UN hearings to be held on Gaza war crimes
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC News
June 5, 2009 - 12:00am

A UN team investigating possible war crimes in Gaza says it will hold public hearings with victims of the conflict in Gaza and Geneva later this month. The team has spent the week interviewing witnesses and visiting sites damaged in Israel's three-week offensive, which ended on 18 January. Richard Goldstone, who is heading the team, said it had hoped to hold hearings in Israel and the West Bank. But Israel has refused to co-operate in the inquiry, accusing it of bias.

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Prosecutor: Gaza Probe Goes on Without Israeli OK
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
May 20, 2009 - 12:00am

Former international prosecutor Richard Goldstone said Wednesday he will go ahead with his U.N. investigation into possible war crimes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Gaza even though Israel has withheld its approval. Goldstone said the U.N. investigators would enter Gaza through Egypt if necessary, but they had wanted to visit Israel first to assess what happened there.

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Haaretz reporter Amira Hass arrested upon leaving Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
May 12, 2009 - 12:00am

Israel Police on Tuesday detained Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass upon her exit from the Gaza Strip, where she had been living and reporting over the last few months. Hass was arrested and taken in for questioning immediately after crossing the border, for violating a law which forbids residence in an enemy state. She was released on bail after promising not to enter the Gaza Strip over the next 30 days.

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Michael Oren, Ambassador, or, this is how the occupation ends
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Opinion) May 11, 2009 - 12:00am

I was reading an Etgar Keret book of gently hallucinatory short stories when I got the news. It fit right in. The Foreign Minister, who was now Avigdor Lieberman - himself nothing if not an Etgar Keret invention - had approved the choice of Michael Oren as Israel's next ambassador to Washington.

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Israel has become its own worst enemy
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
(Editorial) May 7, 2009 - 12:00am

The UN Security Council was handed a report on Tuesday by the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon about Israel’s campaign in Gaza and its targeting of UN facilities earlier this year. The report’s conclusions are damning: Israel’s actions “breached the inviolability of United Nations premises” and amounted in many cases to “recklessness”. As usual, Israel retorted that the report was patently biased. In this matter, Israel is right: there are no two sides to the truth, and as UN investigators found out, the blame for disproportionate and thoughtless violence lies squarely with Israel.

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Gaza: Why probe is neccessary
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
(Editorial) May 7, 2009 - 12:00am

The world has looked on aghast as the Israelis have sowed a deadly harvest of cluster bombs in south Lebanon and bombarded the helpless penned-in citizens of the Gaza ghetto with rockets and heavy ordnance including deadly white phosphorus shells. Had the Serbs or the Iranians launched such attacks, Washington would have howled with rage. But for too long successive American administrations have stayed hypocritically silent while their Israeli ally has flouted the rules of war and common humanity and behaved like a terror state.

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Where Will Israel Respond?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Dar Al-Hayat
by Hassan Haidar - (Opinion) May 7, 2009 - 12:00am

Every time it finds itself cornered, Israel resorts to a balance-shattering violence that deflects attention away from the main problem at hand by depicting it as less important than reaching a ceasefire for example or ending the torture of civilians or the destruction of their economy - as has repeatedly happened with Lebanon and the Palestinians.

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UN will seek damages from Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The National
by James Reinl - May 6, 2009 - 12:00am

In the wake of a UN report that blasts Israel for damaging UN buildings and killing staff during its three-week invasion of Gaza, the secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, said yesterday he will seek reparations. Speaking with journalists following the publication of a report by the UN’s Board of Inquiry, Mr Ban held back from criticising Israel, but said the world body was seeking cash compensation for damage sustained.

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U.N. Inquiry Finds Israel Purposely Fired on School in Gaza
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Washington Post
by Colum Lynch - May 5, 2009 - 12:00am

A United Nations inquiry into the Gaza conflict earlier this year concluded that Israel intentionally struck a U.N.-run elementary school, killing three young men seeking shelter from the fighting, according to a summary released Tuesday. The incident was one of eight in which the Israel Defense Forces fired on U.N. personnel or facilities that drew scrutiny from a three-member U.N. board of inquiry. The board found that Israel had repeatedly breached the inviolability of U.N.

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UN experts discuss Gaza mission
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from BBC World News
by Imogen Foulkes - May 4, 2009 - 12:00am

UN investigators are beginning a week-long meeting in Geneva, ahead of a mission to Israel and the Gaza Strip. The team is mandated to investigate possible war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during Israel's incursion into Gaza last December and January. But it remains unclear whether Israel will grant the investigators access to the former conflict zone. The team, which is led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, was appointed by the UN's Human Rights Council. Other team members include a military specialist and a human rights lawyer. 'Impartial'

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