State Comptroller slams Palmahim beach project
- The State Comptroller’s Office has published a severe report on the holiday village project planned for Palmahim beach south of Tel Aviv. The report says the investigation of the project “found severe deficiencies both in the actions of the Israel Lands Administration and in the planning procedures in which the land was zoned for a holiday village.” The State Comptroller points out that the plan related to one of the most beautiful stretches of undeveloped coast left in Israel. “The authorities are obliged to preserve natural and scenic places on the coastline for the benefit of the public as a whole.”
The right way to run a prison (Haaretz Israel News)
- The fight against moves that have harmed the nature of the welfare state or have transferred public assets to tycoons and real estate sharks - sometimes for half their real value - must be waged on the political level, without turning the Supreme Court into the economy's CEO. On the other hand, attention should be paid to other areas in which the use of force has been handed over to the private sector. They may not be as blatant as prison privatization, but they are no less significant.
The Shin Bet security service, which protects - some say exaggeratedly - the country's leadership, has transferred some of its functions to private security companies. Although their employees may not have the right to arrest or detain citizens, they bar citizens and their cars from entering certain locations. This borders on a significant infringement of civil rights; it could perhaps be acceptable if done by police officers or soldiers, but not by employees of private companies.
Op-Ed: Freedom of religion: At the bottom of the list (New Israel Fund)
- The fact that a significant movement that promotes religious pluralism is evolving in the civilian society here is challenging the recurring attempts to further anchor the hegemony of the old religious establishment. Furthermore, that movement offers a vision of hope and a different kind of relations between the various religious and secular groups in the Israeli society. That pluralist, civilian movement shows its power by continuously creating various alternatives for weddings, other rituals, and Jewish identity as a whole. Expanding further, these alternatives will eventually shed a ridiculous light on the current uniform religious hegemony. Only then will Israel be taken off the list of countries where freedom of religion and conscience is restricted.
- In any case, whether the legal thesis presented here on the extent of Israel’s obligation to conduct an investigation based on international law is accepted or not, the Goldstone Report significantly increases the chances in practice that foreign courts will attempt to claim jurisdiction over Israeli figures, based on the report’s conclusions regarding both crimes allegedly perpetrated in Gaza and the inadequacy of the proceedings conducted in Israel. The head-in-the-sand policy that the Israeli government is currently adhering to is unsuited to the very real legal danger created by the report. Therefore, purely utilitarian arguments support initiating a stronger legal investigation (e.g. setting up an investigation committee), which would enable Israel to extend broader legal protection to Israeli figures that would prevent them from being prosecuted abroad, or would at least considerably reduce the chances of that occurrence. International law places the obligation to investigate not only on the State, but also on ranking officers in the military chain of command, and according to the principle of “the commanders’ responsibility” in international law, ranking commanders and government officials who were aware of a criminal action – or should have been aware of it – and failed to prevent it or take punitive measures can be held criminally liable. The State’s current policy of resigning itself to the fact that the existing investigative proceedings do not meet, or are perceived as not meeting international demands, leaves ranking IDF and government officials vulnerable to being tried abroad for their actions and failures. As such this policy is illegal and unwise.
Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog said Israel had made mistakes all along the line in its handling of the situation that developed after Operation Cast Lead.
First of all, he said, Israel should have agreed to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission and should not have treated Goldstone himself as a persona non grata. The government not only refused to cooperate with the commission, but also prohibited it from entering Israel to visit Sderot and the Gaza periphery or entering the West Bank via Israel.
Herzog added that the government should have challenged the appointments of the other three members of the commission and perhaps tried to cancel some of them. All three appointments were problematic, said Herzog, since one of them, Professor Christine Chinkin, had already accused Israel of committing war crimes while fighting was still going on in Gaza, another, Hina Jilani, was Pakistani and the third, Colonel Desmond Travers, lacked battleground experience.
Herzog also blamed Israeli leaders for making irresponsible and bombastic statements which had no operative significance but were used by the Goldstone Commission to "prove" that Israel's aim in the fighting was to punish the Palestinian civilian population for Hamas's military actions.
But Kremnitzer added that Israel did not act wisely by angering Goldstone during the investigation. "The courtroom rule is that you don't make the judge angry," said Kremnitzer. "But that is exactly what Israel did in systematically refusing requests by Goldstone throughout the investigation."
In the long run, he added, the only way Israel stood a chance of putting an end to the harsh international criticism against it was by reaching a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So long as the conflict was unresolved, no amount of Israeli propaganda or information would help, he said.
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