 |
| |
WEEKLY
SECTIONS |
 |
|
 |
| Top US lawmaker blasts UN |
|
|
|
‘Hamas rocket brings Tel Aviv within range’
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
WASHINGTON/OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: The US House of Representatives was expected to easily approve a sharply worded resolution late on Tuesday, denouncing a UN report that Israel and Palestinians committed war crimes during Israel’s genocidal Gaza war.
With the UN General Assembly due to take up the Goldstone report on Wednesday, US lawmakers were set to vote on a non-binding resolution pushing President Barack Obama to repudiate and block UN approval of its findings.
“I’m going to vote emphatically for it,” said Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. “I think the UN report is unbalanced, and unfair, and inaccurate.
“It’s unfortunate that the United Nations deals with Israel, in my opinion, in a totally biased and unbalanced way. And it is the only country in the world, Israel, that has a special focus by the United Nations,” he added.
The resolution, crafted by Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, expressed support for the Obama administration’s condemnation of the report and urges opposition to its findings in any international forum.
Named after former South African judge Richard Goldstone, who headed the inquiry committee, the UN report accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes during the 22-day conflict that flared up in late December 2008 and ended in January, killing some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
Goldstone recommended that Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas—which rules the tiny Palestinian coastal enclave—face possible prosecution in The Hague if they fail to conduct credible investigations within six months.
Hoyer said rocket fire from Palestinian freedom fighters in Gaza had placed Israel in “an unfortunate position” and stressed that Israel “is as careful a government as there is in terms of prosecuting its own defence” officials.
Meanwhile, a senior Israeli general warned on Tuesday that the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has successfully test-fired a rocket capable of reaching Tel Aviv from the Gaza Strip,.
The rocket, believed to be Iranian-made, has a range of about 60 kilometres, putting Israel’s major population centres in range, said Major General Amos Yadlin, head of military intelligence.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers apparently successfully test-fired the rocket out to sea, Yadlin told a closed-door meeting of parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee, according to a participant.
Hamas called the claim a “fabrication” designed to mobilise world opinion against the Islamist group before the UN General Assembly which was on Wednesday to discuss a controversial report on the Gaza war.
“This is a pre-emptive step by the Zionist enemy to influence international opinion ahead of the General Assembly’s discussion of the Goldstone report,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said. “This crisis has pushed the Zionist enemy to create these kinds of fabrications,” he added.
In a related development, dozens of Israeli settlers took over a house in mostly Arab east Al-Quds on Tuesday armed with a court order secured after a protracted legal battle with a Palestinian family, witnesses and police said.
Members of the Al-Kurd family demonstrated in front of the house along with other Arab residents and pro-Palestinian activists as the settlers hurled the family’s belongings out onto the street, a neighbour told AFP.
Al-Quds police spokesman Shmulik Ben Rubi said police sent in to break up the demonstration had arrested one of the activists.
“A group of Jews arrived at the house with a court order, saying that it was their house. They entered, and then dozens of Arabs and left-wing activists began a demonstration outside the house,” Ben Rubi said.
“The order was completely legal and the entrance was completely legal. We have no right to intervene when the order is signed by the court.”
|
|
|
| Back
| Send
this story to Friend | Print
Version |
|
|
|
ISSN 1563-9479 
