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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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February 23rd,
2009 - Rights Group Calls for Israel/Hamas Arms Embargo |
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Rights Group
Calls for Israel/Hamas Arms Embargo By Daniel Luban Inter Press Service February 23, 2009 New York - A prominent
international human rights organisation has called for an arms embargo
against both Israel and Hamas after finding evidence that both sides used
foreign-supplied arms to commit war crimes during the recent conflict in Gaza. In a report released Monday,
Amnesty International found that weapons produced in the U.S. and Europe,
including white phosphorus shells, were used in "indiscriminate"
Israeli attacks that killed civilians in Gaza. In addition to a U.N.-backed embargo,
the group called on states to unilaterally suspend arms transfers to all
parties in the conflict, and to take steps to hold perpetrators accountable
for war crimes committed during the three-week war. While critics of the Israeli
military campaign have made similar charges since it began on Dec. 27, the
Amnesty International report is likely to carry special weight due both to
the organisation’s stature and to the extensive fact-finding mission in Gaza
and southern Israel that preceded its publication. "As the major supplier
of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply
that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human
rights," said Malcolm Smart, Middle East director for Amnesty
International, in a statement accompanying the report. "The Obama
Administration should immediately suspend U.S. military aid to Israel". The organisation’s
fact-finding mission, conducted during and after the fighting, found
"evidence of war crimes and other serious violations of international
law by all parties to the conflict". The report found that both
sides conducted indiscriminate attacks, which are defined as war crimes under
the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions.
"Indiscriminate" attacks include both those directed at civilian
targets and those which can be expected to cause an excessive amount of civilian
collateral damage in relation to the military objective. On the Palestinian side,
these attacks consisted of the firing of rockets - most locally made, but
others foreign in origin - by Hamas and other militant groups at towns in
southern Israel. On the Israeli side,
indiscriminate attacks resulted from the use of weapons considered acceptable
in conventional warfare against the tightly-packed civilian population of
Gaza, as well as from the use of banned or contested weapons such as white
phosphorus. The fact-finding mission
found white phosphorus shells scattered throughout the Gaza Strip with
markings indicating that they were U.S.-made M825A1 munitions. White phosphorus is
permitted as a smokescreen under international law, but is forbidden for use
against human targets. The Amnesty mission recorded several incidents of
white phosphorus shells striking civilian targets, including private
residences and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
headquarters in Gaza City. The report also found that
the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) used several other weapons during the
conflict that could be expected to cause indiscriminate civilian casualties
when used in highly-populated areas. These included flechettes -
thousands of small metal darts packed into tank artillery shells - as well as
"a new type of missile, seemingly launched from unmanned drones, which
explodes large numbers of tiny sharp-edged metal cubes". These new missiles, the
report noted, "appear designed to cause maximum injury and, in some respects,
seem to be a more sophisticated version of the ball- bearings or nails and
bolts" that are frequently used in suicide bombings. Due to the evidence of war
crimes committed by both sides, Amnesty called for the U.N. Security Council
to implement immediately a comprehensive arms embargo "until effective
mechanisms are in place to ensure that weapons or munitions and other
military equipment will not be used to commit serious violations of
international human rights law and international humanitarian law". They also called on
individual member states to halt unilaterally their arms transfers to the
parties to the conflict - a step aimed most notably at the U.S., which is by
far the largest supplier of arms to Israel. The U.S. has provided Israel
with nearly 20 billion dollars in direct military aid since 2002, and will
provide an additional 30 billion dollars in military aid under the terms of a
10-year agreement signed in 2007. Much of the key equipment
used by the IDF in the Gaza bombing campaign is produced in the U.S.,
including the F-16 fighter and Apache AH-64 helicopter. Many of the
controversial weapons used in the campaign, such as white phosphorus shells
and flechettes, also originate in the U.S. "Put simply, Israel's
military intervention in the Gaza Strip has been equipped to a large extent
by U.S.-supplied weapons, munitions and military equipment paid for with U.S.
taxpayers’ money", the Amnesty report stated. However, many European
countries are also significant providers of arms and military assistance to
Israel, including France, Germany, and Romania. While most of the rockets
fired by Hamas into southern Israel are produced locally, the group also
reportedly uses Russian-, Iranian-, and perhaps Chinese-made rockets that are
smuggled into the Gaza Strip through Egypt. Although it is widely
believed that Iran and Syria have provided arms to Hamas, there is little
reliable information about the extent of state support for the group. The Israeli Ministry of
Foreign Affairs quickly responded to the Amnesty report with a statement
denouncing the report as "biased". The statement charges that the
report "ignores the basic fact that Hamas is a terror organisation"
and fails to pay sufficient attention to Hamas’s war crimes when assessing
the Israeli response. Hamas similarly denounced
the report as "unbalanced and unfair". Hamas spokesman Fawzi
Barhoum said that it "make[s] equal between the real criminal and the victim". International law experts,
however, note that in assessing whether a party committed war crimes, the
legal status of their opponent is irrelevant - as is the question of whether
the opponent also committed war crimes. "Shouldn’t Hamas’s
evident willingness to commit war crimes be taken into account when Israel is
accused of committing war crimes in retaliation? The answer is no, for one
simple reason: innocent civilians deserve to be protected from
(unjustifiable) harm regardless of the criminal behavior of their
governments," University of Auckland law professor Kevin Jon Heller
wrote soon after the outbreak of conflict in January. "That is why Hamas’s
direct attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes, and that is why
disproportionate attacks on Palestinian combatants are war crimes." External link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45860 |