Guterres gets it right. Germany backs UN chief amid Israeli criticism on Gaza comments
"How the death of a teen Palestinian fighter inspired a Gen Z militia in the West Bank"
Guterres does enjoy ‘trust of the federal government,’ chancellery spokesperson says
Oliver Towfigh Nia | 25.10.2023 - Update : 25.10.2023
A man mourns at the morgue of Nasser Hospital as people arrive to take the dead bodies of their relatives who lost their lives in Israeli airstrikes in Khan Yunis, Gaza on October 24, 2023.
BERLIN
Germany on Wednesday expressed support for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres amid criticism of his remarks on Israel’s military actions in Gaza at the Security Council.
“At the moment the situation is very charged, tense ... And I don't have the feeling that such demands for resignation are appropriate,” government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told a press briefing in Berlin.
“Of course, he (Guterres) has the trust of the federal (German) government,” added Hebestreit, whose country is a staunch ally of Israel.
Addressing the Security Council on Tuesday, Guterres condemned the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, but said they "did not happen in a vacuum."
"The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation," he said. "They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing."
He argued that the "grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas," and the "attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people."
The comments drew anger from Israel, which demanded Guterres to resign.
The conflict in Gaza, which has been under Israeli bombardment and a blockade, began when the Palestinian group Hamas initiated Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, a multi-pronged surprise attack that included a barrage of rocket launches and infiltrations into Israel by land, sea and air.
Hamas said the incursion was in retaliation for the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and growing violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.
The Israeli military then launched a relentless air campaign against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.???????
- ‘Shocked by misinterpretation’
The UN chief in a statement on Wednesday said he was “shocked by the misinterpretations” of his statement, and he did not justify the actions by Hamas.
“I am shocked by the misinterpretations by some of my statement yesterday in the Security Council – as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas.
The last week has seen, as of November 28, the release of 69 civilians held hostage in Gaza in exchange for 180 Palestinian prisoners as part of a short-term cease-fire agreement between Israeli authorities and Palestinian armed groups.
While many have rightly hailed the release of civilians held hostage by Hamas after the killings of hundreds of Israelis and other civilians on October 7 — hostage-taking is a war crime .. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/19/hamas-islamic-jihad-holding-hostages-war-crime .. — less attention has been focused on why exactly Israel has so many Palestinians in detention and available to trade. And less still on how they got there.
As of November 1, Israeli authorities held nearly 7,000 Palestinians from the occupied territory in detention for alleged security offenses, according to the Israeli human rights organization HaMoked. Far more Palestinians have been arrested since the October 7 attacks in Israel than have been released in the last week. Among those being held are dozens of women and scores of children.
The majority .. https://hamoked.org/prisoners-charts.php .. have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future. Israeli authorities have held children, human rights defenders and Palestinian political activists, among others, in administrative detention, often for prolonged periods.
The large number of Palestinian detainees is primarily the result of separate criminal justice systems Israeli authorities maintain in the occupied territory. The nearly 3 million Palestinians who live in the occupied West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, are ruled by military law and prosecuted in military courts. By contrast, the nearly half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank are governed under civil and criminal law and tried in Israeli civil courts. Discrimination pervades every aspect of this system.
In short, Israeli settlers and Palestinians live in the same territory, but are tried in different courts under different laws with different due process rights and face different sentences for the same offense. The result is a large and growing number of Palestinians imprisoned without basic due process.
Discrimination also pervades the treatment of children. Israeli civil law protects children against nighttime arrests, provides the right to have a parent present during interrogations and limits the amount of time children may be detained before being able to consult a lawyer and to be presented before a justice.
Israeli authorities, however, regularly arrest Palestinian children during nighttime raids, interrogate them without a guardian present, hold them for longer periods before bringing them before a judge and hold those as young as 12 in lengthy pretrial detention. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel found .. https://law.acri.org.il/en/2017/03/30/arrest-and-detention-of-palestinian-minors-in-the-occupied-territories-2015-facts-and-figures/ .. in 2017 that authorities kept 72 percent of Palestinian children from the West Bank in custody until the end of proceedings, but only 17.9 percent of children in Israel.
While the law of occupation permits administrative detention as a temporary and exceptional measure, Israel’s sweeping use of administrative detention on the Palestinian population, more than a half-century into an occupation with no end in sight, far exceeds what the law authorizes.
Even those charged with a crime are routinely deprived of due process rights in military courts. Many of those convicted and serving time for “security offenses” (2,331 people as of November 1) accepted plea bargains to avoid prolonged pretrial detention and sham military trials, which have a nearly 100 percent conviction rate against Palestinians.
Beyond the lack of due process, Israeli authorities have for decades mistreated and tortured Palestinian detainees. More than 1,400 complaints of torture, including painful shackling, sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures, by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, have been filed with Israel’s Justice Ministry since 2001.
These complaints have resulted in a total of three criminal investigations and no indictments, according to the Public Committee Against Torture, an Israeli rights group. The group Military Court Watch reported that, in 22 cases of detention of Palestinian children they documented in 2023, 64 percent said they were physically abused and 73 percent were strip searched by Israeli forces while in detention.
Palestinian rights groups have reported a spike in arrests and deterioration in the conditions of Palestinian prisoners prior to October 7, including violent raids, retaliatory prison transfers and isolation of prisoners, less access to running water and bread and fewer family visits. The trends have worsened .. https://www.addameer.org/news/5164 .. since.
Discrimination in detention and imprisonment is just one aspect of systematic oppression, which underlies Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians, as Human Rights Watch and other Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organizations have found.
Israeli authorities should end their discriminatory, abusive detention practices, whether the exchanges continue or not.
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