MRN

By Jimmy Carter

(source: Washington Post)

During the past 16 months I have visited the Middle East four times and met with leaders in Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. I was in Damascus when President Obama made his historic speech in Cairo, which raised high hopes among the more-optimistic Israelis and Palestinians, who recognize that his insistence on a total freeze of settlement expansion is the key to any acceptable peace agreement or any positive responses toward Israel from Arab nations.

Late last month I traveled to the region with a group of "Elders," including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Mary Robinson of Ireland, former prime minister Gro Brundtland of Norway and women’s activist Ela Bhatt of India. Three of us had previously visited Gaza, which is now a walled-in ghetto inhabited by 1.6 million Palestinians, 1.1 million of whom are refugees from Israel and the West Bank and receive basic humanitarian assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Israel prevents any cement, lumber, seeds, fertilizer and hundreds of other needed materials from entering through Gaza’s gates. Some additional goods from Egypt reach Gaza through underground tunnels. Gazans cannot produce their own food nor repair schools, hospitals, business establishments or the 50,000 homes that were destroyed or heavily damaged by Israel’s assault last January.

We found a growing sense of concern and despair among those who observe, as we did, that settlement expansion is continuing apace, rapidly encroaching into Palestinian villages, hilltops, grazing lands, farming areas and olive groves. There are more than 200 of these settlements in the West Bank.

An even more disturbing expansion is taking place in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Three months ago I visited a family who had lived for four generations in their small, recently condemned home. They were laboring to destroy it themselves to avoid much higher costs if Israeli contractors carried out the demolition order. On Aug. 27, we Elders took a gift of food to 18 members of the Hanoun family, recently evicted from their home of 65 years. The Hanouns, including six children, are living on the street, while Israeli settlers have moved into their confiscated dwelling.

Read More »The elders view of the middle east

The action was launched in a letter sent to President Barroso and Javier Solana, the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, spelling out the way in which the Treaty conditions are being breached and the way in which international law applies.  The case is being taken forward on behalf of the complainants by Public Interest Lawyers of 8 Hylton Street, Birmingham.

The Commission has been given 28 days to reply to the detailed case outlined in a 15 page letter which spells out the fact that under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the EU has clear obligations in the light of Israel’s violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  The case made is that the EU is failing to meet these obligations.

In the letter it is argued that  ‘Palestinian, Israeli and International Human Rights organizations have concluded in numerous reports and studies that Israel’s actions in Operation Cast Lead intentionally and systematically disregarded and violated both international humanitarian law and international human rights law’.

Furthermore ‘the combined reports delivered to the UN including that of Richard Falk, charged with investigating the human rights situation in Palestine found several breaches of law in Operation Cast Lead.  The Special Rapporteur on Poverty discussed reports that during the military intervention Israel deliberately obstructed the work of humanitarian personnel leaving the poor without basic medical, food and other services in violation of both international humanitarian law and human rights law’ Read More »Legal action to enforce human rights conditions in eu Isarael association agreement

BY AFP

WASHINGTON — Former US president Jimmy Carter said Sunday Palestinian leaders were "seriously considering" a one-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following a visit to the Middle East.

"A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea," Carter wrote in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post.

"By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbors and then demand equal rights within a democracy," he explained. "In this non-violent civil rights struggle, their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela."

Carter noted that in doing so, Palestinian leaders were taking into consideration current demographic trends.

He said non-Jews were already a slight majority of total citizens in this area, "and within a few years Arabs will constitute a clear majority."

Carter added that a two-state solution for the conflict was "clearly preferable" and had been embraced at the grass root level but that a one-state solution was "a more likely alternative to the present debacle." Read More »Palestinians seriously considering one state