Skip to main content

Israel just thumbs its nose at international law

It has been said again and again, until the world confronts Israel it will continue to do as it wants - forget anything humane or decent! - flouting international law in the process.    And if the country is criticised it just shoots the messenger or as recently refuse to admit a UN delegation to the West Bank and Gaza.

The latest travesty and disgrace.....

From Reuters:

"A Palestinian woman held by Israel without charge was deported to the Gaza Strip on Sunday under a deal that ended her 44-day hunger strike.

Hana Shalabi of the Islamic Jihad militant group was put into so-called " administrative detention" on February 16. An Israeli military official said that in return for her release from jail, she had agreed to three years' exile in the Gaza Strip.

A resident of the occupied West Bank, Shalabi went on hunger strike the day she was arrested, in protest at being held without trial. An Israeli official has said she was suspected of involvement in planned Islamic Jihad attacks.

She had been jailed previously by Israel and freed in October as part of a swap for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive in Hamas Islamist-ruled Gaza for more than five years.

Shalabi arrived in Gaza before nightfall in an ambulance, after a tearful farewell with family members who saw her at Gaza's Erez crossing with Israel before she was deported, medics who escorted her said.

Israel says it uses detention without trial to protect intelligence sources in any legal proceedings against a Palestinian suspect."

* * *

Electronic Intifada: On top of banishment to Gaza, Israel uses Twitter to further violate Hana al-Shalabi’s rights:

"Today, Hana al-Shalabi, who spent 43 days on hunger strike to protest her detention without charge or trial by Israel, was banished to the Gaza Strip for three years, under a highly controversial deal that Addameer and Physicians for Human Rights- Israel have said is illegal under international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

In the course of this appalling act, Israeli occupation forces used Twitter to commit an additional breach of international law and Hana al-Shalabi’s rights."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...

Wow!.....some "visitor" to Ferryland in Newfoundland