From the Front Room: Just Another Day

Today was a busy day.

With the EU, the Arab League and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) as the latest to join the chorus of international voices calling for the blockade on Gaza to be lifted, that’s exactly what happened. With almost no fanfare, it was reported that Netanyahu has agreed to a policy shift that would see many more goods able to cross into the Gaza Strip. Tony Blair hailed the move even though Netanyahu has said that the naval blockade will remain. The major change is that instead of a list of permitted goods, all goods will be allowed entry unless they appear on the new list of banned goods. (Apparently it took 4 years for someone to come up with this bright idea).

A quick look at some of the previously allowed and banned goods makes clear the arbitrary process of deciding which items to ban.

Remember, the blockade was put in place to prevent Hamas from re-arming. Fresh meat? Fishing rods? Musical instruments? Nutmeg???

Also, Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem today released their annual report (link to report) on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. From Al-Jazeera: “The report noted that 95 per cent of Gaza's factories have closed, that 98 per cent of residents suffer from blackouts, and that 93 per cent of Gaza's water is polluted.”

This came in addition to a press release from the ICRC that condemned the blockade and called for it to be lifted, noting the following:

At the end of May 2010, 110 of 470 medicines considered essential, such as chemotherapy and haemophilia drugs, were unavailable in Gaza.

Only about 60% of the territory's 1.4 million inhabitants are connected to a sewage collection system. Raw sewage discharged into the river Wadi Gaza, which snakes through urban areas, jeopardizes the health of the communities living on its banks.

Also today, Israel announced the names of the two international observers to its internal inquiry into the Flotilla incident.

Both Turkey and the Palestinian Authority said that the internal inquiry did not meet the criteria set out by the UN Security Council. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said it was a step in the right direction but may not be enough to satisfy its call for an independent and credible inquiry.

Canada and the US supported the decision. Canada couldn’t do much else since one of the jurists is retired Canadian Brigadier General Ken Watkin, the other being Lord David Trimble, Nobel laureate and Former First Minister of Northern Ireland (more on them later). While US State Department Spokesman Philip Crowley called the decision “an important step forward in what is called for in the UN Security Council presidential statement”, he added that the US was “not going to prejudge the process or the outcome”.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, has no problems prejudging either the process or the outcome; he knows that it will come out in Israel’s favour and he keeps repeating it.

Ban Ki-Moon is right to say that he’s not sure if they UNSC conditions are met by this announcement. How can the inquiry have any credibility if they jurists are barred from speaking to soldiers or activists and are essentially only evaluating the legality of the blockade?

Besides, the ‘independent observers’ are more like cheerleaders. Israel has already said that they will not participate in the inquiry in any real way. But I’m really wondering if they chose they best people to lend credibility to this inquiry. Just hours before the raid on the Mavi Marmara, Mr. Trimble (the Irish observer) and some friends launched the Friends of Israel Initiative. To give you an indication of the type of company that Mr. Trimble keeps, Former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, were also involved. Gold is also friends with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As for the Canadian observer, remember those Afghan Detainee Hearings? The ones that Harper prorogued Parliament to avoid? Well,

“Brig.-Gen. Ken Watkins, the military judge advocate general, claimed solicitor-client privilege about whether he'd seen warnings from a diplomat in Kandahar and whether he'd received direction from the prime minister's office. […]Watkins refused to say whether he'd seen published annual reports from the Foreign Affairs Department that detail Afghanistan's abysmal human-rights record. At one point, Watkins wouldn't even acknowledge whether he had read newspaper accounts of torture allegations.”

Those are really the best two observers they could find to lend credibility to their internal inquiry?

Moving away from the Holy Land, it looks like the fight for Afghanistan is about to change in a major way. Afghanistan could be sitting on at least a trillion dollars worth of minerals. But we’re being warned to take that estimate with a grain of salt.

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