Speaking on Thursday, Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, endorsed the recent UN report into the Gaza war and called for ‘impartial, independent, prompt and effective investigations' into war crimes that the report alleges were committed by both sides. Addressing the UN Human Rights Council's special debate session on the Goldstone report, Pillay criticised what she referred to as a ‘culture of impunity' which persists in both Israel and the Occupied Territories. Pillay also criticised the ongoing blockade of Gaza and the recent restrictions placed on Palestinians wishing to enter the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The ToD verdict: The Goldstone report is not going to go away. Regardless of Benyamin Netanyahu's intransigence, which, for the time being, enjoys full US backing, and regardless of the recently successful move to postpone a declaration based on its conclusions, this is a report that seemingly refuses to die. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, the eponymous jurist who led the UN team in investigating the Gaza War is too highly regarded. Richard J. Goldstone, as chair of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, played a key role in uncovering gross human rights abuses carried out by South African security forces. This was a key step in undermining the legitimacy of the apartheid regime among white South Africans. Later he was the chief prosecutor in both the UN International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He has received many awards, including the International Human Rights Award from America's own Bar Association.
Secondly, the report's findings, contrary to Israeli protestations, are relatively mild and even handed; Hamas has also disavowed the report as being ‘political' and ‘biased'. The report's critical flaw, from the Israeli perspective, is that it negates Israeli appeals to the right to self-defence, claiming a key target of the IDF's offensive was the Palestinian civilian population itself. More broadly, it criticized the blockade of Gaza as a policy of disproportionate force aimed at collective punishment.
It was this theme of collective punishment that Navi Pillay, another former South African jurist and the first non-white member of the South African High Court, turned to in her own address. That both sides in the 2008 conflict committed human rights abuses is almost incidental; the controversy generated by the report is due to its highlighting and attempt to publicise this injustice, a conclusion that Pillay endorsed today. Netanyahu has decried the report as representing a threat to peace. Today the UN High Commissioner made clear that this view is a chimera: as long as injustice persists, so will conflict. And so will the Goldstone report.
Honduras negotiations ‘closer' to resolution
On Thursday Victor Meza, chief negotiator for ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, said that they hoped to have a resolution to the current political crisis by midday on Friday. Robert Wood, a spokesman for the US State Department, echoed his optimism, saying that ‘we're close', as he called on both sides in the dispute to continue talking. Roberto Micheletti, who assumed the office of de facto President of the Honduran interim government after Zelaya's exile, is thought to be opposing Zelaya's restitution as president before elections scheduled for 29 November.
Zelaya was forced into exile after the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest him for violating the country's constitution on the 28 June. His clandestine return to the country on the 21 September led to riots in Tegucigalpa, focused around the Brazilian embassy, which remains his sanctuary. In the face of universal condemnation of the coup, with the OAS suspending Honduras on the 4 July, the provisional government's agenda is not clear. Many analysts predict that Micheletti is simply seeking to ‘wait out the clock'.
President Obama threatened that the US may not recognise the legitimacy of any elections held without Zelaya being reinstated. However, he has been under focused criticism from Republicans in congress for his apparent support for the former Honduran president. Zelaya's pro-Chavez stance made him the target of suspicion among right wing politicians in Washington, with Dick Lugar, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, calling for the OAS to send observers to the forthcoming elections. Micheletti may be gambling that, when the time comes, domestic politics may prevent Obama from taking robust action.
Pakistan sustains further bomb attack
After Thursday's attacks on Lahore and Kohat, two more explosions, thought to be suicide bombers, struck the northwest city of Peshawar today. Eleven people have been killed with fifteen reported injured. In a repeat of Thursday's attacks, the principal target appears to have been Pakistan's security apparatus, with the suspected bombers striking a police investigation bureau in the Swati Pathak area, close to an army barracks.
Head of Mi5 defends international intelligence links
In a speech on Thursday evening Jonathan Evans, Director General of Mi5, the UK's domestic security agency, defended Britain's collaboration with foreign intelligence agencies. Evans claimed that at the time of 9/11 Britain's knowledge of al-Qaeda was ‘inadequate' and that they might have struck British interests ‘imminently'. Evans warned that not working with foreign intelligence agencies would have amounted to a dereliction of duty.
The UK has come under fire repeatedly for what is depicted by human rights groups as collusion with foreign governments which employ torture to secure information. In addition to Syria and Jordan, whose governments have been repeatedly criticised for the use of torture, such censure includes the UK's intelligence partnership with the US. The United States clandestine system of prisons, including Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Airforce base, where detainees have been held for years without trial, has proven to be one of the most controversial aspects of the Bush administration's ‘War on Terror'. Documented human rights abuses at such prisons, most prominently Abu Ghraib in Iraq, have further inflamed the issue.
Evans said that these issues did pose a dilemma to Mi5 case officers and that, in view of the pattern discernible in American policy, changes were made. However, he insisted that the UK government was not in a position to change how other countries behave and that, from an operational stand point, taking advantage of available intelligence was the lesser of two evils. Regardless of how it was obtained, such intelligence had led to the thwarting of several terrorist plots since 9/11, saving potentially hundreds of British lives.