast majority of USA vetos were cast in support of Israel and South Africa during the apartheid era, and defending USA actions in Central America. Most of the vetos violate the spirit of United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and other documents describing basic human rights and humanitarian standards.
In December the USA vetoes a United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning Israel for acts of terror against civilians in the occupied territories.
2002
International Criminal Court
The USA president states that he will "unsign" the treaty authorising the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This court, supported by most of the world (137 countries), would allow crimes against humanity (such as genocide and war crimes) to be tried under international rules. USA Secretary of State, Colin Powell, declares that the USA would be "no longer bound in any way to its purpose and objective."
Ken Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch observes that "the USA does not wish to live by the rules that it expects of others".The USA uses its United Nations Security Council veto to block the renewal of the peace mandate in Bosnia in order to put pressure on the world community over the ICC. A seniorUnited Nations diplomat states that this action is "false and discusting" and "an absurd ideological attack on the ICC".
When the ICC becomes law, the USA puts pressure on countries to exempt USA citizens from its provisions. Romania is told that it cannot join NATO unless it agrees to this. Eventually, 16 countries sign agreements with the USA to exempt its citizens.
2002
Israel in Palestine
A report in the UK newspaper, The Guardian states that 200 children were killed and over 400 maimed by Israeli forces in Palestine between September 2000 and December 2001.
Israel demolishes 60 Palestinian houses in the Gaza Strip after four Israeli soldiers are killed. 93 families of about 600 people are left homeless. This collective punishment of a population violates the Genevea Conventions. The demolitions go ahead in spite of appeals from relatives of the dead soldiers. The Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz describes the action as a war crime and: "destruction on a systematic collective and indiscriminate level against Palestinians, whoever they may be. As far as is known, the only sin of most of them - perhaps even all of them - was the place where they lived."Few reports of this action or its aftermath appear in Western media.
Israeli forces attack The Voice of Palestine radio station. Also destroyed are a number of properties funded by the European Union: irrigation schemes, a school building program, the airport in Gaza, the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, and a sea port. Chris Patten, the European Union Foreign Affairs Commissioner asks: "[Does] it really contribute to security if everything we try to support with EU assistance is destroyed." Many institutions of Palestinian statehood are destroyed including the ministries of health and education.The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, is put effectively under house arrest by the presence of Israeli military forces near his residence. His compound is then attacked forcing Arafatinto one windowless room. Israel refuses permission for Arafat to go to an Arab Summit in Beirut. The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, declares Arafat "an enemy of the world"and states that he regrets that "we did not liquidate" Arafat during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The USA ignores the comments which are condemned by European leaders.Saeb Ereket, a Palestinian cabinet minister responds: "I think these remarks reflect what has been always said - that Sharon is trying to finish what he began in 1982. And for prime ministers to announce openly their gangster intentions is a reflection of what kind of government we're dealing with."
Hundreds of reservist soldiers from Israel sign a petition refusing to serve in the occupied territories. The petition says that the occupation of Palestinian land is "corrupting the entire Israeli society". Soldiers had been issued with orders in the occupied territories that "had nothing to do with the security of our country [and had] the sole purpose of perpetuating our control [over the Palestinians]. We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people". Lieutenant Ishai Sagi adds: "Everything that we do in there [the occupied territories]... all the horrors, all the tearing down of houses and trees, all the roadblocks, everything - is just for one purpose, the settlers, who I believe are illegally there. So I believe that the orders I got were illegal, and I won't do that again."In late February, a 22 year old Palestinian woman, Maysoun Hayek, begins experiencing the labour pains for her first child. Her husband, Mohammed, decides to drive his wife the 19km from their village Zeita (in the West Bank) to the nearest large town, Nablus. On the previous night a pregnant woman had been shot and injured by Israeli soldiers on the same road. Travelling at night on that road is dangerous but the woman's labour pains are too strong to wait until morning. Mohammed's father, Abdullah, decides to travel with them in the hope that a car containing an old man would be spared any trouble. The party leaves at 1:30 am and arrives at Nablus where the car is stopped at an Israeli checkpoint. The solders search the car and pat the woman's stomach. Five minutes later, the car comes under fire from Israeli troops stationed on a hillside. Mohammad is killed after 25 bullets penetrate his body. The old man, Abdullah, is hit in the chest and back; doctors say he may be permanently paralysed. At the hospital, Maysoun gives birth to a daughter, Fida. These people are Palestinians travelling from a Palestinian village to a Palestinian town. Many Palestinians have been killed travelling past Israeli checkpoints, some dying on their way to hospital.
In the same week an Israeli woman gives birth after being shot by terrorists. The Western media concentrate on her story and ignore the story of the two Palestinian women.
In March, Israeli forces kill an Italian photographer, Raffaele Ciriello, reporting for Corriere della Sera from the West Bank city of Ramallah. He is killed when soldiers in a tank open fire on him with a heavy machine gun. On the same day, a clearly marked television car is also attacked. Egyptian journalist, Tareq Abdel Jaber, is saved by his flak jacket after Israeli soldiers fire five shots at his vehicle.Foreign journalists say that they are routinely fired at by Israeli forces. In another incident the Israeli army fires for 15 minutes into a hotel used by journalists in Ramallah. Seven shots are fired at a camera belonging to the USA ABC Network. A taxi carrying USA and UK journalists is fired at. According to Reporters Without Borders, 40 journalists have been injured in the previous two years of reporting in the occupied territories, mostly by Israeli forces.
By the end of March, Amnesty International reports that more than 1000 Palestinians had been killed. "Israeli security services have killed Palestinians, including more than 200 children, unlawfully, by shelling and bombing residential areas, random or targeted shooting, especially near checkpoints and borders, by extrajudicial executions and during demonstrations."Palestinians begin to attack Israeli civilians with suicide bombers. Even so, Amnesty International comments: "These actions are shocking. Yet they can never justify the human rights violations and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions which, over the past 18 months, have been committed daily, hourly, even every minute, by the Israeli authorities against Palestinians. Israeli forces have consistently carried out killings when no lives were in danger."
In early April, Israeli tanks fire at a group of unarmed peace demonstrators (including many foreigners) in Bethlehem. A Jewish woman from the UK, Jo Bird, is among the people shot at: "I feared for my life, for sure. The soldiers carried on firing at us for 10 minutes... It opened my eyes to the brutality of the Israeli occupation".The UK BBC reporter Orla Guerin is fired at and forced to abandon her vehicle. Another UK television station, Channel 4, reports that USA CIA operatives (who did not want to be filmed) were allowed to pass into the area under Israeli military control.
In the West Bank city of Bethlehem, USA-made F-16 warplanes drop large bombs on residential areas; one lands 200m from a United Nations school where 3000 children are studying. Helicopters fire heavy calibre machine guns at Palestinian police and civilians. 38 people are killed in a 12 hour period. On the ground, Israeli tanks shunt Palestinian ambulances off the street in violation of the protection afforded to rescue workers by the Geneva Convention.
Dr Ahmed Soubeih becomes the fourth doctor to be killed in one week of Israeli action. He had informed Israeli military authorities of his trip to a neighbouring hospital to get supplies for his patients. After being shot at, he again spoke to the Israelis who assured him of his safety. He was killed by a volley of bullets from an Israeli tank a few minutes later.Red Cross workers describe ambulances and hospitals being attacked by Israeli forces, medical attention being denied to casualties, and bodies lying unburied. Israeli Arabs and Jews attempting to take food to Palestinian families under siege are tear-gassed by Israeli soldiers.
16 Palestinians (including 5 children) are killed in the Gaza village of Kouza.
Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposes a plan whereby the Arab world would recognise Israel diplomatically in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinianterritories and the Syrian Golan Heights occupied in 1967. Palestinian refugees would have the right to return (or compensation) and the settlements (colonies) would have to be evacuated. Both Israel and the USA ignore the plan.
An article in the USA magazine, USA Today talks of the "transfer" or "resettlement" of Arabs to Jordan to solve the "Palestinian problem". This is ethnic cleansing which would be a war crime. The question of whether Jewish settlers (colonists) should be transferred off illegally occupied Arab land is not mentioned.
In mid April, Israeli forces invade Palestinian territory. The USA takes time to condemn the invasion while European and Arab populations demonstrate against it. Arab leaders query why the USA Secretary of State, Colin Powell, takes over a week to reach the region (travelling slowly via Europe and other Middle East countries) while the invasion rages. In 15 days over 400 Palestinians are killed and 1,500 injured; many are children. The USA criticises the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, even though he is besieged in his offices with a few aids and no electricity. Two weeks previously, the USA had sold 24 Black Hawk helicopters to Israel worth $211 million and paid for by the USA. This fact is hardly mentioned in the Western media.In the West Bank city of Jenin the director of the hospital, Dr Ziad Ayaseh, describes a warning by Israeli forces that ambulances would be fired on if they attempt to enter the combat zone. This is confirmed by the International Red Cross. The director of the hospital in Bethlehem, Peter Qumri, is issued with similar threats. Basil Bshaarat is shot in the thigh and cannot get medical treatment for two days. He lies in his university dormitory with a towel to stop the bleeding. Palestinian ambulances are eventually allowed into the area with orders to bring out only dead bodies. Bshaarat and another man is smuggled out under three bodies: "the smell was terrible". Stopping rescue services from treating the injured is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Both the Red Cross and the World Health Organisation state that people have died because Israeli forces had stopped rescuers getting through. The International Red Crescent has two of its ambulances destroyed while they are parked in Tulkarem.
Journalists are threatened and shot at to keep them out of the invasion zone. Stun grenades are used. A French television journalist is shot in front of BBC cameras. Michael Holmesof CNN has rubber bullets fired at him. Barbara Plett of the BBC is attacked with stun grenades when part of a five car convoy: "I was not shocked at the heavy-handed approach of the Israeli army. They have a sniper outside our hotel, for Heaven's sake." The BBC reporter Jeremy Vine, is denied access to the invasion zone but enters on foot. In Rumana, he films people whose hands had been bound for two days. Others had been wounded with dumdum bullets. These break up into many fragments when entering flesh. Hundreds of wounded civilians are being treated in houses.
In Bethlehem, hundreds of people take refuge in the Church of the Nativity which is surrounded by Israeli tanks. Among those trapped is the governor of the city, Mohammed al-Madani. The Christian bell ringer at the church for 30 years, Samir Ibrahim Salman, is killed while crossing to the building. A Muslim is shot while attempting to put out a fire at the Church. Brother Mark Boyle, a 60 year old monk from the UK, is confined to the Vatican funded university where he teaches, after Israeli missiles attack the building, destroying classrooms. From his vantage point he watches Israeli soldiers surrounding the Church of the Nativity and firing from all sites, starting several fires, as well as playing sounds of screaming women and barking dogs through loud-speakers.
USA-made Apache helicopters fire missiles and rockets on residential areas. Bulldozers demolish houses in the narrow streets. Hundreds of people are killed in Jenin over a three day period. Israeli troops open fire on the house of Sami Abda, even though neighbours had warned them there were only civilians inside. His mother and brother are killed after 18 bullets are fired through the open front door. Ambulances are refused permission to enter the street so the family has to live with the bodies for 30 hours. The United Nations Commission for Refugees report that Israeli soldiers smashed medical equipment even though there was no fighting.
The refugee camp in Jenin is closed to all outsiders for two weeks. Dozens of people are killed, half of them civilians. Many houses are bulldozed without warning with people inside, including several storey buildings. An area 0.5km wide, and home to 800 people, is flattened. Survivors talk of indiscriminate killings, mass graves (one trench with over 30 bodies), bodies taken away by the military, people shot as they surrendered, grenades being thrown into houses full of people, people used as human shields (including 72 year old Rajeh Tawafshi), ambulances shot at to keep them from treating the wounded.Many civilians are killed. Mohammed Abu Sba'a, an elderly unarmed man, is shot in the chest after attempting to persuade a bulldozer driver not to crush his house. Fadwa Jamma, a nurse in uniform, is shot dead while attempting to help a wounded man outside her house. Atiya Rumeleh calls for an ambulance after her husband is shot in the face. The Israelis stop the vehicle and send it away and he dies. Afaf Desuqi, a 52 year old woman, is killed when Israeli soldiers blow her door open. Jamal Feyed, a mentally and physically disabled man, is killed when an Israeli bulldozer crushes his house, even though relatives had told the driver of his presence. Ahmad Hamduni, a man in his 80s, is shot by soldiers at close range in his house. Faris Zeben, a 14 year old boy, is shot from a tank while out buying groceries Mohammed Hawashin (15) is shot in the face while walking home. Kemal Zughayer, a 58 year old disabled man, is shot dead in his wheelchair while wheeling himself on the road with a white flag; a tank then runs over and mangles his body.
United Nations officials are shocked at the scale of the destruction; Terje Roed-Larsen states: "Given the deplorable and unprecedented refusal to allow international relief organisations into the camps while people were slowly dying in the rubble of their wounds and thirst, the onus is on Israel to account for the missing thousands of refugees who lived in the camp until a few weeks ago. [Israel] were hiding a war crime, in fact, two war crimes: the mass killing and the denial of humanitarian relief." The Israeli vilify him for his observations.
Amnesty International calls for a full enquiry by the United Nations Security Council. Many countries support this but the USA initially resists. The International Red Cross states that the camp "looks like it has been hit by an earthquake". After being denied entry for a week, workers from the Red Cross find injured survivors in the rubble. The Jenin refugee camp was home to 14,000 people and was established in 1953. Its inhabitants were originally ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel, a fact not widely reported in the Western media.
Israel blocks a United Nations enquiry into the events in Jenin. A few months later, the general in charge of the Jenin operation, Shaul Mofaz, is appointed Israel's Defence Minister.
Dima Sinafta, a 14 year old girl is killed after being hit by tank fire while standing on her balcony in Tubas. 8 year old Ahmed Srayer is one of 11 people injured when the car he is travelling is attacked by two helicopters in Hebron.
In Ramallah a group of Palestinian policemen, including two in their mid-50s are executed in a small room. Over 1000 prisoners are taken away to unknown destinations. Some are seen blindfolded and gagged in Jewish settlements (colonies). Hakam Kanafani, manager of Jawwal, a mobile phone company, describes his offices being wrecked and looted by Israeli soldiers: "All doors were broken even though the keys were available for them to use."The Israel newspaper Ha'aretz describes vandalism and looting perpetrated by the Israeli army in the Ministry of Culture building in Ramallah occupied by troops for a month: "In every room of the various departments - literature, film, culture for children and youth - books, disks, pamphlets and documents were piled up, soiled with urine and excrement. There are two toilets on every floor but the soldiers urinated and defecated everywhere else in the building. They did their business on the floors, in emptied flower pots, even in drawers they had pulled out of the desk... someone even managed to defecate into the photocopier."
70 Palestinians are killed in Nablus. The Al-Shu'bis family loses 8 members when Israeli soldiers buldoze their house while they are inside. The dead include three children, their pregnant mother and their 85 year old grandmother. Soldiers continue to demolish the house even after neighbours inform them of the presence of people inside.
A woman and two children (aged 4 and 6) are shot and killed by a tank in Jenin while gathering firewood.
The Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, is called "a man of peace" by the USA. The USA president, George W Bush tells the Palestinians that they can have their own state only if they elect a leader acceptable to the USA and Israel.140 people are wounded and 14 killed (including 9 children, some babies) when an Israeli F-16 warplane fires a missile into a residential area in Gaza City. The Prime Minister of Israel,Ariel Sharon describes the attack as "one of our greatest successes". The target had been a Palestinian leader accused by Israel of planning suicide bombings. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees informs Israel that "the reckless killing of civilians is absolutely prohibited, regardless of the military significance of the target being attacked." Only a week earlier, the UK government had agreed sales of electronic parts to the USA that would be used in the manufacture of F-16 warplanes for sale to Israel. European diplomats had agreed a deal to stop the suicide attacks when this incident occurred.
After demolishing the houses of several suspected militants, Israel attempts to deport their relatives as a deterrent. Amnesty International describes this as "collective punishment" and declares that "if these people have committed no crime then deporting them would be a breach of the Geneva Conventions".
Amnesty International publishes a report stating that in the first nine months of 2002, 322 children died in the conflict. Of these, 72 were Israeli children killed by Palestiniangunmen and suicide bombers.During the same period, 250 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli military forces, nearly half of them under 12 years old. Israel is attacked in the report for "excessive and disproportionate use of lethal force [and] reckless shooting [in residential areas]". The report concludes that "No judicial investigation is known to have been carried out by members of the Israeli Defence Forces in the occupied territories, even in cases where Israeli government officials have stated publicly that investigations would be carried out."
In one highlighted incident, 9 children are killed with 8 adults when a 1000kg bomb is dropped on their house from a USA made F-16 jet. The dead include Dina Matar (2 months old),Ayman Matar (18 months), Mohamad Matar (3 years), Sobhi Hweiti (4), Diana Matar (5), Mohamad Hweiti (6), Ala Matar (10), Iman Shehada (15), Maryam Matar (17). The Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, describes this strike as a "great success". None of the victims is named or pictured in the Western media.
Another report, by The United Nations Children's Fund blames the Israeli army's curfews for preventing 170,000 Palestinian children from going to school in breach of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Israeli troops frequently open fire on people breaking the curfew, even children.
In Gaza, several people are killed by Israeli tank fire including 12 year old Saher al-Hout. A hospital is fired on killing a hospital worker.In the Gaza city of Khan Younis, eight Palestinians are killed while standing outside a mosque by a missile fired by an Israeli helicopter. Over 80 people are injured including children. Although reported in Reuters, this story is unreported in the Western media.
In November, two Israeli children are killed by Palestinians in a Kibutz. This is extensively reported in the Western media with photographs of the victims, videos of them playing and interviews with grieving relatives. During the same month a number of Palestinian children are killed by Israeli forces in the occupied territories. These include a 2 year old boy, Nafez Mishal, and an 8 year old girl, Shaima abu Shamaaleh. Only a few newspapers in the UK report these deaths and none in the USA. No television images are broadcast. Shaima's father states "The [Israeli] army fires at our houses and calls it self defence, but they call our attacks terrorism. I am against the killing of children". Between September 2000 and October 2002, 602 Israelis and 1591 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict.
Palestinians from the West Bank village of Yanun are attacked daily by armed Israelis from the nearby illegal settlement (colony) of Itamar while harvesting their olive groves. Hani Bani Minyeh is shot dead. Two international peace activists are beaten up by the same settlers: Mary Hughes-Thompson, 68 (from UK) and James Delaplain, 74 (from USA).
2003
Palestine and Israel
In Palestine, 300 Israeli soldiers demolish 62 shops in a market in the village of Nazlat Issa, destroying the livelihood of hundreds of Palestinians. The village is close to a fence being built by Israel on occupied West Bank land. This fence will cut off many Palestinian towns from the rest of the West Bank.A vegetable market is demolished in Hebron where the Israeli army also close three police stations and two television channels. These actions are against international law but are ignored by the West.
In Gaza, Israel uses helicopter gunships, tanks and armoured vehicles in a 7 hour night attack on Gaza City. 12 Palestinians are killed and 67 injured. In mid February, Israel sends 40 tanks into the city killing 11 people including Mundur Safadi, a medic tending to a man with chest injuries. In March, Nuha al-Magadmeh, a woman who is nine months pregnant, is crushed to death when Israeli forces blow up the house next door.In Nablus a 65 year old UK woman, Anne Gwynne, is shot at by Israeli soldiers while working as a volunteer medical worker in a Palestinian ambulance. The driver is killed by a shot in the head. Shooting at medical services violates the Geneva Convention. 61 year old Ahmad abu Zahra and his 17 year old grandson are shot dead while walking during an Israeli imposed curfew.
In Rafah a 7 year old boy is killed by Israeli army fire. A 65 year old partially deaf woman, Kamla Said, is killed in Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza when Israeli forces demolish her home while she is inside. Her stepson states: "Israeli troops were acting in a brutal way. They got us all out of the house so fast and in an aggressive manner, they gave no chance for us to see who was out and who was in".
In Bethlehem Israeli forces construct a high concrete wall across the occupied city cutting off 500 people from their work, schools and community. One resident, Amjad Awwad, is told that if a doctor is required in the night, the hospital will have to telephone the Israeli government for permission. A series of fences and walls is being built around Jerusalem to protect illegally built settlements (colonies) in the West Bank.
After elections in Israel, a coalition forms including parties calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank by force.
In March, TV film shows a Palestinian fireman, Naji Abu Jalili, being killed while putting out a fire in Jabalya by an Israeli tank shell. The shell is full of flachettes, arrow shaped pieces of metal designed to inflict mass casualties. Several people in a crowd opposite the building are also injured.Israeli forces fire on people attempting to rescue the wounded. The wounded include Hamad Jadallah and Shams Odeh, journalists working for Reuters. The Israelis state that the man died from a booby trap in the building, a claim not supported by the film footage.
Rachel Corrie, a 23 year old citizen of the USA, is killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to protect a Palestinian house from being demolished in a refugee camp in Gaza. Another human shield, Nicholas Durie (Scotland, UK) explained "we were trying to frustrate their efforts by getting in front of the bulldozers. One of the drivers saw Rachel and drove towards her. She didn't get out of the way and he didn't stop. She was carried up with a heap of earth in the shovel of the buldozer. The driver continued working. She slipped and fell and was run over by the bulldozer. The driver saw that she had fallen, but carried her along for another 16 feet [5m]. Only then did he back off".A senior Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat, stated: "Rachel died doing what world governments have failed to do - protecting defenceless civilians". A few months later, her parents visit the house she was protecting with the permission of the Israeli army. A UK television documentary shows them being shot at by Israeli snipers and bulldozers 30m from the house where they are visiting.
The bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes are manufactured the USA company, Caterpillar. It is estimated that 50,000 Palestinians have been made homeless by the company's D9 armoured bulldozer.
Tom Hurndall, a 21 year old human shield from London (UK), is shot in the head by an Israeli soldier while trying to lead a group of Palestinian children away from a gun fight in Rafah. His injuries leave him in a coma. His parents, Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall, later visit the area from the UK to find out the circumstances. They are also shot at by Israeli soldiers at the Abu Khouli checkpoint while driving in a convoy organised by the UK Embassy and bearing diplomatic number plates. They had given notice of the journey on three occasions including a few minutes before the convoy arrived.
The Israeli army demolishes an apartment block in Hebron after an attack by non-residents on Israeli soldiers. Several families are left homeless. This form of collective punishment is common in the West Bank and Gaza and violates the Geneva Convention.
Two days before the USA invades Iraq, the President, George W Bush, and the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, both state that the USA is committed to a Palestinian state and publish a "road map" towards that goal. This story is publicised in all Western media. Within a day of this announcement, the Israel leader, Ariel Sharon states that he will not allow a viable, independent Palestinian state. This story is hardly reported in the West.During the first week of the USA and UK invasion of Iraq, Israeli forces kill three children in the occupied territories: a girl aged 10 shot in a car she was travelling in; soldiers shot a 14 year old boy who had climbed onto an armoured car; a 15 year old boy who was throwing stones.
Five people are killed and 50 injured when Israeli forces fire a missile at a car in Gaza City. The bulk of the injuries occur when the jet fires at a crowd that had gathered around the damaged car.
More than 1000 men and boys are taken away at gunpoint in trucks from Tulkarem refugee camp.In Rafah (a refugee camp in the Gaza strip), Israeli forces kill 5 Palestinians and injure over 40 when a large force is sent into the area.
In a 24 hour period, two journalists are shot dead by Israeli soldiers: In Nablus, Nazeh Darwazeh, 41, a cameraman who worked for Associated Press; in Rafah, Corporal Lior Ziv, 19, an Israeli army cameraman.
In late April, a "road map" for peace is published. The plan has been agreed by the USA, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.The plan calls for Palestinians to stop their violence but does not call on Israel to comply with UN resolutions concerning the occupation and settlements. The Israeli Prime Minister,Ariel Sharon, calls on Palestinians to renounce the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees before he will negotiate on the plan.
The right of refugees to return to their homeland is a human right under the United Nations. The new Prime Minister of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, (himself appointed after pressure from Israel and the USA) is a refugee from 1948. He asks "Why should I drop the Right of Return of refugees. It is not my right to drop it".
22 Arab states reiterate their call for complete withdrawal from the occupied territories, in return for complete recognition of Israel. This is under-reported in the West.
James Miller, a well known UK cameraman filming a documentary, is shot dead by Israeli forces in southern Gaza. The victim was wearing a helmet marked with TV, walking slowly towards an Israeli post with a white flag, and shouting in English and Arabic that he was a journalist, according to witnesses. An ambulance is called but is not allowed through. The Israeli government states that he was shot by Palestinians. A post-mortem disproves this and several weeks later the Israelis admit culpability and promise an enquiry. In practice, the site of the shooting is bulldozed and the weapons used are not impounded for 11 weeks. Two years later all discipliary action against the accused are dropped.The Israeli army demands that any foreign national entering the Gaza strip sign a waiver releasing the army of all responsibility for their safety.
The Israeli army occupy the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun (population 35,000) for five days. Seven Palestinians are killed including 14 year old Muhammad al-Zaneen who was helping his father paint their house. 15 houses are demolished.
As the army departs from the town, they bulldoze 6000 orange trees over 300 hectares. Since 2000, the Israelis have destroyed 70% of the town's citrus groves. One of the owners,Maher al-Shawwa (42), describes one of his trees: "I took care of it for 15 years. It produces at 15. When it is 40, I can make a profit". He estimates his loss at hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of his workers, Ibrahim Hussein (59) was asleep outside his house when the bulldozers arrived: "They fired three shots at me and told me to stay inside. I saw five bulldozers. They destroyed the farm. I have lost my salary, and so have 29 other farmers".
After pressure from the USA, the Israel Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, convinces his skeptical parliament to accept the USA-sponsored "road map" to peace: "The idea that it is possible to continue keeping 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is bad for Israel, bad for the Palestinians and bad for the Israeli economy".
In June, Israel continues its policy of targeted killings (assassinations) of Palestinian leaders. In one incident in Gaza City, an Israeli helicopter fires into a civilian area killing 7 and injuring 33. A day later, 23 people, including children, are injured. The attacks have become so common that Palestinians now leave their cars when they hear helicopters flying overhead. Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group, accuses the Israeli Prime Minister of deliberately using assassination to destroy the "road map".In a 32 month period up to the end of May 2003, 762 Israelis and 2,274 Palestinians have been killed. Almost 7,500 Palestinians are held in 22 Israeli prisons, detention centres or military encampments. 1,134 homes have been demolished in the Gaza strip.
In the first half of 2003, 5000 Jewish "settlers" moved into the occupied territories bringing the total of "settlers" to 231,443. All are regarded as illegal under the Geneva Convention. During the year, Israel announces its intention to build over 600 houses in 3 West Bank "settlements".
Israel's largest human rights group, Civil Rights in Israel, accuses the government of Ariel Sharon of gross human rights violations in the occupied territories including the use of human shields.
Israel continues its construction of a "security" fence despite international criticism. The fence is being constructed entirely on occupied Palestinian land, cutting the West Bank into a series of cantons (or reservations). The United Nations estimates that the completed fence will cut off 240,000 Palestinians from their communities and leave 160,000 Palestinians in enclaves surrounded by the barrier.The fence will cut off 16.6% of the West Bank. The Israeli army issues an order that Palestinians living between the fence and the 1967 borders must obtain special permits to travel. Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, tells the UK newspaper, The Observer, "Israel is the promised land - promised to Jews and to no-one else".
In August, Israel passes a law that forbids Palestinians who marry Israelis from living in Israel. Citizens of all other countries who marry Israelis will not be affected by the new law. Children will also be affected after the age of 12. Several international and Israeli human rights organisations declare the law to be discriminatory and anti-democratic.
In Nablus, Israeli undercover troops (disguised as vegetable merchants) break into a hospital and seize two Palestinians with whom they had a gun fight. The men were being treated in intensive care. This act is a violation of the Geneva Convention. In Gaza, Israeli helicopter gunships fire into a residential area.
In September, the Israeli parliament agrees to expel the Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, from the occupied West Bank.The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution urging Israel to refrain from deporting Arafat. The UK, Germany and Bulgaria abstain from the vote. During the debate 40 governments condemned Israel for its decision to "remove" Arafat.
Sana Al-Daour, a ten year old Palestinian girl, is killed when the car she is travelling in is hit by an Israeli missile fired from a helicopter. Amira Hass, a journalist for the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, quotes figures that suggest that 80% of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces have no connection to armed resistance to the occupation.In October, Israeli forces destroy 114 houses in Gaza, killing several people including children. United Nations officials estimated that 1,240 people had been left homeless including 10 year old Yasser Abu Swelen who said "I don't have a house, a bed or schoolbooks anymore". Eye-witnesses report residents running as bulldozers advanced: "Suddenly, a bulldozer was hitting the back of my house. We were ten people. We ran away. I saw barefooted women carrying children, with hardly any clothes on. I and my family went to Kholafa al-Rashedeen mosque. The army dug holes around my house. I am in the mosque with 200 people. Our house...is partly demolished". Many people tell of the demolitions being done at night and of being given little time to take anything. Hundreds of people are forced to live in the changing rooms of the football stadium. 45 people end up in the first aid room measuring 5m square. Others end up living in ruined buildings. The Israeli army demolish three apartment blocks in Netzarim Junction (in Gaza) after clearing more than 2,000 Palestinians from their homes.
Little of these events is shown or reported in the Western media.
Many people were badly wounded after a helicopter fired a missile into a building; some had to have limbs amputated, including 11 year old Louai Barhoum. Over 50 people were injured.A few days later, the USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning the continued building of a fence by Israel on Palestinian land.
27 reservists are grounded by the Israeli air force for refusing to take part in assassinations of Palestinians.
In October, Israeli forces bomb targets in Syria. The USA refuses to condemn the action by stating that "Israel must not feel constrained in terms of defending the homeland". So, Palestinians are not allowed to fight for their homeland by attacking regions outside their (occupied) borders but Israelis are. This message does not go down well with the Arab peoples of the Middle East.
Peace Now, an Israeli peace group, declares that of the 104 settlements in Palestine, that Israel has pledged to remove, it has removed only 7, all staged for the media. Five new ones were set up.In November, the USA complains to Israel after their soldiers destroyed a number of water wells build by a USA aid agency, the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) for civilian use in Gaza. At the same time the USA agreed $2,000 million of military aid to Israel for 2005, an increase of $60 million over 2004.
The table below lists the casualties in this conflict for the three years up to September 2003.
| Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian attacks | 552 |
| Israeli civilians under 18 years old killed by Palestinian attacks | 100 |
| Israeli occupation soldiers killed by Palestinian attacks | 246 |
| Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks | 2197 |
| Palestinians under 18 years old killed by Israeli attacks | 399 |
| Palestinian children under 15 killed by Israeli attacks | 200 |
| Palestinians assassinated by Israeli forces | 123 |
| Palestinian bystanders killed by Israeli forces | 84 |
2003
Cuba
For the 12th consecutive year, the United Nations overwhelmingly votes to end the USA's 40 year embargo of Cuba. The USA vetos the resolution (passed by a record 179 to 3 -Israel and the Marshall Islands also voting against). The USA continues to ignore world opinion and carries on with the embargo.2004
Israel - Palestine
A group of Israeli and Palestinian politicians, former ministers and intellectuals produce the Geneva Accord, a proposed plan for peace between Israel and Palestine. The plan requires both sides to make concessions but attempts to treat both sides as equals. The main points of the accord are listed below:- The Israeli army would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank. The vast majority of Jewish settlements would be dismantled and evacuated.
- An independent Palestinian state would be set up in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The state would be demilitarised but Palestinians would have control of their own borders.
- The Palestinians would forego the "right of return" for people who left or were forced out of the newly created State of Israel in 1948. A small number would be allowed to return. Others would be resettled in Palestine or third countries.
- Jerusalem would be divided in sovereignty. East Jerusalem would become the capital of the Palestinian state. West Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel. A few Jewish settlements in the East as well as the Western Wall of the temple would remain under Israeli sovereignty. The Temple Mount and much of the old city of Jerusalem would be under Palestinian sovereignty.
- Some settlements close to the 1967 border between the two countries would be annexed to Israel. Palestine would receive land close to Gaza in exchange.
- A multinational force would oversee the plan.
- Palestine would recognise the existence of the State of Israel and its right to live in peace. Israel would recognise the Palestinian state in the same way.
- The Geneva Accord would be a final and permanent peace settlement, resolving all existing United Nations resolutions.
The Accord is given support by former presidents and winners of the Nobel Peace prize including: Jimmy Carter (former USA president), Nelson Mandela (former South Africa president), Lech Walesa (former Poland president), Michael Gorbachev (former president of the USSR) and F W de Klerk (former South African president).
The Accord is rejected by the government of Israel and thousands of Palestinians who want to maintain the "right of return".
In March, Israel assassinates the spiritual leader of Hammas, Sheik Ahmad Yassin. The wheelchair-bound partially-sighted paraplegic was blown up outside a mosque by missiles fired from an Apache helicopter. Seven other people are also killed. The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning the assassination.
In April, the USA president, George W Bush, makes a speech that approves a unilateral plan by Israel concerning the Palestinians and their occupied territories. The following points are approved:
- Israel will pull out of Gaza, although they will keep control of the borders and access to the sea.
- Israel will pull out of parts of West Bank, but will keep the vast majority of the illegal settlements. The 1967 border, accepted by the United Nations, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and other international bodies, will be ignored as will a number of United Nations resolutions (noteably 242). The West Bank will end up as a collection of unrelated and unconnected cantons.
- No mention is made of the Golan Heights, annexed from Syria and not part of the original Palestine.
- No mention is made of the status of Jerusalem.
- Palestinians expelled from their land in 1948, 1967 or in the recent ethnic cleansing will have no right of return to their homes. This violates the United Nations charter on human rights as well as resolution 194.
- No mention is made of the wall being built by Israel in the West Bank on confiscated land which has been declared illegal by the United Nations General Assembly.
Western media report this as a wonderful breakthrough and a chance for peace, even though it rewards Israel's ethnic cleansing and denies the establishment of a viable Palestinianstate and will effectively turn Gaza into a prison for a million people. The story is told in the form "Israel to withdraw from Gaza".
The plan is discussed with the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak and the King of Jordan, Abdullah. No Palestinian representative is consulted. The UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who had boasted that invading Iraq with the USA would lead to a just peace in the Middle East, praises the plan.
The leader of the Palestinians, Yasser Arafat, declares that the resistance to Israeli occupation will continue and encourages Arab states to meet and discuss the new USA policy. A legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organisation told the USA newspaper, New York Times, "imagine if Palestinians said, 'O.K., we give California to Canada.' Americans should stop wondering why they have so little credibility in the Middle East."
Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute For Policy Studies, writes: "The U.S. position returns Middle East diplomacy to its pre-1991 position, when Palestinians were excluded from all negotiations. Israeli-U.S. negotiations become the substitute for Israeli-Palestinian talks, with the U.S. free to concede Palestinian land and rights. The official U.S. acceptance of the Israeli occupation of huge swathes of Palestinian territory, and the Bush administration's willingness to cede internationally-recognized Palestinian rights represents a new version of the 1917 Balfour Declaration in which Britain, the colonial power, guaranteed settlers of the early Zionist movement a 'national Jewish homeland' in Palestine disregarding the rights of the indigenous population."
The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, criticizes the USA endorsement of Israel's unilateral plan when he affirmed that "final status issues should be determined in negotiations between the parties based on relevant Security Council resolutions".
Shortly after, Abdul Aziz Rantisi, the leader of Hammas for only a month, is assassinated by an Israeli missile attack. The killing causes mass anger throughout the Arab world and is condemned by many countries (but not the USA).
20 armed Israeli settlers move into Silwan, an Arab neighbourhood in Jerusalem, to occupy a seven storey apartment building. Police help as Palestinians are evicted. The area is recognised as part of the occupied territories by the United Nations.
During May, Israeli forces attack occupied Gaza killing people and demolishing homes, shops, power and telephone lines and destroying agricultural land. Among the dead were Asmaa Mughayer (15) and her brother Ahmed (13) killed on their roof as they fed pigeons. The Israeli army says that they were killed by a Palestinian bomb. Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaira, at Rafah Hospital, shows the single bullet wounds to the heads with their larger exit wounds, to UK journalist, Donald Macintyre.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Israel destroyed 100 homes in 10 days, leaving 1110 Palestinians homeless. 131 residential buildings were damaged.
UNRWA declares that the demolitions violate the Geneva Conventions. The human rights group, Amnesty International, calls the actions "a war crime" as the demolitions are part of a policy of collective punishments and to help the establishment of illegal settlements (actually "colonies") in violation of international law.
The USA says it is "concerned" and "troubled" but condones the actions as "self defence" even though they are the actions of an occupying army on occupied territories. In the UK, only one newspaper (The Independent) and one television news broadcast (Channel 4 News) covers the story with pictures. These show distressed families in and around the wreckage of their homes trying to salvage possessions, buldozers tearing down walls of buildings and houses being blown up. Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid criticised his own government with this moving statement:
"I saw on television an old woman picking through the rubble of her house in Rafah, looking for her medicine. She reminded me of my grandmother who was expelled from her home during the Holocaust."
In Rafah, an Israeli tank and helicopter fire shells and missiles on civilians demonstrating against the house demolitions. Dozens are killed and injured, mainly children and teenagers. The injuries include severed limbs and intestines hanging out. The pictures seen around the world are so graphic that in the United Nations Security Council, even the rabidly pro-Israel USA abstains and a resolution is passed (by 14 - 0) condemning the attack and calling for Israel to respect international law and to stop demolishing houses.
The death toll between September 2000 and May 2004 stands at 921 Israelis and 2,806 Palestinians. In Gaza, over 2,300 homes have been demolished by Israel, making 17,594 people homeless. Rafah is the worst affected area where 11,215 people have already been made homeless over a three year period. Many people in Rafah are refugees from 1948, 1967 and 1973. Many have been refugees on more than one occasion. The dispair of a people under a 37 year occupation while the powerful West looks the other way can only be imagined.
2004
USA and the World
The USA has 730 military bases in 132 of the world's 191 countries. None of these countries have reciprocal arrangements in the USA.Before the invasion of Iraq, the USA spent 43% of the world's military spending. The proposed military budget for 2004 is $ 401,300 million
During 2003 and 2004 that USA suspended military aid to 35 countries that have failed to sign agreements giving USA citizens immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court, created to try war crimes.
In September 2004, over 600 citizens of 42 nations were being held in Guantanamo Bay, a USA military base in Cuba. Some detainees had been held for three years without proper access to legal representation and were being denied prisoner of war status. Some of the UK citizens were eventually allowed access to lawyers but these were not allowed to discuss their visits.
Human rights groups have consistently criticised conditions in Guantanamo Bay and have stated that the detentions are illegal. Detainees have been handcuffed, shackled and there have been numerous reports of torture. 32 inmates have attempted suicide.
The USA plans military tribunals for the detainees. Human rights groups condemn the hearings as unfair and in violation of the Geneva Conventions: "We're concerned that the military commission rules lack key fair-trial protection. Under these rules, the military serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, appeals court and, potentially, even as executioner. The commission rules do not create a level playing field. The military commissions offer no possibility for independent appeal, no matter how serious the error. A fair system of justice provides an opportunity for trial mistakes to be corrected through independent review."
The defendant or their lawyers have no right to see evidence used by the prosecution plus all conversations will be monitored. Information obtained by torture will be allowed.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) publishes a report in December. The report confirms that the USA military have intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners in Guant�namo Bay. The report concludes that the USA military has developed a system to break the will of prisoners through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions.The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture."
The report continues doctors and other medical workers in Guant�namo Bay were participating in planning for interrogations in "a flagrant violation of medical ethics. Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators to assist in information-gathering .
The population of the USA is 5% of the world's total. The country uses 25% of the world's oil and is ranked first in emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas that is responsible for global warming. In comparison, the UK with 2% of the world's population uses 2% of its oil.
The USA refuses to ratify the Kyoto Agreement which is designed to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. The USA Vice President, Dick Cheney, has set up the Energy Task Forceto study the problem. The 63 member group includes 62 representatives with ties to corporate energy interests. No environmentalists were invited to speak at any of the meetings. In March 2001, the Task Force was busy investigating the oil reserves of Iraq.
Canadian author, Graydon Carter, published a report called What We've Lost. The following figures appear in the report.
| USA citizens who believe that Iraq was to blame for the attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001 | 69% |
| USA citizens who believed in June 2003 that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq | 34% |
| USA citizens who believed in May 2003 that weapons of mass destruction had been used against USA forces in Iraq | 22% |
| Young USA adults who cannot find Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel on a map | 85% |
| Young USA adults who cannot find the Pacific Ocean on a map | 30% |
| Young USA adults who cannot find the USA on a map | 11% |
| Young USA adults who believe that "politics and government are too complicated to understand" | 30% |
Before the 2004 elections, over 40,000 voters appeared on a list of people ineligible to vote. These were suspected felons and ex-felons. In Florida, felons who served their sentence had to apply to be re-instated on the voters list because of a law dating from 1868. They had to apply to the Governor of the state who is Jeb Bush, brother of the USA president (George W Bush) who was applying for re-election. The American Civil Liberties Union estimated that 600,000 people in Florida had no vote (including 1 in 3 black men).
The UK's BBC (Newsnight, 26 October 2004) broadcast the story of Willy Steen, a black voter from Tampa, who was barred from voting in the 2000 election for being a convicted felon. He had, in fact, never even been arrested. In 2004, he attempted to vote early and was again barred. The bar to his voting disappeared when he arrived at the voting station with BBC reporters.
In December, the USA newspaper, Washington Post, reveals that the USA was using phone tapping and other electronic surveillance on Mohammad El-Baradei, the head of theInternational Atomic Energy Agency in an attempt to undermine and remove him from office. His crime was to show that evidence used by the USA to justify its invasion of Iraq in 2003 was fake.
Nadir Fergani, the author of a United Nations report on freedom and government in the Arab world said that the USA threatened to cut aid if the report was published. The cost to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) would be about $100 million a year. Fergani said the USA had already penalised the UNDP by $12 million because it did not like the previous report. The report, which criticises USA involvement in Iraq and Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories, is eventually brought out as a private document.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency proposes that all production and processing of weapon-usable material should be under international control, with "assurance that legitimate would-be users could get their supplies". The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (or Fissban) was debated by the United Nations Committee on Disarmament in November.
The vote was 147 to one (USA), with two abstentions: Israel and UK.
A year later the United Nations General Assembly would agree the resolution 179 to two (USA and Palau) with Israel and UK abstaining.
In 2005 the USA would use production and processing of weapon-usable material as an excuse to threaten Iran.
2006
The Siege of Palestine
Early in 2006, the Palestinians had an election that was seen as free and fair by external independent observers.The USA and Israel saw the result as against their interests. Israel, supported by the USA, closed off Gaza, laying siege to the territory and stopping all funding, goods and movement. Taxes owed on goods entering Gaza are witheld by Israel. The USA (which controls most of the world's financial system) threatened Arab and Middle Eastern banks if they supplied aid or money to the Palestinians. The European Union collude with USA'a policy against the Palestinians by withdrawing subsidies. Western media fail to report on the plight of the people of Palestine.
In September, the UK newspaper, The Independent, begins publishing a series of stories about the Palestinian territoty of Gaza. According to this newspaper:
"The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation. Here on the shores of the Mediterranean a great tragedy is taking place that is being ignored because the world's attention has been diverted by wars in Lebanon and Iraq."
The report continues: "A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.
Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day by land and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which is fast running out of medicine. Of these, 64 were children and 26 women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon."
Gideon Levy, a journalist for the Israel newspaper, Haaretz writes that for the previous three months the Israeli army "has been rampaging through Gaza - there's no other word to describe it - killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately".
The Independent continues: "Gaza has essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and tanks come and go at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22 Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed. Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: 'They even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep.' He pointed sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting leaves lay in heaps. Near by a yellow car was standing on its nose in the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house. His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they survived by drinking water from a fish pond. 'Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody who came near', he said. 'They killed one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water'."
According to a report published by the World Bank in August, the West Bank and Gaza face "a year of unprecedented economic recession. Real incomes may contract by at least a third in 2006 and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population." The income per person in beseaged Palestine falls to less than $2 per day.
Crime and looting increases as people become desperate to feed their families.
Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, the mayor of Gaza City declares: "It is the worst year for us since 1948. Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves."
He continues that the Israelis "have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange groves in order to create security zones". Exports are left to rot. After Israeli air strikes electric power is at 55%. Nearly 70% of Palestinians are unemployed and the remainder who work for the state are not being paid due to the economic siege. The siege leaves Gaza as the poorest region on the Mediterranean. Of its population 1.3 million, 33% live in refugee camps.
The Independent writes that "The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment of everybody in Gaza". According to one Palestinian "Arab and Western countries want to destroy this government because it is the government of the resistance".
Between 25 June and 8 September:
- Over 260 Palestinians were killed (including 64 children and 26 women). In the same period 1 Israeli soldier was killed. Over 1,200 Palestinians were injured, including up to 60 amputations. A third of victims brought to hospital are children.
- Israeli warplanes launched over 250 raids on Gaza (one of the most densly populated regions in the world), hitting the two power stations and the foreign and Information ministries.
- Over 120 Palestinian structures including houses, workshops and greenhouses were destroyed and 160 damaged.
- $1,800 million of damage has been caused including to the electricity grid, leaving more than a million people without regular access to drinking water.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reports that 76 Palestinians, including 19 children, were killed by Israeli forces in August alone. Evidence shows at least 53 per cent were not participating in hostilities.
International aid agencies report that the Israeli military and economic siege of Gaza has led to many people looking for scraps of food in rubbish dumps. Karen Abuzayd, the head of the UN Relief and Works Agency: "The pressure and tactics have not resulted in a desire for compromise. But rather they have created mass despair, anger and a sense of hopelessness and abandonment."
Kirstie Campbell of the United Nations's World Food Programme: "Women in Gaza tell me they are eating only one meal a day, bread with tomatoes or cheap vegetables."What little food is available is eaten cold due to the frequent power cuts and lack of money to pay for fuel. In addition, in one month 4% of Gaza's agricultural land was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. The 35,000 fishermen cannot fish because Israeli gunboats will fire on them if they go more than a few hundred yards from the shore. The USA and European led boycott of the Palestinian government means that there is no foreign aid to pay Palestinian government employees. The government had a monthly budget of around $200 million, half of which went to pay 165,000 public sector workers. By mid-September the budget was $25 million a month.
Aid agencies struggle to persuade the world and the Western-controlled media that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is much worse than it is in the more reported Lebanon: "In contrast to Lebanon, where humanitarian food aid needs have been essentially met, the growing number of poor in Gaza are living on the bare minimum."
23 peace activists cycling from London to Jerusalem are denied entry to the Jenin refugee camp by Israeli officials. The mainly UK group reached the outskirts of Jenin after travelling from Damascus, and were detained for 8 hours. One of the founders of the group, Peace Cycle 2006, Laura Abraham:
"No valid reason was given. Spurious explanations were provided by officials, and despite phone calls to the Israeli authorities from the British consulate, the group was told it would not be permitted to cross indefinitely." Requests for water or the use of toilet facilities were also denied: "We were treated so well in every country we passed through in Europe and the Middle East, but now we are being treated like animals."
In November, Israeli artilery kills 20 civilians (including women and children) in Bait Hanoun. The USA vetoes a United Nations resolution condemning the attack and calling for Israelto withdraw from Gaza. The UK abstains. This is the second similar resolution vetoed by the USA in 2006. 350 Palestinians died under Israeli attack between June and November 2006. Israel says that the attacks are to stop rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. These killed nine Israelis between 2000 and 2006.
The Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, publish a report saying that in 2006, 660 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied territories. This included 141 children and over 320 civilians. These figures had increased three fold from the previous year. Some 292 homes were demolished making 1,769 people homeless. 42 Arab homes were demolished in East Jerusalem. In the same period, Palestinians killed 17 Israelis, including a child and six soldiers. This was a drop from the previous year. The disparity of these figures and the fact that Israeli has been occupying Palestinian territory for nearly 40 years is under-reported in the West.
2006
Cuba
In the USA a group called the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (co-chaired by our Secretaries of State and Commerce), presents a report to the USA president on how to bring Cuba under USA control after the death of the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.The plan involves privatising Cuba's public services, including communications, electric power, transport, mining, industry, agriculture and medical services.
The report recommends the continuing destabilisation of Cuba including radio and television propaganda currently supplied by illegal flights over Cuban, the denying of hard currency to the country by a tightening of the long-running blockade, the fining foreign banks which deal in Cuba transactions, punishing and rewarding foreign governments which increase or decrease trade with Cuba, and the tightening with increased punishment for travel to the country. The destabilisation is funded with $80 million per year.
The report fails to mention the social systems that currently exist in Cuba as well as the effects of the USA blockade on Cubans. The Cubans themselves are treated as helpless children in the report with no thought given to their wishes. The plan talks of setting up a Cuban Transition Government (a puppet government). The puppet government will request help from the USA. Reconstruction will be funded by a loan from the International Monetary Fund as well as international (mainly USA) investment.
The report makes allegations that Cuba and Venezuela have been meddling in other Latin American countries' internal affairs (which is ironic coming from the USA). No country from the region has complained of meddling by Cuba and the report offers no evidence to support the allegation. Cuba does in fact send doctors, nurses and teachers to help people inLatin America, the Caribbean and Africa, but only with their governments' permission.
After a century of USA corporate exploitation, some of the countries in South America are becoming independent nations. Cuba stands as an example that countries can survive and prosper outside of the USA controlled global system.
The USA votes against the ending of the financial embargo against Cuba in the United Nations.
2007
USA and Human Rights
After five years, the USA continues to hold prisoners without charge or trial, access to family or legal representation in a military base called Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. None of the prisoners has gone through legal extradition procedures - all have, in effect, been kidnapped by the USA. All prisoners are considered as "enemy combatants" by the USA even though many were not captured in battle and all should be held under the Geneva Conventions. There have been numerous reports of abuse, humiliation and torture. Prisoners are not allowed to see any evidence against them. The UK government has made no attempt to help eight UK residents who are being held.The following figures are as 10 June 2007.
| Number of prisoners detained | 400 |
| Number of prisoners released since 2002 | 340 |
| Number of prisoners to be charged by the USA | 70 |
| Number of prisoners who have attempted suicide | 40 |
| Number of prisoners charged | 10 |
| Number of prisoners who have committed suicide | 3 |
| Number of prisoners brought to trial | 1 |
Guantanamo Bay is one of many detention centres run by the USA around the world. In August 2006, there were 14,000 prisoners in USA custody around the world.
In March the USA begins a number hearings for 14 detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The prisoners are without legal representation. The hearings are to determine whether the detainees are to be labelled as "enemy combatants", a USA term with no international validity. If found "guilty" the prisoners can be held indefinitely and prosecuted by military tribunals. All the prisoners had been transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006 after years held in secret CIA prisons.
Both defence lawyers and reporters were barred from the proceedings.
One 20 year old detainee from Canada, Omar Khadr, had not spoken to his family between 2002 and 2007 when he was allowed a telephone call. The call was permitted only after months of lobbying the USA military by lawyers. One of the lawyers, Rick Wilson, a law professor at the American University in Washington, stated: "We made arguments based on his youth and the amount of time he's spent away from his family, and apparently those were persuasive."
Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national who is resident in the UK, is released without charge from Guantanamo Bay after nearly five years. He was detained while on a trip to Gambia in 2002.
Another detainee is Sami al-Haj, a journalist from Sudan who was a cameraman working for Al-Jazeera television. In June 2007 he had been in detention for five years and has a son he does not know.
He had been arrested in Pakistan close to the border Afghanistan. All his documents were valid. For five years he was held in a small cell and allowed to excercis for one hour per week. He had only been working for Al-Jazeera for a few months. For the five years of his detention he was not chanrged with any crime. During over 130 interrogations he was not asked about terrorism but was questioned about the workings of Al-Jazeera. His lawyer reports that al-Haj has been told that he would be released if he were to spy for the USA against his employer.
He described tortures on himself and other detainees including having testicles squeezed by female guards, having to watch guards having sex, detainnes having menstral blood smeared onto their bodies, being forced to walk on all fours while guards ride on the back of a prisoner, deprivation of sleep, having Israeli and USA flags warpped around them, being terrorised by dogs and solitary confinement for years.
Jumah al-Dossari has been detained for four years without charge. He has been beaten, sexually abused and watched USA guards abuse the Koran. He has attempted suicide 12 times, once during a visit by a lawyer.
Majid Khan, previously a resident of Baltimore, was held in secret CIA-run prisons before being transferred to Guant�namo Bay in 2006 after a USA Supreme Court ruling that the Geneva Conventions should apply to �war on terror� detainees.
Khan came to the USA in 1996 from Pakistan and has been granted asylum. In 2003, he visited Pakistan to see his wife and family. In March 2003, Pakistani police arrested him, his brother, his sister-in-law and their 1 month old daughter in a midnight raid on their house.
According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR): �Majid�s sister-in-law and infant niece were imprisoned for a week. Pakistani officials imprisoned his brother for approximately one month. When Majid�s brother was released, officials threatened him not to make any public statements or inquire after Majid. As a result of the threats, Majid�s family in Baltimore and Karachi waited anxiously and fearfully for his return. He was never released or heard from again.�
The family knew nothing until September 2006 when the USA described him as a �ghost detainee� being transferred to Guant�namo Bay. Khan was retied to a chair every hour with his bonds tightened each time so that it was more painful. He was often hooded and had difficulty breathing. He was beaten repeatedly, slapped him in the face, and deprived of sleep. When not being interrogated, he was kept in a small totally dark cell. The cell was too small for him to lie down in or sit in with his legs stretched out - he could only crouch. The room was infested with mosquitoes. This torture only stopped when he agreed to sign a statement that he was not allowed to read.
The USA CIA denies torturing Khan. However the USA Justice Department stated that he should not be allowed to speak to a civilian lawyer, because he might �reveal the agency�s closely guarded interrogation techniques.�
Chalmers Johnson of the Japan Policy Research Institute publishes details of the number of USA personnel and bases around the world as at 2005. The figures are taken from the USA's own Defence Department inventory, trade and building magazines and other sources. This information is very rarely found in the mainstream news media.
| Number of USA personnel in bases outside of the USA | 2,500,000 |
| Number of uniformed USA military personnel in bases outside of the USA | 196,975 |
| Number of local people hired to work in USA bases outside of the USA | 81,425 |
| Number of USA bases in foreign countries | 737 |
| Number of medium and large USA bases in foreign countries (naval and air) | 39 |
| Value of foreign bases | $ 127,000 million |
| Number of barracks, hangars, hospitals and other buildings owned by the USA military outside the USA | 32,327 |
| Number of barracks, hangars, hospitals and other buildings leased by the USA military outside the USA | 16,527 |
The numbers, though large, are not complete as they do not include bases in Kosovo (Serbia), Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan.
Iraq (under USA occupation in 2007) had 106 garrisons (May 2005). The island of Okinawa (Japan) has 38 USA bases that cover 19% of the island's prime sites.
A number of military and espionage installations in the UK (worth $ 5,000 million and disguised as Royal Air Force bases) are also excluded from USA figures.
Many countries insist that the USA does not publicise the presence of its bases on their soil. This includes Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The topic of USA bases is generally not reported in the media of the USA.
Around the world in 2007, 95% of all foreign military bases belong to the USA.
The USA has negotiated agreements which allow it access to other country's sea and air space. In addition it has insisted on what are called Article 98 agreements. These controversial treaties are designed to exempt USA citizens from prosecution under the International Criminal Court (which the USA has refused to sign up to).
The USA states that Iranian bombs are being used to kill USA soldiers in Iraq. The following figures are from the USA writer Robert Weitzel:
| Number of cluster bombs dropped by the USA in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos | 297 million |
| Number of cluster bombs dropped by the USA in Kosovo (1999) | 290,000 |
| Number of civilians killed by cluster bombs in Kosovo in the 12 months after the end of hostilities | 151 |
| Number of unexploded cluster bombs in Afghanistan as at 2007 | 5,000 |
| Number of cluster bombs dropped by the USA in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991 | 54 million |
| Number of cluster bombs dropped by the USA in Iraq in 2003 | 2 million |
| Number of unexploded cluster bombs in Iraq in 2007 | 13 million |
| Number of USA made cluster bombs dropped by Israel in Lebanon in 2006 | 4 million |
| Number of unexplodede cluster bombs in Lebanon (2007) | 350,000 |
During aviation negociations between Europe and the USA, one of the points of contention is that European companies are allowed to own no more than 25% of USA airlines whereas the USA can control up to 49% of European carriers.
In April Amnesty International publish a report saying that conditions at the USA detention camp at Guantanamo Bay are deteriorating. some detainees at the camp are close to mental and physical breakdown. The report states that over 160 prisoners (roughly 30%) have been moved to a new building called Camp Six. The report continues: "Amnesty International believes that conditions in Camp Six, as shown in photographs or described by detainees and their attorneys, contravene international standards for humane treatment."
Camp Six is composed of windowless, steel cells where prisoners are confined for at least 22 hours a day. According to Amnesty, Camp Six has created increased conditions of extreme isolation, to the detriment of prisoners' mental health: "...in Camp Six is that detainees have no way of knowing whether it is day or night."
The USA attempts to interpret the law to allow the use of torture. This prompts Elisa Massimino, director of Human Rights First to state �Instead of abiding by the law, the administration stocks the Justice Department with lawyers who will say that black is white and wrong is right and waterboarding is not torture.�
Seventy countries meet in Peru to ban cluster bombs which kill thousands of civilians every year. The biggest users and manufacturers of these weapons (USA, UK and Israel) fail to attend.
Osama Bin Laden produces a video in September attacking USA foreign policy. The Western media condemn the video without broadcasting its contents. Some extracts are listed below:
- "Bush's insistence not to give the United Nations an expanded mandate in Iraq is an implicit admission of his loss and defeat over there." The USA continues to deny the United Nations any role in Iraq.
- "A short while ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima with your nuclear bombs." This anniversary was ignored by Western media but continues to be the worst use of weapons of mass destruction in the world's history.
- "..the arrogance and indifference you show for the lives of humans outside America.." The USA continues only to count its own victims in its wars. In 2007 these were directly in Iraq and Afghanistan, by proxy in Somalia and Haiti and by financial and political help in Palestine.
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton publish a book (The Best War Ever) detailing how the USA uses propaganda in the Arab world. The USA Pentagon paid $5,400,000 to a public relations firm called the Lincoln Group. The company was responsible for giving USA government money to Iraqi media and newspapers to carry stories written by USA "information operations". The stories and articles are designed to creative a positive image for the role of the USA in Iraq.
The articles would be drafted by Pentagon staff and then planted in Iraqi and other Arabic newspapers by the Lincoln Group: "When delivering the stories to media outlets in Baghdad, Lincoln's staff and subcontractors sometimes posted as freelance reported or advertising executives. The amounts paid ranged from $50 to $2,000 per story placed. All told, the Lincoln Group had planted more than 1,000 stories in the Iraqi and Arab press."
This policy of paying newspapers for positive stories about the USA or negative stories about its enemies has been used before by the USA. In the examples below, newspapers promoted false news aimed at undermining a governments or its leader, reported non-existent shortages to create a panic that would induce an actual shortage and defended hostile economic and military actions by the USA.
- Iran in the early 1950s before the 1953 USA-UK coup against the democratically elected president Mohammed Mossadegh.
- Chile (1970s) where the newspaper El Mercurio was used as a weapon by the USA against democratic president Salvador Allende.
- Jamaica in the 1970s where newspaper, The Daily Gleaner waged a campaign against the democratic prime minister Michael Manley.
- Nicaragua (1980s) where newspaper, La Prensa was a source of attacks on the democratically elected government of Daniel Ortega.
The USA (along with Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico and the UK) votes against a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for peaceful uses of outer space. This was one of several such votes in 2007.
The USA also voted against a female anti-descrimination resolution, three times, and against a convention for the rights of children (183 to 1).
The USA alone voted against the right for food.
The USA (and Israel) also voted against a resolution protecting civilians under the Geneva Convention at times of war.
The USA (and Japan) voted against global climate protection.
The USA (and UK and France) voted against the implementation of the declaration of the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace.
2007
Palestine Under Siege
The United Nations confirms that between 2002 and the end of 2005, 36 Palestinian babies have died because their mothers were detained during their labour at Israeli checkpoints located on Palstinian land. One woman, Jamilla Alahad Naim, has to pass through two Israeli checkpoints between her home and the hospital and is considering having her baby at home.After the Palestinians elected a new government, Israel stopped giving the new government money it was collecting in taxes, Europe stopped sending aid money and the USA threatened countries who provided aid with economic sanctions. This has led to poverty and hardship in the Palestinian territories.Israel has been building a 8m high wall around Jerusalem that is designed to control Palestinian entry from the West Bank. The wall cuts through historic highways from Jerusalem(part of which is considered as occupied under international law) to Amman (Jordan) and from Jenin to Hebron. For West Bank Palestinians, the wall is broken only at four checkpoints. These can only be reached after many detours which require travellers to leave their vehicles and cross on foot. Palestinian vehicles are banned from Jerusalem.The 180km wall will cost over $ 1,000,000 per kilometre. Only 5km of wall runs along the recognised border between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Most of it is being built on Palestinian territory. Around Jerusalem, the majority of the wall does not separate Israelis and Palestinians (as required by Israel stating that the wall is for security) but cuts off Palestinians from their schools, fields, olive groves, hospitals and cemeteries.
The West Bank city of Qalqiliya (population 40,000) is now surrounded by the wall. Residents can only enter and exit through a single military checkpoint which is open daily between 7am and 7pm.
When the wall is completed, there will be over 400,000 Palestinians completely or partially surrounded by it.
East Jerusalem was originally an Arab city. Israel has annexed the entire city and has passed apartheid laws allowing the building of Jewish only "settlements" on the land. Since 1967, 250,000 Jewish settlers have been housed in this area.In contrast to the difficulty encountered by West Bank Palestinians entering Jerusalem, Israel has built new roads to enable Jewish settlers to reach the city as quickly as possible. A tramline is also planned. The roads form a network of four lane highways, lit up at night, along which the trees have been cut down, Palestinian houses demolished, and protective walls erected. These highways linking the settlements and Jerusalem are prohibited to Palestinian vehicles. They have to use poor quality secondary roads that are badly maintained and controlled by checkpoints. Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat describes the dual road system as the "apartheid that dare not speak its name".
In Jerusalem all Jews but only 2.3% of Palestinians are citizens. West Bank Palestinians have green identity cards which give them no no rights in the city, not even the right to enter without permission. Permanent residents with blue identity cards enjoy voting and welfare benefits, but those rights are not transmitted automatically to their spouses or children.
The European Union published a report in 2005 (that was censored) that highlighted more discrimination: "Between 1996-1999 Israel implemented a centre of life policy, meaning that those with blue ID found living or working outside East Jerusalem, for example in Ramallah, would lose their ID. A wave of blue ID cardholders quickly moved back to East Jerusalem".
These policies have succeeded in making life difficult for the city's Arab population in a number of ways:
- Loss of time: "I used to be able to walk to university in 10 minutes, now it takes me 90 minutes by car." - student from Ramallah studying medicine at Al Quds University.
- Loss of personnel: 33%-50% of doctors, nurses and teachers can no longer work in Jerusalem.
- Loss of income: shopkeepers on the "wrong" side of Al-Ram complain of a 30%-50% drop in turnover.
- Loss of resident status: anyone unable to prove they live and work in Jerusalem when their blue identity card comes up for renewal will have it withdrawn.
- The loss of East Jerusalem's role as the Palestinian metropolis and possible future capital.
Meron Benvenisti, a leading expert on Jerusalem, described the situation as follows:"The wall? A monument to despair! Look at Bethlehem: on one side, the Church of the Nativity, on the other, the bunker around Rachel's Tomb. It's the arrogance of an occupier who feels free to define and redefine communities as he sees fit. As if the fence separated 'good' Arabs, accepted in Jerusalem, from 'bad' Arabs excluded from it. Those who dreamed-up this horror follow the same logic of 19th century colonialism as did the French when they hung on to Indochina and North Africa. It won't work this time either. The Jerusalem wall will go the same way as the Berlin wall."
This "ethnic management" of Jerusalem is under-reported in the Western media.
Facts about the wall (2006):
| Total length of planned wall | 700km |
| Amount of the West Bank left on the Israeli side of the wall | 50% |
| Maximum distance into the West Bank taken by the route of the wall | 16km |
| Width of buffer zone around the wall | 70m to 100m |
Facts about the occupation (2006):
| Percentage of Arabs living in Palestine in 1918 when the UK issued the Balfour Declaration | 90% |
| Percentage of historical Palestine allocated to the Jewish state by the United Nations in 1947 | 57% |
| Percentage of historical Palestine that became Israel in 1948 | 78% |
| Number of Palestinian villages destroyed in the 78% of historical Palestine that now forms Israel | 531 |
| Percentage of historical Palestine currently recognised as occupied by Israel | 22% |
| Percentage of occupied territories on the Israeli side of the wall or taken by illegal settlements | 50% |
| Percentage of Palestine's natural water used by Israel every year | 82% |
| Maximum depth of Palestinian wells allowed by Israel | 140m |
| Maximum depth of Israeli wells | 800m |
| Amount of aid received by Israel from the USA | $ 5,000 million |
| Number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers (Sep 2000 to Dec 2005) | 652 |
| Percentage of Palestine's population that is under 18 years old | 52% |
| Percentage of Palestinian children suffering from chronic or acute malnutrition | 22.5% |
| Number of journalists killed / injured by Israeli forces between 2000 and 2005 | 12 / 300 |
| Number of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons | 7,500 |
| Number of Palestinians homes demolished under Israeli occupation | 12,000 |
| Number of Palestinians homes demolished (2000 to 2006) | 5,000 |
| Percentage of Palestinian attacks in the occupied territories as opposed to Israel (2000 to 2003) | 96% |
In June 2006, Israel banned all fishing from Gaza. According to the United Nations 35,000 people directly rely on the fishing industry for subsistence. A blockade of Gaza is maintained by Israeli naval vessels. The Western media (which loudly reported the "withdrawal" of Israel from Gaza) fails to report this illegal blockade of Gaza's coast.Between 2000 and 2006 the monthly catch of fish by Palestinians has dropped from 823 to 50 tonnes. The World Bank cites Israel's blockade as responsible for the economic and humanitarian crisis facing Gaza.
These actions by Israel violate article 52 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), which Israeli has signed. The article states: "No contract, agreement or regulation shall impair the right of any worker, whether voluntary or not. All measures aiming at creating unemployment or at restricting the opportunities offered to workers in an occupied territory, in order to induce them to work for the Occupying Power, are prohibited."
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza has been monitoring the blockade: "Fishermen have been subjected to intensive monitoring by the Israeli occupation forces, which use helicopters gunships and gunboats". During 2006 four fishermen were killed after being attacked by Israeli forces and many have been arrested.
Israel begins excavations close to the Al Aqsa Mosque. The work violates the Israel-Jordan peace treaty which awarded custody of the Islamic and Christian holy places in easternJerusalem to Jordan. The site is protected by UNESCO World Heritage. Israel ignores protests from groups as diverse as the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Conference, the Nonaligned Movement and Churches for Middle East Peace.
In Umm Naser in northern Gaza a river of raw sewage and debris overflowed from a collapsed earth embankment into a refugee camp driving 3,000 Palestinians from their homes. Five people died by drowning, 25 were injured and many houses were destroyed. In the USA, the media blamed the Palestinians for building shoddy infrustructure.There are two causes of this ecological disaster. Firstly it is the economic blockade imposed by Israel (and enforced internationally by the USA) on the Palestinian territories. Secondly, massive bombing by Israel on Gaza during 2006, demolished roads, bridges, sewage treatment facilities, water purification and electrical power plants.
In May, less than a month before the 40th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel bombs Gaza killing dozens of people in an attempt to assassinate members of the Palestinian government. The Western media fail to mention the anniversary of the occupation and concentrate on the fewer numbers of Israelis attacked by rockets.Israel arrests more of the elected officials of Palestine - the number reaches one third. Western governments, which attempt to impose "democracy" on the Arabs, says nothing.
Between September 2000 and July 2007, 5,776 people have been killed in the conflict, most of them Palestinians.The charity Save The Children reports that serious malnutrician is becoming a problem in Gaza as Israel continues the siege and blockade. Apart from the UK newspaper, The Independent, this story is unreported in the Western media. Israel begins cutting power to Gaza. This causes problems in industry and begins to close hospitals. 85% of people inGaza have no work and banks have run out of money. The siege stops movement of people and goods between Palestine and Israel as well as limit movement within the West Bank. There are 546 checkpoints. 40% of the West Bank is inaccessible to Palestinians.
Human rights groups condemn the Israeli siege as a violation of the Geneva Conventions against collective punishment. The siege continues to be supported and enforced by the USA (which controls financial institutions in the region), the UK and Europe.
Nofer Ishai-Karen, an ex-soldier in the Israeli army, publishes a report after interviewing a number of soldiers involved in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Two platoons were studied, ESHBAL and ESHKHAR. The interviews show what life under occupation is like for the Palestinians. The soldiers spoke freely about events which occurred nearly 20 years previously admitting to murder, breaking bones of Palestinian children, actions of humiliation, destruction of property, robbery and theft.
- Ilan Vilenda: "We - Israeli soldiers - were put there to punish the Palestinians."
- Soldier A: "We decided to turn an old shower in our base [in]to a make-shift detention cell. A Palestinian was brought there, handcuffed and mouth banded so he couldn't talk, or move. We forgot him there for three days..."
- Soldier B: "I was on my first patrol. Others simply shot like mad. I started to shoot as they did. They 'set me on.' I took my weapon and shot. Nobody was there to tell me otherwise."
- Soldier C: "The truth is that I love this mess - I enjoy it. It is like being on drugs. If I didn't enter Rafah, to put down some rebellion - at least once a week - I'd go berserk."
- Soldier D: "What is great is that you don't have to follow any law or rule. You feel that YOU ARE THE LAW; you decide. Once you go into the Occupied Territories YOU ARE GOD".
- Soldier E: "We drove an APC through Rafah. A man of 25 walked nearby. He didn't hurl a stone at us or anything. Then without any reason 'X' shot him in the stomach. We left him lying on the sidewalk."
- Soldier F: "Some 'tough guys' developed it into 'an ideology', according to which we have to react brutally even for minor events. A woman threw a sandal at me. I kicked her with my foot at her crotch. I broke her. She can't have children any longer. Next time she won't throw sandals at me... and when another woman spat at me she got the butt of my gun in her face. She can't spit now."
- Soldier G (described his first forced entry to a home to detain a Palestinian): "He was real big, some 30 years old. He refused detention. We hit him but couldn't force him down. Some people came hurling stones at us. We beat him and told him to lie down. Till he finally did. We drove to the base with him. By that time he had lost consciousness. He died some days later."
- Soldier H: "After two months in Rafah a new NCO commander arrived. The first patrol, which he commanded, was at 06 hours. Rafah was under curfew. Not a soul was on the street. Then he saw a young boy, of about 4, playing in the sand in the courtyard of his home. The kid was building a castle in the sand. Suddenly the NCO, a guy from the Engineers Corps, ran to chase the kid. We followed. He captured the kid and broke his elbow. Broke the kid's elbow! Damn me if I'm not telling the truth! Then the NCO treaded on the kid's stomach three times, before he moved on. We couldn't believe our eyes... But the next day we went on patrol with that guy and the soldiers started to imitate him..."
Since 1967 Israel has imprisoned more than 650,000 Palestinians, equivalent to nearly 20 per cent of the population. In 2007, there are 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
The USA, Israel and three small islands in the Pacific Ocean voted against a resolution by the United Nations calling for self determination for the Palestinian people.
2008
USA and Cluster Bombs and Other Weapons
An international conference to ban cluster bombs opens in Dublin, capital of Ireland. The USA along with China and Russia refuses to attend. Over 100 other nations attend and agree a ban. The UK agrees the ban but houses USA cluster bombs on its territory and pushed for a clause in the agreement to allow the UK to fight alongside countries that still used cluster bombs. The USA lobbied diplomats at the conference to dilute the terms of the agreement, the USA President, George W Bush was personally involved with contacting delegates.98% of all deaths from cluster bombs are civilian (over 30% are children). Worldwide there have been 13,000 deaths from cluster bombs since 1945.The USA is the main user of this weapon. Human Rights Watch reports that the USA possess 638.3 million cluster bombs.
As an example, in Laos, from the 1970s there are 80 million cluster and unexploded bombs which were dropped by the USA which continue to injure people decades later.
Since the inital invasion of Iraq ended in April 2003, the USA dropped nearly 60,000 pounds (27,000 kg) of cluster bombs from air strikes. Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst fromHuman Rights Watch calls cluster bombs "the single greatest risk civilians face with regard to a current weapon that is in use."
Israel, along with India and Pakistan, dispproved of the cluster bomb ban.
In the final 72 hours of the Israel attack on Lebanon in 2006, 1.2 million cluster bombs were dropped. For two months after the end of the conflict, three or four people were killed or badly injured from these weapons. Many of these bombs were supplied or paid for by the USA.
The USA vetos a United Nations resolution on setting up an arms trade treaty and votes against (the only country to do so, 175 - 1 with Israel abstaining) another banning the development of new weapons of mass destruction.The USA votes against a United Nations resolution calling for assurances to non-nuclear states that they will not be attacked or threatened with attack with nuclear weapons.
The USA votes against a United Nations resolution against an arms race in space. Along with the UK and France the USA votes against decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons systems. These three countries and Israel voted against the use of depleted Uranium in weapons.
The USA, UK and France voted against resolution calling for a nuclear-free Central Asia and a nuclear free Southern Hemisphere.
The USA, alone voted aginst a resolution on illicit trade in small arms.
2008
USA and United Nations Resolutions
The USA vetos a number of United Nations resolutions which are approved by the vast majority of the world's nations. These are some that were vetoed or voted against by the USAin 2008.- On the rights of children.
- against Racial Descrimination. Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Israel, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom also vote against.
- Affirming the sovereignty of the Palestinian people over the occupied territories and their resources. Australia, Canada and Israel also vote against. Another resolution calling for self determination of the Palestinian people.
- Calling on Israel to pay compensation for an oil slick caused by its bombing of Lebanese facilities. Australia, Canada and Israel vote with the USA.
- Calling for a new and fairer economic order.
- Calling on the right of nations to development. Ukraine also votes against.
- Calling for a right to food.
- Respect for the right to universal freedom of travel and the vital importance of family reunification. Israel also votes against.
- On Information Technology developments for international security.
2008
Palestine Under Siege
The Israeli blockade of Palestine (backed by the USA and, under pressure from the USA, by the UK and Europe) results in the only power station in Gaza to be shut down. This causes problems with hospitals not being able to run their medical equipmnent.In March, Israel bombs Gaza killing over 120 people in a week, 25 of them children. Israel states that the attack is in response to the firing of rockets at Israel. These home made rockets have killed 14 people in seven years.The attack left at least 370 children injured. Hospitals in Gaza had to treat hundreds of seriously injured people without reliable electricity and with shortages of drugs, spare parts for medical equipment, and surgical supplies. Ambulances came under Israeli fire, three medical workers were injured and one killed. The crowded refugee camps in Gaza City were hit by two bombs from a USA-provided F-16 jet which destroyed the headquarters of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, seriously damaging several nearby apartments.
The United Nations attempts to condemn the Israeli attack but the resolution is watered down by the USA. In addition, during 2008 the USA government provides Israel with $ 2,550 million in arms shipments, a 9% increase over actual spending in 2007. This is part of a $30,000 million total over ten years. Israel will spend 25% of this money on its own arms manufacturers. The remaining 75% will go mainly to USA companies including Motorola, Caterpillar (who provide bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian houses), Lockheed Martin,Boeing and General Dynamics. The USA Congress voted 404-1 to support Israel and condemn Palestinian rocket attacks on civilians.
The 120 or so dead Palestinian civilians apparently do not count for USA rulers.
A report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur John Dugard (Israeli Occupation Causes Terror) states that Palestinian terrorism is the "inevitable consequence of Israeli occupation. While Palestinian terrorist acts are deplorable, they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation."Although Israel insists that it has withdrawn from Gaza, the report states that "it is clear that Israel remains the occupying Power as technological developments have made it possible for Israel to assert control over the people of Gaza without a permanent military presence." The report and its implications are unmentioned by mainstream media outlets in the USA and UK.
The human rights group the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) publishes evidence of Israel security forces using psychological torture by bringing in detainees' families during questioning of suspects.Gheith Nasr, an 18 year old student, was arrested and kept in the police station for several days. His mother was brought in handcuffed and paraded in front of him:
"When I saw my mother being brought into the cell with handcuffs, I tell you, I would have told them anything just to save her, anything."
The website of the UK based BBC marks the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel with a story detrimental to the Palestinian people by its subtle use of quotation marks:Abbas marks Israel "catastrophe". Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas recalls his people's "suffering", as they mark Israel's creation 60 years ago.
An Israeli missile fired into a house in the Gaza village of Beit Hanoun kills an entire family including four children. The report appeared on the BBC web site which completed its article:"The militant group Hamas has run the Gaza Strip since June 2007, when its fighters drove out the forces of Mr Abbas's Fatah movement.". The BBC failed to mention thatHamas had won democratic elections, the results of which Israel, the USA and Europe had opposed.More than 400 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip in the first five months of 2008, many of them civilians.
The siege of Gaza by Israel (and supported by the USA and Europe) which has restricted access to food, water and medicine begins to affect unborn children and newborn babies. According to Dr Salah al-Rantisi, head of the Women's Health Department of the Palestinian Ministry of Health:"Many babies are born suffering from anaemia that they have inherited from their mothers. Premature babies born dangerously underweight is a daily and increasing phenomenon in Gaza's hospitals. There are many cases of pregnant women who need medicines that are not available in Gaza."
Between 2007 and 2008, 146 people in Gaza died directly as a result of the Israeli siege and border closures. This is apart from the 564 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the same period (92 were children).
One such victim was teacher, Wafer Shaker, killed by an Israeli explosive that blasted her door as she was about to open it to Israeli soldiers. Her children (aged 2 to 13) were then confined to the premises for five hours while the headless body lay nearby.
In May, former USA President, Jimmy Carter, visits Gaza stating that the Israel blockade is "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth". He describes the siege as the"imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees". He continued: "Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing".
The South African anti-Apartheid campaigner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, also visits Gaza as part of a United Nations fact finding mission and calls the siege and "abomination"criticising the international community for its "silence and complicity".
Both men are accused of being anti-Semitic by the Western media who fail to ask the question why the European Union special envoy, former UK Prime Minsister, Tony Blair, failed to visit Gaza in his first year in Israel.
Most media describe the siege as being imposed after the ruling party, Hamas, "siezed power" in Gaza failing to mention that they won democratic elections requested by the USA and then ignored as the "wrong" party had won.
In Israel the Association of Civil Rights (ACRI) accuses the Iraeli government of using checkpoints in the occupied West Bank to prevent Palestinians from reaching Dead Searesorts being run by Israeli settlers. Vehicles turned back include school buses. The ban on Palestinians was revealed when two Israeli reserve soldiers working at the Beit Ha'aravacheckpoint were informed that the checkpoint was to "prevent Palestinians coming from the Jordan Valley to the Dead Sea beaches".
The Israeli siege prevents sewage works from being maintained. After heavy rains, one stagnant pool overflowed killing a 9 month old baby and a grandmother.
Leaked documents and memos from the USA indicate that the USA attempted to engineer a coup against Hamas, who won elections in Palestine in 2006. Measures included sending $80 million of arms to Fatah, the party that lost the elections. Memos encouraged the Palestinian Presedent, Mahmoud Abbas to drive out Hamas.
A report by the Red Cross is leaked to the UK newspaper, The Independent. The report states that the blockade of Gaza is causing a humanitarian catastrophe including chronic malnutrition to over a million people."The Israeli blockade of Gaza has led to a steady rise in chronic malnutrition among the 1.5 million people living in the strip."
The report notes that the dramatic fall in living standards has triggered a shift in diet that will damage the long-term health of those living in Gaza and has led to alarming deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D. 70% of the population is being affected.
Figures of Palestinian deaths between September 2000 and February 2008.
| Extra-Judicial Killings by Israel | 705 |
| Targetted Victims | 478 |
| Innocent Civilians | 227 |
| Children | 68 |
| Total Palestinian Deaths | 4419 |
| Children Killed | 794 |
| Women Killed | 152 |
| Medical Personnel Killed | 25 |
| Journalists Killed | 10 |
| Total Palestinian Injuries in Gaza | 11,700 |
| Total Palestinian Injuries in the West Bank | 13,550 |
The USA votes against all United Nations General Assembly resolutions concerning the Palestinians, their refugee status, the status of the occupied territories, property and Israeli practices.
2009
Palestine Under Attack and Siege
In late December 2008 Israel bombs Gaza with USA made F-16 aircraft and Apache helicopters killing nearly 300 people and injuring over 700 in the first four days. More than 30 missiles and 100 bombs were used on heavilly populated areas including Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah.Images from the areas attacked showed dead and injured Palestinians, burning and destroyed buildings, and scenes of panic and chaos on the crowded streets. The attacks occurred while children were on their way to school and at least seven children from a United Nations run school were killed. Many police stations in residential areas were attacked, one during a passing out ceremony. The victims included Tawfiq Jabber, the chief of police in Gaza. Several mosques, a factory and the headquarters of a television station (al-Aqsa) were also destroyed.Israel justified its arracks by blaming the firing of home made Palestinian rockets into Israel. Only four Israelis had been killed by these rockets during 2008, and that after the bombing ofGaza began. The Hamas government had offered a continuation of the cease file if Israel ended its 18 month blockade of Gaza. Israel refused and sent missiles into Gaza. The Palestinian rocket attacks escalated after this. The media of the USA and UK fail to explain this, instead allowing Israeli politicians to justify the attack with the rocket excuse without questions.A USA spokesman said the USA "urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza". Hamas are the elected government in Gaza which is under an Israeli siege that is supported by the USA and European Union. Another USA spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, blamed the victims for "provoking" Israel. The UK government called for "maximum restraint to avoid further civilian casualties" while also blaming Hamas.
The South African Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, stated that the bombardment of Gaza by Israel bears all the hallmarks of war crimes. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela rejected the Israeli attacks as defensive and said the USA was complicit in this "naked agression". Neither of these two views are broadcast by USA or UK television.
A contributer called Muntasir to an Al-Jazeera blog from Bangladesh summed up the majority view from around the world:"Ok. So let me get this right. After months of ceasefire, during which Israel put up blockades to stop almost all essential goods from getting in, militants start firing rockets to vent their anger. The shelling does not kill a single Israeli. Now Israel is fed up so it decides to bomb any building in Gaza it deems as a 'Hamas institution' - be it Civilian or otherwise - and kill a hefty 250 people while injuring 600. Now the US says Hamas is responsible for the deaths. That makes perfect sense.
John Ging, of the United Nations Agency for Refugees noted that there had been a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel during which Palestinians of Gaza had been deprived of food and medicine by the Israeli blockade: "There was five months of a ceasefire in the last couple of months, where the people of Gaza did not benefit; they did not have any restoration of a dignified existence. We in fact at the UN, our supplies were also restricted during the period of the ceasefire, to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position and with a few days of closure we ran out of food."
On the second day of the attacks, Israel bombs the University of Gaza. Thousands of people demonstrate against Israel and the USA in Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraqalthough the mainly pro-West Arab governments stay silent.Five sisters from the Ballousha family are killed when a mosque collapses on their house after being bombed. Their ages are between 4 and 18.
Israel fires two missiles into the refugee camp at Rafah. One hits the al-Absi family home, killing three brothers - Sedqi, 3, Ahmad, 12, and Muhammad, 13, and wounding two sisters and the children's mother.
2011
Palestine Under Occupation and Siege
The USA vetoes a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a halt to the illegal Israeli West Bank settlements. All other 14 countries voted for the resolution.According to the BBC web site: "The Obama administration's decision risks angering Arab peoples at a time of mass street protests in the Middle East, the BBC's Barbara Plett reports from the UN."The resolution was sponsored by more than 130 countries. It declared Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories were illegal and a "major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace".
Jawaher Abu Rahma was killed by inhaling tear gas while watching a demonstration against the Israeli wall in Bil?in. The demonstration included 350 Israeli and international activists along with Palestinians.A day later, Ahmed Maslamany, was shot and killed at a West Bank checkpoint because he failed to follow an instruction given in Hebrew, a language he did not understand.
A leaked cable from Israel to the USA discussed the real reasons for the siege of Gaza (published in a Norwegian newspaper:“As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to [U.S, Embassy economic officers] on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gaza economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”
Nakba is the name that Palestinians give to the 1948 founding of Israel when more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from what is now Israel. On the 15 May anniversary, Israel attacks Palestinians commemorating this event.Twelve people are killed and 80 wounded in northern Gaza as Israeli troops open fire on a march, including children, of at least a thousand people heading towards the Erez crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
In the West Bank refugee camp of Qalandiya injuries were reported from tear gas canisters fired at protesters.
Israeli forces killed 12 Syrian citizens who had been taking part in an anti-Israeli rally on the Syrian side of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights border.
Israeli gunfire kills ten people and injures scores more in the Lebanese town of Ras Maroun, on the southern border with Israel. A journalist, Matthew Cassel, saw at least two dead Palestinian refugees in the town and reported: "Tens of thousands of refugees marched to the border fence to demand their right to return where they were met by Israeli soldiers."
One of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon was Abbas Jomaa who explained his reasons for marching to the border: "Israel may be 63 years old today but its days are numbered. Sooner or later, we will return."
Israeli Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter planes (both USA made) flew over demonstrators.
The USA threatens to cut the funding of the United Nations if it votes to recognise a declaration of independence by the state of Palestine.KryssTal Opinion: That says it all.
Dozens of people are killed in Gaza by Israeli airstrikes in August. The United Nations, USA and Europe which had only just condemned state violence in Syria stay silent as do the media.
While the world looks towards events in Libya, Israel uses air strikes against Gaza. In six days 26 people are killed and 101 injured. The BBC ignores this story.
In a prisoner swap, Israel releases hundreds of prisoners, many held without trial. Although the majority of the Palestinians live in Jerusalem or the West Bank, Israel "deports" them toGaza.
Over 100 countries in the United Nations vote to admit Palestine to UNESCO. The USA is one of two countries to vote against (the other is Israel). The USA threatens to cut funding to UNESCO.Israel theatens to build 2000 homes on occupied land.
A Canadian boat (Tahrir) and an Irish boat (Saoirse) taking $30,000 medical aid to Gaza are stopped by Israel in international waters. One of the people on the convoy, Ahmed Sholi, stated:"We will come back. We will keep going. To free Gaza and break the siege. We have a spirit that they're not going to break. People of Gaza have a right to live. Kids in Gaza have a right to live like any other kids in the world. We will keep going back until we break the siege. We will free Palestine and Gaza."
Israel has illegally blockaded Gaza since 2007 when they opposed election results in the territory.
A bid by Palestine to be recognised by the United Nations fails. Eight countries (Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Niger, Gabon and Lebanon) voted for a Palestinian state. Seven countries voted against: USA, UK, France, Germany, Columbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Portugal abstained.
