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Saturday, January 25, 2020
Israeli war crimes rewarded with UN handshakes
Israeli spending on settlement infrastructure has soared as the UN
suppresses publication of a database of companies profiting from the
settlements.
APA images
-24 January 2020The position of the United Nations seems to be: Israeli war crimes are bad, but we’re not going to do anything to stop them and we’re going to undermine meaningful efforts toward accountability.
One example of this is the unprecedented delay of the publication of a UN database of businesses involved in Israeli settlements, whose construction is a war crime under international law.
Human rights groups submitted yet another urgent appeal to UN bodies this week urging action that would ensure publication of the database.
“The release of the UN database is a necessary step in ensuring
compliance, control and accountability for the role of businesses in the
expansion of Israel’s settlement enterprise,” the signatories to the
appeal state.
In 2016, the UN Human Rights Council voted in favor of producing the
database, with a release date of March 2017. But the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights, which is mandated to compile the list,
has repeatedly delayed its publication.
“Several organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have previously expressed concern
that no other mandate given to the [Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights] by the Human Rights Council has been subject to such a prolonged unfounded and unacceptable delay,” the appeal states.
Israel has pledged “to do everything it can to ensure that this list
does not see the light of day,” as Danny Danon, the country’s ambassador
to the UN, said in 2017.
Israel fears publication of the list would harm its economy by prompting
companies to pull out of settlements, deterring others from doing
business and encouraging investors to dump shares.
It could also boost grassroots boycott campaigns by helping publicize the names of corporations complicit in Israeli crimes.
In other words, it would impose a real cost on Israel for flouting
international law, a cost that has so far been borne by Palestinians.
Yet the UN is burying the database even as the International Criminal Court is poised to launch a war crimes investigation over Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.
Settlement spending soars
Meanwhile, Israeli spending on West Bank settlement infrastructure has soared following the election of Donald Trump as US president in late 2016.
Israel has advanced or approved the construction of 22,000 housing units in the West Bank during that period.
The Trump administration has greenlit settlement construction and broken away from previous US policy and international consensus by recognizing Israel’s claims to sovereignty over the Golan Heights – Syrian territory it has occupied since 1967.
Netanyahu vowed this week to unilaterally annex all Israeli settlements in the West Bank if he wins upcoming elections.
His rival, Benny Gantz, pledged to annex the Jordan Valley of the West
Bank in coordination with the international community if he is
victorious at the polls.
Nickolay Mladenov, the UN’s Middle East peace process envoy, stated on
Wednesday that annexation of West Bank land “would deal a devastating
blow to the potential of reviving Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,
advancing regional peace, the essence of the two-state solution.”
A 2016 UN Security Council resolution condemning
Israeli settlements requires Mladenov to give quarterly updates on the
implementation of the resolution’s provisions.
Those updates, as observed by Palestinian human rights groups, have “starkly noted the absence of action taken by the international community.”
But also starkly absent is any specific recommendation towards
accountability in Mladenov’s updates, including calls for publication of
the UN database. His approach has been to view Palestinian rights not
as something be protected, but as subject to negotiation with Israel.
Handshakes with war criminals
One might accuse the UN envoy of sitting on his hands, but that wouldn’t
be fair, as they have been busy clasping those of Israeli defense
minister Naftali Bennett.
Good discussion today with #Israel’s Defence Minister @Naftali_Bennett focusing on regional tensions in the #MiddleEast and focusing on the need to prevent an escalation in #Gaza.
Bennett has recently promoted plans to build new settlements in the so-called H2 area of Hebron, the occupied West Bank city whose heart has been purged of its Palestinian population for the benefit of Israeli colonizers.
Bennett, who is seeking reelection to Israel’s parliament, recently announced the opening of “nature reserves” on West Bank land confiscated from Palestinians.
Declaring Palestinian property as nature reserves is an old Israeli ruse before eventually using the land for Jewish-only settlements.
Mladenov has also been busy shaking hands with Kamil Abu Rukun, the head of COGAT, the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation that openly declares collective punishment measures on Gaza’s two million Palestinians.
Today, COGAT MG Kamil Abu Rukun met with UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov. They discussed recent developments, the latest rocket fire from Gaza and potential consequences, as well as means to achieve stability in the region. @nmladenov
Dozens of Palestinians have died because they have been barred by COGAT from leaving Gaza for lifesaving medical care.
Last week Abu Rukun also enjoyed the warm embrace of Mladenov’s
colleague Ursula Mueller, the UN assistant secretary-general for
humanitarian affairs and emergency relief.
Unheeded warnings from the UN that Israel’s siege would make Gaza “unlivable” have been realized.
Yet Mueller praised Israel
as “an important contributor” to global disaster management during a
Tel Aviv conference, despite it engineering a humanitarian disaster in
Gaza.
Mueller also “expressed appreciation” to
the Israeli foreign ministry “for close collaboration and enhanced
relations with OCHA,” the UN humanitarian affairs coordination body that
she oversees – and which is charged with mitigating the devastating
harm deliberately caused by Israel’s siege.
If this is the treatment that Israel receives from UN officials – despite bombing the world body’s facilities in Gaza and killing its students and staff – why would it change its behavior?
As one observer recently remarked, Israel’s behavior gets worse only because it can.
