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Blair Peterson

UN human rights chief criticises security council over global conflicts | World news | ... - 0 views

  • “These crises hammer home the full cost of the international community’s failure to prevent conflict,” Pillay said. “None of these crises erupted without warning.”
  • Pillay said Syria’s conflict “is metastasing outwards in an uncontrollable process whose eventual limits we cannot predict”. She also cited conflicts in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza.
  • The resolution acknowledged that the United Nations has not always used the tools in its charter for preventing conflict. It prescribed several steps for improvement, focusing on addressing human rights violations earlier and recognizing that such abuses are often warning signs of looming conflicts.
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    • Blair Peterson
       
      What are the tools in the charter that can be used to prevent conflicts? Why have they decided to not use them in the past?
  • The resolution said little about the political differences that often paralyze the security council, where sharp divisions between veto-holding members Russia and the United States have often thwarted action on Syria and Ukraine.
  • “Short-term geopolitical considerations and national interest, narrowly defined, have repeatedly taken precedence over intolerable human suffering and grave breaches of and long-term threats to international peace and security,”
  • The human rights chief said the use of veto power on the security council “to stop action intended to prevent or defuse conflict is a short-term and ultimately counter-productive tactic”.
  • And she suggested building on the Arms Trade Treaty by requiring that, in countries where there are human rights concerns, governments accept a small human rights monitoring team as a condition of purchasing weapons.
Blair Peterson

Crisis Guide: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - 7 views

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    An in-depth, multimedia look at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its geopolitical repercussions.
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    An in-depth, multimedia look at the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its geopolitical repercussions.
Blair Peterson

9 questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict you were too embarrassed to ask - Vox - 1 views

  • On the surface at least, it's very simple: the conflict is over who gets what land and how it is controlled. In execution, though, that gets into a lot of really thorny issues, like: Where are the borders? Can Palestinian refugees return to their former homes in present-day Israel?
  • Israeli forces have occupied and controlled the West Bank ever since. It withdrew its occupying troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintains a full blockade of the territory, which has turned Gaza into what human rights organizations sometimes call an "open-air prison" and has pushed the unemployment rate up to 40 percent.
  • Settlers are Israelis who move into the West Bank.
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  • Others move deep into the West Bank to claim land for Jews, out of religious fervor and/or a desire to see more or all of the West Bank absorbed into Israel. While Israel officially forbids this and often evicts these settlers, many are still able to take root.
  • The simple version is that violence has become the status quo and that trying for peace is risky, so leaders on both ends seem to believe that managing the violence is preferable, while the Israeli and Palestinian publics show less and less interest in pressuring their leaders to take risks for peace.
  • That sense of Palestinian hopelessness and distrust in Israel and the peace process has been a major contributor to violence in recent years.
  • "We don't have a partner for peace."
  • 9 questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict you were too embarrassed to ask
Blair Peterson

Israel Kills 3 Top Hamas Leaders as Latest Fighting Turns Its Way - NYTimes.com - 7 views

  • But the latest round of fighting appears to have given Israel the upper hand in a conflict that has already outlasted all expectations and is increasingly becoming a war of attrition.
  • Israel’s advantage has never looked more lopsided. In contrast to the earlier phase of the war, Israel this week deployed its extensive intelligence capabilities and overwhelming firepower in targeted bombings with limited civilian casualties less likely to raise the world’s ire.
  • “There’s a longstanding conventional wisdom that Israel doesn’t do well in wars of attrition,” said Michael B. Oren, an Israeli historian and a former ambassador to the United States. “That overlooks a broader historical view that Israel’s entire existence has been a war of attrition, and we’ve won that war.”
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  • Even more significant would be the death of Mohammed Deif, the shadowy figure who has survived several previous Israeli assassination attempts with severe injuries and was the target of Tuesday night’s attack. Mr. Deif’s fate remained unknown Thursday, though the body of his 3-year-old daughter, Sara, was recovered from the rubble of the Gaza City home where five one-ton bombs also killed Mr. Deif’s wife, baby son and at least three others.
  • Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli chief of military intelligence, called the killing of Mr. Deif’s three deputies “a very important operational achievement” and said that if Mr. Deif also turns up dead, “this will badly hurt Hamas’s military wing.”
  • “We’re now going to a war of attrition that was a threat of Hamas. Israel basically turned it upside down and said, ‘You want attrition? You are welcome. You lost your strategic military tools against Israel. Our firepower and our intelligence and our capability to sustain more days is much bigger than yours.’ This is the strategy.
  • The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 60 people since the collapse on Tuesday of cease-fire negotiations in Cairo and the resumption of violence after nearly nine days of quiet, bringing the Palestinian death toll in the operation that began July 8 close to 2,100.
  • As the conflict grinds on, Israelis see time as on their side. Experts estimate that Hamas began the summer with a stockpile of about 10,000 rockets. It has fired nearly 4,000, according to the Israeli military, which says it has taken out at least 3,000 more. So it cannot keep launching at this pace for long.
  • With Israel and the Palestinians apparently still far apart on terms for a durable truce, analysts suggested settling in for days or even weeks more of cross-border air exchanges, after what is already the longest Israeli military operation in decades. Diplomatic pressure appeared to be easing, if only because the world’s attention seems focused on other crises including the rise of Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria, the Ebola outbreak in Africa and civil unrest in Ferguson, Mo.
    • Blair Peterson
       
      Look at how other events around the world impact this major conflict.
  • Israel has much vaster resources, though its politicians and people are increasingly fractured over the prosecution of the campaign. There are growing calls for a more aggressive ground invasion, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted, and intense opposition to the idea of making concessions in a cease-fire agreement that might seem to reward Hamas.
    • Blair Peterson
       
      The right wing position.
  • In Gaza, time is a liability. The number of displaced residents seeking shelter in United Nations schools swelled to nearly 300,000 as the violence resumed; officials have already given up any hope of classes starting Sunday as planned.
  • “Israel can play that game for a long time, certainly longer than Hamas can. That’s true on a purely military level, but the fact is, as the war drags on, it’s going to be harder and harder for Netanyahu not to do one of those two things.”
  • When Sergeant Shalit was exchanged for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in October 2011 after Hamas held him in captivity for five years, it was Mr. Attar seen in a video ushering him from a pickup truck. Mr. Abu Shamalah, the Israeli military said, was also involved in a 2004 tunnel attack that killed six soldiers, and the 1994 murder of an Israeli officer in Rafah.
  • In the Rafah refugee camp, a friend of Mr. Abu Shamalah’s said he had last seen him at the onset of the war, with Mr. Attar, and that he had said then he hoped to be a martyr.
Blair Peterson

Voices for Reason - Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict | The Ayn Rand Institute - 2 views

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    Podcast with four classes.
gr323867

United Nations News Centre - There can be no military solution, Ban says as Israel laun... - 4 views

  • Ban Ki-moon today voiced his regret that Israel has launched a ground offensive against Gaza, despite calls for restraint, and stressed that there can be no military solution to the conflict which flared up over a week ago.
    • gr323867
       
      The UN is against Israel's actions because it believes that a military solution will not help and a peaceful solution is necessary.
  • escalated
    • gr323867
       
      He seems to believe that violence leads to more violence.
  • Militants in Gaza have since stepped up rocket attacks against Israel, and Israeli airstrikes on the enclave intensified.
    • gr323867
       
      Each side increases its amount of violence in response to the other.
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  • I urge Israel to do far more to stop civilian casualties. There can be no military solution to this conflict.
  • He voiced support for international efforts, led by Egypt, for a sustainable ceasefire, and expressed hope that today’s humanitarian pause can lead to a “more durable calm.”
    • gr323867
       
      He endorses peaceful negotiations. 
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    Ban Ki-moon Supports a Peaceful Solution
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