Who are the fools that reward Israel's criminal behaviour?

Stuart Littlewood

Members of the European Parliament recently took a critical view of proposals to upgrade the EU-Israel Association Agreement and put down amendments designed to toughen up the conditions. "It's time for the Israeli Government to stop considering itself above the law and start respecting it,” warned Luisa Morgantini, the Parliament’s vice-president.

As a result the vote was postponed – “a political stunt”, said the frustrated Israel lobby. In the meantime all 27 EU ministers voted unanimously to approve the upgrade. However it is not a done deal just yet. The EU Parliament still has to vote on this.

Most citizens, myself included, are baffled by the way the EU operates. One thing is certain: it has little to do with democracy. I seem to remember that when they voted in 2002 to suspend the EU-Israel Agreement on account of Israel’s continual violation of human rights, they were ignored by the Commission and Council of Ministers... that’s western democracy for you.

Meet Israel’s European Friends

Why would anyone in Europe think it a good idea to reward Israel’s disregard for international law and common decency? One of the MEPs in my region in England, a Conservative Friend of Israel, explained his position:

"...I have been closely following recent developments in the Middle East... I believe there is significant benefit in closer economic and commercial ties between the EU and the only functioning and embedded democracy in the Middle East. I have great sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians… but, in my view, the State of Israel has been placed in an impossible position by the continuation of terrorist attacks mounted from Gaza. The motive behind the Israeli restrictions was a refusal to tolerate unending and increasing attacks from Hamas and other terrorist groups... I wish to see a two-state solution with an essentially Jewish state of Israel at peace with an essentially Palestinian neighbour, which is free from thuggery and terrorism, and where democracy and social and economic well-being can flourish..."

Another, also Conservative, wrote in similar vein:

"I am familiar with the situation in Israel and the occupied territories as well as the suffering of many innocent Palestinian caught up in the maelstrom of the terrorist actions of Hamas and the Israeli counter attacks… The Conservatives are opposed to any new settlement building in the occupied territories yet I support an enhanced agreement with Israel, because Israel, as a democratic government is very similar to Britain. They hold free and fair elections, have a free press, healthy and lively public debate, an independent judiciary and uphold the rule of law. Because of these values Israel finds itself at the front line fighting the existential threat of Islamist terrorism."

Note the way the situation is redefined to make Israel smell good… Hamas the terrorist, Israel only responding… Israel imposing “restrictions” when truthfully it’s a full-blown blockade all the way down to shelling Gazan fishing boats… wishing to see a Palestinian neighbour “free from thuggery” – that’s funny coming from people who admire and support an apartheid state, the plain-language description of Israel by the president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, and many, many others.

Yet another Conservative MEP the other side of the country sent out the same distorted framing of the situation, which we can assume is ‘standard issue’ in the Conservative Party. He too was "very familiar with the situation in Israel and the occupied territories", adding that the security fence had “considerably reduced the ability of suicide bombers to cross over and kill innocent Israeli civilians who are still subject to Hamas rockets launched from Gaza”.

It angers me that these MEPs claim to know everything but actually know only the nonsense they are spoonfed. Israel is no liberal western-style democracy, it is an ethnocracy with a racist agenda. I am deeply offended to be told by such ignorant people that we in Britain share its values. And when I recently asked a newspaperman in Jerusalem if the Israeli press was free he laughed in my face. Most of the time Israel bars journalists, and even medics, from entering Gaza to witness and report.

Upholding the rule of law? Maybe for Jews. Some 9,000 Palestinians including women and children, abducted from their homes, are banged up in Israeli prisons, many without charge or trial. There are several reports, even by Israeli organisations such B'Tselem, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and the Centre for the Defence of the Individual, drawing attention to Israel’s torture and medical neglect of prisoners and detainees.

When the Palestinians exercised their democratic right in free and fair elections in 2006, Israel and Western leaders rejected their choice and resolved to destroy the embryonic democracy and bring Palestinian civil society to its knees in an orgy of vicious collective punishment. As for the Hamas government now confined to Gaza, does it not have a perfect right under international law to take up arms (the same right the Israeli government pretends is exclusively theirs) to defend its people against the brutal oppression of an illegal invader and occupier?

As for terrorists, anyone who has been to the Holy Land knows who they are.

How come the EU finds it so difficult to uphold justice in the Middle East? Meet the European Friends of Israel (EFI). And what does the EFI do? Its purpose includes....

• expanding and reinforcing European support of Israel.

• providing decision-makers and those who influence public opinion with propaganda lies about the Middle East.

...and, evidently, there are enough gullible fools to swell EFI’s ranks.

At the core of EFI’s work, says the website, is a belief that Israel deserves better recognition of the cultural and democratic bonds that it shares with the EU and greater EU support. EFI’s objective is to “improve and help foster an environment in which Israel’s commercial interests are enhanced. Our aim is to increase the number of Europeans who share this belief and encourage them to take individual political action."

In signing up to support such a lawless foreign power how can our politicians possibly conform to the Principles of Public Life, in particular the principle of Integrity, which lays down that holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties?

And have they bothered to read and understand the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which they are pledged to observe and promote?

EFI, as you might expect, is economical with the truth. It says that Israel didn't really want to build the Wall and resisted doing so for more than 35 years, but “was forced to act…. It is important to stress as repeatedly mentioned by Israeli Officials that the fence is not political, and is not a border.”

On the contrary, the Wall has been instrumental in Israel’s seizure of more than 38% of the West Bank, including prime agricultural land and strategic water resources. These areas are now off-limits to Palestinians. 80% of the West Bank's precious water is diverted to illegal settlers while Palestinians are strictly rationed or go without. If simply a security fence why wasn’t it built within Israel’s recognised border?

Is an Israeli life more precious than a Palestinian life?

Another EFI gem was this statement after 27 months of siege: "Faced with unremitting rocket attacks from Gaza (4,000 rocket and mortar attacks on its civilians since the Jewish state dismantled every settlement and removed every settler from Gaza in 2005) the government of Israel has shown great restraint as it takes action to defend its citizens, the right and the prime obligation of any nation."

We hear the non-stop mantra about home-made rockets "raining down" on Sderot (although only 1 in 500 causes a fatality) but nothing of the countless thousands of Israeli bombs, missiles, grenades and tank shells that are blasted into Gaza's tight-packed humanity. And nothing about how Israel still occupies Gaza’s airspace and coastal waters and all the Strip’s entries and exits.

EFI urges the freeing of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and "wants to keep awakening the conscience of the world, to display to Gilad’s family that Europe has not abandoned their son". But it shows no such concern for the 6,500 children arrested by the IDF in the last 8 years, usually after bursting into their homes between midnight and 4am, and the use of handcuffs, blindfolds and leg shackles on these youngsters. They are held for up to 90 days, incommunicado and without access to a lawyer.

Nor do they urge the freeing of the 30-odd Palestinian MPs and legislators kidnapped and still under 'administrative detention'.

So where is the balance expected of our EU legislators and decision-makers? Sad though it is, the Shalit story needs to be seen in context. To Palestinians this is just another trained killer in Israel’s occupation force. How many women and children had his tank blown to smithereens? How many homes had it reduced to rubble? How much infrastructure, probably paid for by European taxpayers, had it wrecked?

Why aren’t the same powerful voices speaking up for the sons of Palestinians snatched from their homes and locked up in Israeli jails? In the Holy Land struggle 8 Palestinians die for every Israeli. When it comes to children the kill-rate is 11 to 1. Is an Israeli life deemed more precious that a Palestinian life?

I am greatly encouraged by the news that a group of human rights lawyers has now filed charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court against Israel and its leaders - Olmert, Barak, Vilnai, Dichter and Ashkenazi. Their bloodstained hands have no doubt been eagerly clasped by their many ‘friends’ in Brussels.

Oh, come all ye faithful… Let’s crush Gaza, starve their little ones

"...If our thoughts are not with the children of Gaza – Muslim and Christian alike - at this season of goodwill, they ought to be. I’m told that many people packed into the ravaged Strip are having to scavenge through rubbish tips for food to survive. What sort of Christmas is in store for their little ones while the criminals who inflict on them such unspeakable hardship and torment, and who deny them their human rights, have their snouts in the Yuletide trough and enjoy a warm bed?..."



Stuart Littlewood

Who is holding the governments of Britain, the EU and the US to account this Christmas for aiding and abetting the deliberate starving of 1.5 million in Gaza?

Hardly anybody. Most of those in a position to do so are Friends of Israel.

What of our foreign secretary, David Miliband, our very Christian prime minister Brown and our even more pious peace envoy Mr Blair…. have they done anything at all to insist that Israel’s blockade is ended?

The ‘Zionist Tendency’ in Whitehall still goes unchallenged.

Please tell us Messrs Brown, Miliband and Blair: isn’t the Fourth Geneva Convention supposed to protect civilians under military occupation…. no violence to life or person, no cruelty, no torture; no taking of hostages; no outrages upon personal dignity; no collective punishment, no sentencing or executions unless ordered by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees demanded by civilised peoples…all that sort of thing?

And doesn’t Article 33 say that no protected person may be punished for an offence he or she did not personally commit? Aren’t collective penalties, intimidation and terrorism prohibited? Likewise reprisals against protected persons and their property?

Am I right in thinking that collective punishment is actually a war crime? In World War 2 the Nazis practised collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages, towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there. Isn't this what the Israelis and their Western collaborators are doing to Gaza?

The Israeli regime doesn’t seem to have heard of the Geneva Conventions - although it has been instructed to observe them in various UN resolutions - nor even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps it needs educating.

We have seen the remnants of Palestine become so fractured and shredded by the Occupation that they cannot possibly be drawn together to form a cohesive, viable, independent state. Why international leaders cling to the idea of a two-state solution is therefore a mystery... unless they plan to make the Palestinian state a permanently impoverished dumping ground for dispossessed Arabs, which will remain forever crippled, subservient, totally under Israeli control and unable to prosper.

Unfortunately Gaza, with its freely elected government of resistance, is an obstacle to the plan for total Israeli domination and needs to be crushed.

The way to bring the Gazan population to its knees is to blast them with high-tech weaponry, wreck their infrastructure, trash their economy, threaten re-invasion, impose a starvation siege, and stunt the growth of their kiddies… It’s a price worth paying, as one-time US secretary of state Madeleine Albright might have remarked, to eliminate those Hamas guys, huh?

By the way, when did Hamas do us any harm?

Prime Minister Brown’s thoughts right now are with the Jewish community, wishing them a happy Chanuka from Number10.gov.uk and recalling how he celebrated with them Israel’s 60th birthday, the flip-side of which is the 60th remembrance of El-Nakba, “the Catastrophe”, in which nearly a million Palestinians were driven from their homes and lands by Israeli terrorists.

Of course Brown has no festive greeting for the Gazans. And no word of cheer, either, for the Christian communities in Gaza and the West Bank endlessly persecuted by his Israeli friends.

If our thoughts are not with the children of Gaza – Muslim and Christian alike - at this season of goodwill, they ought to be. I’m told that many people packed into the ravaged Strip are having to scavenge through rubbish tips for food to survive. What sort of Christmas is in store for their little ones while the criminals who inflict on them such unspeakable hardship and torment, and who deny them their human rights, have their snouts in the Yuletide trough and enjoy a warm bed?

Decent men would not let this happen. I say to friends in the West Bank and Gaza: "We have not forgotten you, but we despair of our worthless leaders."

If Gaza falls...

"...How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children – more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next..."



Sara Roy

Israel’s siege of Gaza began on 5 November, the day after an Israeli attack inside the strip, no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June. Although both sides had violated the agreement before, this incursion was on a different scale. Hamas responded by firing rockets into Israel and the violence has not abated since then. Israel’s siege has two fundamental goals. One is to ensure that the Palestinians there are seen merely as a humanitarian problem, beggars who have no political identity and therefore can have no political claims. The second is to foist Gaza onto Egypt. That is why the Israelis tolerate the hundreds of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt around which an informal but increasingly regulated commercial sector has begun to form. The overwhelming majority of Gazans are impoverished and officially 49.1 per cent are unemployed. In fact the prospect of steady employment is rapidly disappearing for the majority of the population.

On 5 November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even teacups are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all. According to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza in November. This means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered the strip compared to an average of 123 in October this year and 564 in December 2005. The two main food providers in Gaza are the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP). UNRWA alone feeds approximately 750,000 people in Gaza, and requires 15 trucks of food daily to do so. Between 5 November and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived, around 6 per cent of the total needed; during the week of 30 November it received 12 trucks, or 11 per cent of what was required. There were three days in November when UNRWA ran out of food, with the result that on each of these days 20,000 people were unable to receive their scheduled supply. According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December UNRWA suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes because of the blockade.

The WFP has had similar problems, sending only 35 trucks out of the 190 it had scheduled to cover Gazans’ needs until the start of February (six more were allowed in between 30 November and 6 December). Not only that: the WFP has to pay to store food that isn’t being sent to Gaza. This cost $215,000 in November alone. If the siege continues, the WFP will have to pay an extra $150,000 for storage in December, money that will be used not to support Palestinians but to benefit Israeli business.

The majority of commercial bakeries in Gaza – 30 out of 47 – have had to close because they have run out of cooking gas. People are using any fuel they can find to cook with. As the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has made clear, cooking-gas canisters are necessary for generating the warmth to incubate broiler chicks. Shortages of gas and animal feed have forced commercial producers to smother hundreds of thousands of chicks. By April, according to the FAO, there will be no poultry there at all: 70 per cent of Gazans rely on chicken as a major source of protein.

Banks, suffering from Israeli restrictions on the transfer of banknotes into the territory were forced to close on 4 December. A sign on the door of one read: ‘Due to the decision of the Palestinian Finance Authority, the bank will be closed today Thursday, 4.12.2008, because of the unavailability of cash money, and the bank will be reopened once the cash money is available.’

The World Bank has warned that Gaza’s banking system could collapse if these restrictions continue. All cash for work programmes has been stopped and on 19 November UNRWA suspended its cash assistance programme to the most needy. It also ceased production of textbooks because there is no paper, ink or glue in Gaza. This will affect 200,000 students returning to school in the new year. On 11 December, the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, sent $25 million following an appeal from the Palestinian prime minister, Salaam Fayad, the first infusion of its kind since October. It won’t even cover a month’s salary for Gaza’s 77,000 civil servants.

On 13 November production at Gaza’s only power station was suspended and the turbines shut down because it had run out of industrial diesel. This in turn caused the two turbine batteries to run down, and they failed to start up again when fuel was received some ten days later. About a hundred spare parts ordered for the turbines have been sitting in the port of Ashdod in Israel for the last eight months, waiting for the Israeli authorities to let them through customs. Now Israel has started to auction these parts because they have been in customs for more than 45 days. The proceeds are being held in Israeli accounts.

During the week of 30 November, 394,000 litres of industrial diesel were allowed in for the power plant: approximately 18 per cent of the weekly minimum that Israel is legally obliged to allow in. It was enough for one turbine to run for two days before the plant was shut down again. The Gaza Electricity Distribution Company said that most of the Gaza Strip will be without electricity for between four and 12 hours a day. At any given time during these outages, over 65,000 people have no electricity.

No other diesel fuel (for standby generators and transport) was delivered during that week, no petrol (which has been kept out since early November) or cooking gas. Gaza’s hospitals are apparently relying on diesel and gas smuggled from Egypt via the tunnels; these supplies are said to be administered and taxed by Hamas. Even so, two of Gaza’s hospitals have been out of cooking gas since the week of 23 November.

Adding to the problems caused by the siege are those created by the political divisions between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas Authority in Gaza. For example, Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU), which is not controlled by Hamas, is supposed to receive funds from the World Bank via the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) in Ramallah to pay for fuel to run the pumps for Gaza’s sewage system. Since June, the PWA has refused to hand over those funds, perhaps because it feels that a functioning sewage system would benefit Hamas. I don’t know whether the World Bank has attempted to intervene, but meanwhile UNRWA is providing the fuel, although they have no budget for it. The CMWU has also asked Israel’s permission to import 200 tons of chlorine, but by the end of November it had received only 18 tons – enough for one week of chlorinated water. By mid-December Gaza City and the north of Gaza had access to water only six hours every three days.

According to the World Health Organisation, the political divisions between Gaza and the West Bank are also having a serious impact on drug stocks in Gaza. The West Bank Ministry of Health (MOH) is responsible for procuring and delivering most of the pharmaceuticals and medical disposables used in Gaza. But stocks are at dangerously low levels. Throughout November the MOH West Bank was turning shipments away because it had no warehouse space, yet it wasn’t sending supplies on to Gaza in adequate quantities. During the week of 30 November, one truck carrying drugs and medical supplies from the MOH in Ramallah entered Gaza, the first delivery since early September.

The breakdown of an entire society is happening in front of us, but there is little international response beyond UN warnings which are ignored. The European Union announced recently that it wanted to strengthen its relationship with Israel while the Israeli leadership openly calls for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip and continues its economic stranglehold over the territory with, it appears, the not-so-tacit support of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – which has been co-operating with Israel on a number of measures. On 19 December Hamas officially ended its truce with Israel, which Israel said it wanted to renew, because of Israel’s failure to ease the blockade.

How can keeping food and medicine from the people of Gaza protect the people of Israel? How can the impoverishment and suffering of Gaza’s children – more than 50 per cent of the population – benefit anyone? International law as well as human decency demands their protection. If Gaza falls, the West Bank will be next.

Sara Roy teaches at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and is the author of Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.

U.S. Vetoes of U.N. Resolutions on Behalf of Israel

Donald Neff

On March 17, 1970, the United States cast its first veto in the United Nations Security Council during the presidency of Richard Nixon, when Henry Kissinger was the national security adviser. It was a historic moment, since up to that time Washington had been able to score heavy propaganda points because of the Soviet Union’s profligate use of its veto. The first U.S. veto in history was a gesture of support for Britain, which was under Security Council pressure to end the white minority government in southern Rhodesia.

Two years later, however, on Sept. 10, 1972, the United States employed its veto for the second time—to shield Israel. That veto, as it turned out, signalled the start of a cynical policy to use the U.S. veto repeatedly to shield Israel from international criticism, censure and sanctions.

Washington used its veto 32 times to shield Israel from critical draft resolutions between 1972 and 1997. This constituted nearly half of the total of 69 U.S. vetoes cast since the founding of the U.N. The Soviet Union cast 115 vetoes during the same period.

The initial 1972 veto to protect Israel was cast by George Bush [Sr.] in his capacity as U.S. ambassador to the world body. Ironically, it was Bush as president who temporarily stopped the use of the veto to shield Israel 18 years later. The last such veto was cast on May 31, 1990, it was thought, killing a resolution approved by all 14 other council members to send a U.N. mission to study Israeli abuses of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Then President Bill Clinton came along and cast three more.

The rationale for casting the first veto to protect Israel was explained by Bush at the time as a new policy to combat terrorists. The draft resolution had condemned Israel’s heavy air attacks against Lebanon and Syria, starting Sept. 6, the day after 11 Israeli athletes were killed at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games in an abortive Palestinian attempt to seize them as hostages to trade for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Between 200 and 500 Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the Israeli raids.

Nonetheless, Bush complained that the resolution had failed to condemn terrorist attacks against Israel, adding: “We are implementing a new policy that is much broader than that of the question of Israel and the Jews. What is involved is the problem of terrorism, a matter that goes right to the heart of our civilized life.”

Unfortunately, this “policy” proved to be only a rationale for protecting Israel from censure for violating a broad range of international laws. This became very clear when the next U.S. veto was cast a year later, on July 26, 1973. It had nothing to do with terrorism. The draft resolution affirmed the rights of the Palestinians and established provisions for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories as embodied in previous General Assembly resolutions. Nonetheless, Washington killed this international effort to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.

Washington used the veto four more times in 1975-76 while Henry Kissinger was secretary of state. One of these vetoes arguably may have involved terrorism, since the draft condemned Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians in response to attacks on Israel. But the three other vetoes had nothing at all to do with terrorism.

One, in fact, struck down a draft resolution that reflected U.S. policy against Israel’s alteration of the status of Jerusalem and establishment of Jewish settlements in occupied territory. Only two days earlier, U.S. Ambassador William W. Scranton had given a speech in the United Nations calling Israeli settlements illegal and rejecting Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Yet on March 25, 1976, the U.S. vetoed a resolution reflecting Scranton’s positions which had been passed unanimously by the other 14 members of the council.

The two other vetoes during Kissinger’s reign also were cast in 1976. One, on Jan. 26, killed a draft resolution calling for recognition of the right of self-determination for Palestinians. The other, on June 29, called for affirmation of the “inalienable rights” of the Palestinians.

The Carter administration cast only one veto. But it had nothing to do with terrorism. It came on April 30, 1980, killing a draft that endorsed self-determination for the Palestinian people.

The all-time abuser of the veto was the administration of Ronald Reagan, the most pro-Israel presidency in U.S. history, with the most pro-Israel secretary of state, George Shultz, since Kissinger. The Reagan team cynically invoked the veto 18 times to protect Israel. A record six of these vetoes were cast in 1982 alone. Nine of the Reagan vetoes resulted directly from Security Council attempts to condemn Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and Israel’s refusal to surrender the territory in southern Lebanon which it still occupies today. The other nine vetoes shielded Israel from council criticism for such illicit acts as the Feb. 4, 1986, skyjacking of a Libyan plane.

Israeli warplanes forced the executive jet to land in Israel, allegedly in an effort to capture Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. He was not aboard and, after interrogation, the passengers were allowed to leave. The U.S. delegate explained that this act of piracy was excusable “because we believe that the ability to take such action in carefully defined and limited circumstances is an aspect of the inherent right of self-defense recognized in the U.N. Charter.”

Other vetoes employed on Israel’s exclusive behalf included the Jan. 20, 1982 killing of a demand that Israel withdraw from the Golan Heights it had occupied in 1967; the April 20, 1982 condemnation of an Israeli soldier who shot 11 Muslim worshippers at the Haram Al-Sharif in the Old City of Jerusalem; the Feb. 1, 1988 call for Israel to stop violating Palestinian human rights in the occupied territories, abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and formalize a leading role for the United Nations in future peace negotiations; the April 15, 1988 resolution requesting that Israel permit the return of expelled Palestinians, condemning Israel’s shooting of civilians, calling on Israel to uphold the Fourth Geneva Convention and calling for a peace settlement under U.N. auspices.

The Bush [Sr.] administration used the veto four times to protect Israel: on Feb, 1989, to kill a draft strongly deploring Israel’s repression of the Palestinian uprising and calling on Israel to respect the human rights of the Palestinians; on June 9, 1989, deploring Israel’s violation of the human rights of the Palestinians; on Nov. 7, 1989, demanding Israel return property confiscated from Palestinians during a tax protest and calling on Israel to allow a fact-finding mission to observe Israel’s suppression tactics against the Palestinian uprising; and, finally, on May 31, 1990, calling for a fact-finding mission on abuses against Palestinians in Israeli-occupied lands.

The May 31, 1990 veto was the last, presumably, as the result of a secret understanding, if not an official agreement, with Russia and the three other Security Council members with veto power. By then it had become obvious that the council could not be effective in a post-Cold War world if Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States recklessly invoked their vetoes.

Moreover, the international alliances sought by Washington to repel Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990 made it necessary for the Bush administration to retain unity in the Security Council. As a result, instead of abstaining on or vetoing resolutions critical of Israel, as it did in 1989 and the first half of 1990, the Bush administration abruptly joined other members in late 1990, 1991 and 1992 in passing six resolutions deploring or strongly condemning Israel’s conduct against the Palestinians.

These resolutions brought the total passed by the council against Israel since its birth to 68. If the United States had not invoked its veto, the record against Israel would total 100 resolutions condemning or otherwise criticizing its behavior or supporting the rights of Palestinians.

The agreement on vetoes held until March, 1995, when President Clinton invoked the veto after all 14 other members approved a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Israel to rescind a decision to expropriate 130 acres of land in Arab East Jerusalem. The Clinton administration exercised two more vetoes in 1997, both of them on resolutions otherwise unanimously supported by the 14 other Security Council members. The draft resolution was critical of Israel’s plans to establish a new settlement at Har Homa' Jabal Abu Ghneim in East Jerusalem in the midst of Palestinian housing.

The three Clinton vetoes brought to 32 the number Washington has cast to protect Israel.

Donald Neff has been a journalist for forty years. He spent 16 years in service for Time Magazine and is a regular contributor to Middle East International and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. He has written five excellent books on the Middle East.

Israeli Prison Bans Visits to Palestinian Prisoners

The families of Palestinian prisoners revealed that the management of the Israeli Ofer Prison has decided to deny them visitation rights. The decision was made following the weekend clashes that raged in the prison, resulting in the injury of 16 inmates.

The Israel Prison Service (IPS) stated Tuesday that visitation rights were revoked from inmates involved in the rioting and attacking of prison guards, while uninvolved inmates would be allowed to continue receiving visitors.

The inmates stressed the riots were provoked by the guards, who beat one of them during a routine search. The prisoner's friends then resisted the search, and the clash ensued.

The father of one of the prison's inmates, a resident of Ramallah, told Ynet that Red Cross officials had telephoned a number of families registered to visit and told them that the prison's management had decided to cancel the appointments.

He said his son had informed him that a number of inmates were seriously injured, and that some of them had suffered head injuries. He said the IPS had canceled visitation rights to prevent the public exposure of the injuries.

The father added that a number of families were planning to demand that an attorney visit their loved ones in order to determine the status of their health.

Israel ready to complete apartheid wall.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Tel Aviv must complete its apartheid wall by 2010 amid rising global condemnation.

Palestinians condemn the 790-km-long West Bank separation wall as a major obstacle blocking any peace deal with the Israeli regime.

The apartheid wall cuts off large chunks of the West Bank, including key eastern parts of the holy city where Palestinians want a capital for future statehood.

"Over the years, the security fence has gone from the project that set the international community against us to a project that constitutes an example of how to defend against terrorism," Olmert said.

Israel occupied the eastern part of al-Quds in the 1967 Six-Day War. It calls the entire city its capital, a claim not recognized internationally. In 2004, the World Court declared the apartheid wall illegal since it is being built inside the occupied West Bank, but Israel has pressed ahead with its construction.