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Friday Nov 15, 2024
Wednesday, 13 August 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Israel has lost 64 soldiers and three civilians, while heavy losses among civilians and the destruction of thousands of homes in Gaza have drawn international condemnation.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the new negotiations would be “the last chance” for an agreement. Israeli representatives are not meeting face-to-face with the Palestinian delegation because it includes Hamas, which Israel regards as a terrorist organisation.
In Geneva, the United Nations named an international commission of inquiry into possible human rights violations and war crimes by both sides during the offensive. The commission, which will be headed by William Schabas, a Canadian professor of international law, was welcomed by Hamas but condemned by Israel.
“Hamas welcomes the decision to form an investigation committee into the war crimes committed by the occupation (Israel) against Gaza and it urges that it begin work as soon as possible,” spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza.
Israel’s foreign ministry recalled that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously called the Human Rights Council a ‘kangaroo court’.
“Already, with the decision on July 23 to establish the committee, the prime minister and the foreign minister declared that the Human Rights Council had long ago turned into the ‘terrorist rights council’ and a kangaroo court, whose ‘investigations’ are pre-determined,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said in a statement.
“If any more proof were needed, the appointment of the chairman of the panel, whose anti-Israel bias and opinions are known to all, proves beyond any doubt that Israel cannot expect justice from this body, whose report has already been written and all that is left is to decide who will sign off on it,” Palmor said.
Long-term truce
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said in a radio interview on Monday that disarming Gaza militants was crucial to a long-term truce and he hoped this could be done by diplomacy rather than force.
“I certainly hope that there will be a diplomatic solution. If there will not be a diplomatic solution, I am convinced that sooner or later we will have to opt for a military solution of taking temporary control of Gaza to demilitarise it again,” he told Israel Radio.
Another sticking point in the Cairo talks has been Israel’s demand for guarantees that Hamas would not use any reconstruction supplies sent to Gaza to build tunnels of the sort Palestinian fighters have used to infiltrate Israel.
Hamas has demanded an end to the economically stifling blockade of the enclave imposed by both Israel and Egypt, which also sees the Islamist movement as a security threat.
Israel has resisted easing access to Gaza, suspecting Hamas could then restock with weapons from abroad.
According to the United Nations, at least 425,000 displaced people in the Gaza Strip are in emergency shelters or staying with host families. Nearly 12,000 homes have been destroyed or severely damaged by Israeli attacks.
Obama applauds nomination of new Iraqi PM as ‘step forward’Reuters: US President Barack Obama said on Monday Iraq had taken “a promising step forward” in designating a new prime minister, vowing to step up support for a new Iraqi government in a widening conflict that his administration had hoped to avoid. Speaking to reporters in the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, where he is vacationing with his family, Obama said Iraq had made important strides toward rebuffing fighters from the Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot, since the United States authorised air strikes last week. He urged the quick formation of an inclusive government to address the needs of all Iraqis. “Today Iraq took a promising step forward in this critical effort,” Obama said in brief remarks. Obama’s comments and a congratulatory telephone call he made to Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Haider al-Abadi signal the administration’s expectation, or hope, that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s 8-year-rule is all but over, even as Maliki shows no sign of relinquishing power. “They’re treating him like he’s the prime minister already,” Michael Knights, a Boston-based fellow and Iraq scholar at the Washington Institute, said of Abadi. “Now the US can press on with its offer of enhanced security cooperation with Iraq.” Maliki, a Shi’ite Muslim Islamist blamed by Washington for driving the alienated Sunni minority into a revolt that is fueling the Islamic State’s brutal insurgency, deployed militias and special forces on the streets on Monday in a potentially dangerous political showdown. Obama urged Abadi to quickly form a new cabinet that represents Iraq’s different ethnic and religious communities. “This new Iraqi leadership has a difficult task,” Obama said. “It has to regain the confidence of its citizens by governing inclusively and by taking steps to demonstrate its resolve.” Abadi, a deputy speaker and veteran of Maliki’s Dawa Party, was named by President Fouad Masoum on Monday to replace Maliki. Obama’s comments underline what one former US official described as a potential “sea change” in Washington’s ties with Baghdad if Abadi forms a government following increasing US disenchantment with Maliki, who Washington backed as prime minister in 2006 when a Sunni insurgency raged and again in 2010 for a second term. “The US will finally have a partner in Baghdad,” said Wayne White, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former senior State Department intelligence official. Born in Baghdad in 1952, Abadi was a trained electrical engineer before entering Iraq’s government after the US-led invasion in 2003. He was part of the political opposition to late dictator Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime and lived in Britain for many years. Two of his siblings were executed in 1982 for their membership in the then-outlawed Dawa party. |
