Mustafa Qadri » Hamas

Has Israel Finally Gone Too Far?

mustafa — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:50:15 +0000

It’s not the first time foreign passports have been used by Israeli assassins but the Dubai murder may push the limits of international goodwill, writes Mustafa Qadri

No organisation fuels more conspiracy theories than the Mossad, Israel’s much feared international spy agency — and conspiracy theories have been splashed across the front-pages of Australian newspapers today in the wake of allegations about the fraudulent use of Australian passports by Mossad agents.

The angry responses from Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith — and the issue of a summons to the Israeli ambassador — sounded a different tone to that which otherwise characterises the affable relationship between Australia and Israel.

According to security cameras in the Dubai hotel, Mossad agents spent 45 minutes in the room of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh before leaving him dead inside. There are also suggestions he was tortured. At the very least his death may not have been quick and clinical. As Mark Steven argued in newmatilda.com yesterday, al-Mabhouh is not the first Hamas operative to be killed by the Mossad but the special circumstances surrounding his death mean that this murder is having major reverberations.

The use of stolen passports has serious implications for travellers, particularly dual Israeli citizens. Many, if not all, of the passports were apparently stolen from people not involved with Israel’s covert activities or the assassination. They now have a genuine fear of imprisonment or reprisal when they next travel.

If Israel is found to be behind the passport abuses, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said “Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend”. Internationally, it seems, the use of foreign passports by up to 26 Mossad agents is testing the limits of Israel’s allies. Britain and other European nations have become increasingly critical of Israel’s apparent involvement in the murder.

By flouting international norms so openly, Israel has garnered added resentment. For years now, Israel’s neighbours have been cowed by its clout and bullied at a diplomatic level.

When they were called to account for the passport fraud allegations, Israel’s ambassadors to the UK and to Australia, Ron Prosor and Yuval Rotem, were presumably treated better than the Turkish ambassador to Israel was during a recent impasse. Ahmet Oguz Celikkol was subjected to a humiliating public dressing down and was placed on a deliberately lowered sofa as the news cameras rolled. He had been summoned by Israeli authorities because a Turkish television drama depicted Israeli soldiers as ”brutal”.

We can, then, identify a certain degree of arrogance in Israel’s behaviour.

Officials in the Jewish state have been quoted saying they were surprised at the speed with which police investigators in Arab Dubai were able to piece together the crime. That suggests overconfidence played a pivotal role in Mossad sloppiness which may lead to the erosion of Israel’s image as a hitherto impregnable power in the region.

Dubai’s police chief has called for Mossad head Meir Dagan to be arrested if Israel is found to be behind the killing. These are strong words from a generally pliant Arab state that is staunchly pro-US and has relatively good relations with Israel. Although Dagan would never be extradited, there is a good chance that he may face arrest in other countries if he travels.

Remarkably, this is not the first time the spy agency has been implicated in similar assassination plots involving fake or stolen passports.

In 1997 Israel tried to assassinate the exiled Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in the Jordanian capital of Amman. In what was on paper an ingenious plot, Mishal was to be poisoned in the ear as an agent, posing as a passerby, brushed up against him on a street but the plot was foiled, and the would-be assassins were captured. Israel was forced by Jordan and the US to hand over an antidote to the poison. Mishal was kept alive and the Mossad’s reputation as a perfect assassin force was left tattered.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald’s Paul McGeough, the veteran Middle East correspondent who authored an excellent book on the attempted Mishal assassination, a dual Canadian and Israeli citizen admitted to Canadian officials that he had acquiesced in the use of his passport by Mossad agents in the botched killing.

Back in 2004, Mossad spies were jailed by New Zealand for attempting to use the passport of a heavily disabled Kiwi.

There have been at least two other recordings of Mossad agents illegally using British passports, in 1979 and again in 1987. On that latter occasion, Israel promised never to repeat the indiscretion. The fact that it has continued to use British and other foreign passports suggests it has not learnt any lessons from past mistakes.

It is instructive to compare Britain’s response to the current scandal to a similar incident allegedly involving Russian spies. When Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy living under self-imposed exile in the UK, was poisoned in an upmarket London restaurant much of the evidence pointed to Moscow. British authorities lambasted their Russian counterparts for refusing to hand over four suspects in the murder. Four Russian diplomats were expelled in the process and the media had a ball reporting Russia’s new Cold War conspiracies.

It’s still unclear whether Mossad’s latest scandal will provoke spy fantasies and media conspiracy theories or whether it will prove a watershed in the long battle to keep Israel accountable for its actions.

Source URL: http://newmatilda.com/2010/02/26/has-israel-finally-gone-too-far

Israel Accused Of War Crimes

mustafa — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:14:51 +0000

It’s unlikely Richard Goldstone’s report into the Gaza bombings will result in ICC prosecutions but it may mark a turning point in the conflict, writes Mustafa Qadri

This week the United Nations released an explosive report on Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip in late December last year. It finds both Israel and armed Palestinian groups guilty of war crimes and, potentially, of crimes against humanity. Over 1400 mostly civilian Palestinians (including over 300 children) and 13 Israeli (including nine soldiers) were killed during Israel’s massive invasion of the Gaza Strip, the most densely populated region on the planet.

The report, prepared by a four-person committee headed by the respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone, has singled out Israel for particular criticism. It speaks of “a deliberately disproportionate attack [by Israel] designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population” — including the demolition of homes, factories and infrastructure, the deliberate targeting civilians and a failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets.

Rockets fired into Israel from Gaza were also judged to be war crimes, and potentially crimes against humanity, because they deliberately targeted civilians or failed to distinguish between civilian and military targets.

Also significant was the mission’s conclusion that Palestinian armed groups did not, as charged by Israel, use human shields or shelter in hospitals. Yet Israeli forces were found guilty of this very same crime, as had already been widely documented by human rights groups and Palestinian civilians at the time.

The Goldstone report calls on Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza to investigate the alleged crimes listed in the report and, unless prosecuted within three months, recommends that they be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC). It further recommends that Israel pay compensation to Palestinians who lost family members or property during the invasion, something which could create a precedent for future claims with respect to Israel’s program of land confiscation in the West Bank.

At a press conference announcing the report’s findings, Goldstone noted that Israel had not mounted any “credible” investigation into alleged crimes arising out of the Gaza invasion. Israel says it has undertaken over a hundred investigations into alleged crimes committed by its forces but, it adds, these investigations found all the claims to be baseless. Israel’s findings lie in stark contradiction to those of independent bodies like the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch — and now the Goldstone inquiry.

The report represents a powerful challenge to decades-old Israeli exceptionalism in the face of multiple breaches of international law and politics. It is not the first report of its kind. In 2007, for example, another South African lawyer, then UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Palestine John Dugard, likened Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Another 2007 report by a senior UN official, Alvaro de Soto, on the devastating blockade of Gaza, caused a stir when it was leaked to the media.

Unlike de Soto’s report, which was never intended for wider release, the Goldstone report is the most detailed public condemnation of crimes committed by Israel. The character of these crimes — extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, targeting civilians and using them as human shields — have, however, been frequent features of its 43-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The massive report — all 575 pages of it — is based on 188 interviews, more than 10,000 pages of documentation, 1200 photographs and 30 videos. It includes several hours of live testimony in Gaza and Geneva. Israel refused to cooperate with the inquiry — including with respect to access to its territory.

Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh welcomed the report’s findings with respect to Israel, but rebuked its condemnation of Palestinian rocket fire saying it was an act of self-defence incomparable to the latter’s powerful military force.

Israel immediately rejected the report, calling it “biased and encouraging terror”. It argued that the UN Human Rights Council, which commissioned the report, always singles out Israel for criticism while ignoring other countries accused of human rights violations. It has commenced an international campaign to scupper the report and to prevent its findings from being brought before the Security Council, the only body capable of bringing Israelis or Palestinians before the ICC.

Moreover, in light of the report’s findings, some countries may seek to indict individual Israeli leaders or military personnel on charges of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The prospect of those accused of crimes being hauled to the ICC may be remote. But the report has nevertheless struck a powerful, measured blow for the principle that international criminal law ought to be applied universally regardless of the nationality of the culprits.

According to the historian Norman Finkelstein, the report may not lead to an end of Israel’s brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories, but it nevertheless represents the end of blanket support for the state among the liberal Jewish diaspora.

Of added importance is the fact that the Jewish South African Goldstone has strong personal links to Israel. He is a noted jurist who cut his teeth as an anti-apartheid activist before decades later becoming chief prosecutor at the Yugoslavia and Rwanda war crimes tribunals. Indeed, according to his daughter Nicole, Goldstone is an ardent Zionist whose presence in the inquiry “softened” the report’s findings.

Most non-Arab nations, however, have been notably silent in response to the report’s findings. As ever, either by their direct military or economic ties or by their refusal to condemn Israel, the international community remains complicit in the destruction of any viable Palestinian state.

Remarkably, the Western media has relegated its coverage of the report to the second tier of its newspaper columns. In a bitter twist of tragic irony, most spoke of US envoy George Mitchell’s meeting with Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about a Jewish settlement freeze in the West Bank as though it were taking place on another continent or, perhaps, a different planet. Such lapses in attention point to a continued disparity between the reality on the ground and the so-called Peace Process.

It is sobering to describe a massacre as a watershed. But in years to come the devastation of Gaza by Israel at the beginning of 2009 and the subsequent Goldstone report may well be seen as key moments in the struggle for Palestine.

Source URL: http://newmatilda.com/2009/09/18/israel-accused-war-crimes

Speak to Hamas and Hezbollah

mustafa — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:25:05 +0000

Britain aligned itself with the U.S. position on Hezbollah, but has now seen its error. Bill Marston, a Foreign Office spokesman, told Al Jazeera: “Hezbollah is a political phenomenon and part and parcel of the national fabric in Lebanon. We have to admit this.”

Gaza conference fineprint

mustafa — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:38:41 +0000

One of the headlines coming out of the Gaza donors conference currently being held in Egypt is the US’s pledge of $900 million for the Palestinians. What is getting less attention is that only one third of that will actually go to Gaza and none of that can be used for rebuilding.

Where now for Hamas?

mustafa — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:34:38 +0000

The Diplomat‘s Middle East and South Asia correspondent, Mustafa Qadri, reports on Hamas’ future…

The latest edition of the excellent The Diplomat magazine, Australia’s only dedicated foreign affairs magazine, has my latest article on the future of the Palestinian Hamas movement following the recent Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The article is available here via subscription.

Kerry in Gaza but not with Hamas

mustafa — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:44:28 +0000

“Hamas has to change its policies,” Mr. Kerry said at the ruins of the American International School in Gaza, which was destroyed by an Israeli air attack in early January. “There is no change in our policy.”

I can’t think of any other conflict on earth where the aggressor (the US, by supplying Israel with its weapons and giving them economic and political support is complicit in its crimes) is peacefully allowed into the territory it has devastated and can make, from there, pronouncements, against the government of the attacked people.

Has Israeli politics really shifted right?

mustafa — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:08:45 +0000

According to most regional analysts, the results of Israel’s recent election signal a profound shift to the right. But a deeper reading reveals a more pedestrian reality.

Kill them like insects

mustafa — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Interesting that the Wall Street Journal has no qualms with Israeli soldiers who describe Palestinians as mosquitoes:

Arieh Spitzen, the former head of the Israeli military’s Department of Palestinian Affairs, says that even if Israel had tried to stop the Islamists sooner, he doubts it could have done much to curb political Islam, a movement that was spreading across the Muslim world. He says attempts to stop it are akin to trying to change the internal rhythms of nature: “It is like saying: ‘I will kill all the mosquitoes.’ But then you get even worse insects that will kill you…You break the balance. You kill Hamas you might get al Qaeda.”

India’s Israel envy

mustafa — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 06:56:46 +0000

The fact is that India knows that war will accomplish nothing. Indeed, it is just what the terrorists want – a cause that would rally all Pakistanis to the flag and provide Pakistan’s army an excuse to abandon the unpopular fight against the Taliban and Al-Qaida in the west for the more familiar terrain of the Indian border in the east. India’s government sees no reason to play into the hands of those who seek that outcome.

Israel wanted humanitarian crisis

mustafa — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:23:04 +0000

The scale of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, and the almost daily reports of war crimes over the last three weeks, has drawn criticism from even longstanding friends and sympathisers. Despite the Israeli government’s long-planned and comprehensive PR campaign, hundreds of dead children is a hard sell. As a former Israeli government press adviser put it, in a wonderful bit of unintentional irony, “When you have a Palestinian kid facing an Israeli tank, how do you explain that the tank is actually David and the kid is Goliath?”