ALAN FISHER
The Israeli-Palestinian question continues to dominate the foreign agenda
Monday 14 September
Osama Bin Laden has been speaking again. In his first communication since June, the de-facto leader of Al Queda issued an audio message with a still called ‘A statement to the American people’. It’s 10 minutes long and tells Barack Obama that he is ‘powerless’ to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Clearly timed to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he says they were, in part, a response to US support for Israel. ‘The time has come for you to liberate yourselves from fear and the ideological terrorism of neo-conservatives and the Israeli lobby,’ the voice says. ‘The reason for our dispute with you is your support for your ally Israel, occupying our land in Palestine.’
And, not for the first time, Bin Laden has given an indication that he sees a way to end the conflict. ‘If you stop the war, then fine. Otherwise we will have no choice but to continue our war of attrition on every front. If you choose safety and stopping wars, then we are ready to respond to this.’
Bin Laden is thought to be hiding in the mountains on the Afghanistan and Pakistan border. Despite the biggest manhunt in history, he’s still free and still able to post communications on Islamic websites.
Tuesday 15 September
He became a hero to Arabs in many places – and to lots of Westerners. Muntadar al-Zaidi became world famous when he threw his shoes at the then US President George W Bush. Initally sentenced to three years in jail, it was reduced to a year on appeal. He was released today, three months early, for good behaviour.
Walking out of prison in Baghdad he told waiting reporters that he had been tortured and would name those responsible later. The Iraqis say they will investigate any allegations of wrong-doing.
Mr al-Zaidi said he suffered beatings, whippings, electric shocks and simulated drowning at the hands of officials and guards. ‘At the time that prime minister Nouri Maliki said on television that he could not sleep without being reassured on my fate. I was being tortured in the worst ways, beaten with electric cables and iron bars’, he said.
The shoe-throwing incident came during a joint news conference between Mr Bush and Mr Maliki. Throwing the shoes, he shouted: ‘This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq’. Showing your soles to someone is regarded as a huge insult in the Middle East. Bush tried to laugh it off saying: ‘I’ve seen a lot of weird things during my presidency, and this may rank up there as one of the weirdest’.
Many Iraqis believe that Muntadar al-Zaidi is a national hero – others think he was unbelievably rude. He has reportedly received offers of money, jobs and even marriage from across the Arab world.
Wednesday 16 September
It’s a report that will be condemned as biased. I can almost hear the soundbites now which will criticise the people behind it, the methods used, the political slant of the wording, but an important UN document about the war in Gaza has been released and it deserves attention and consideration.
South African judge Richard Goldstone led a fact-finding team to the area and says Israeli and Palestinian forces committed war crimes during the three week war. The report says Israel used ‘disproportionate force’ in the war. It condemns rocket attacks by Palestinian groups which Israel says sparked its offensive.
In the 574 page report – the longest and arguably the most comprehensive into the war – is this key passage:
‘Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.’ The Israeli operations, it says, ‘were carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population’. Of the blockade which was imposed on the Gaza strip before the war, Mr Goldstone and his team say that this ‘amounted to collective punishment. The Israeli military operation was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole’.
As for the Palestinian rocket attacks, the report says there is evidence that the groups responsible had committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity. ‘Where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into civilian areas, they constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population,’ it says.
The report has recommended that the UN’s security council calls for the authorities in Israel and Gaza to file their own reports within six months, with the possiblity of the International Criminal Court becoming involved.
Sitting here, writing this and listening to reports on the document, it has predictably come in for criticism from both sides. Mark Regev for the Israelis says it was ‘born in sin’ and had no mandate. The israelis refused to co-operate with the judge from the beginning. In Gaza, Hamas says the report is ‘political, unbalanced and dishonest’.
Judge Goldstone’s report could be left on the shelf unless there is a will on the part of the international community to get to the bottom of what really happened and to hold those responsible to account. Otherwise this will confirm that the rule of law means nothing, and the bad feeling and hatred which this war created will continue to fester.
Alan Fisher is an Al Jazeera correspondent
24.09.09
Issue no 145
POETIC
JUSTICE
The Rose Street Muse
outlives them all
Kenneth Roy
[click here]
JUST ANOTHER SATURDAY
I got more than
I bargained
for in Cambuslang
Islay McLeod
[click here]
LOCAL HEROES
How a community can
run an island
Catherine Czerkawska
[click here]
HOW TO MAKE UP
11 MINUTES
Reflections on time
Bruce Gardner
[click here]
DUSK ON
SKYE COAST
Gallery
Scottish contemporary art
Margaret Evans
[click here]
Catch-up on Tuesday and Wednesday’s editions
[click here]
