ISRAEL DEFENDS ARMY CONDUCT
An internal Israeli investigation has concluded that the country's military acted in accordance with international law during the recent war in Gaza. Reporting its findings on Wednesday, the military rejected allegations of war crimes from human rights groups and some UN officials.
The groups had criticised the Israeli army's conduct during the three-week offensive.The army "maintained a high professional and moral level while facing an enemy that aimed to terrorise Israeli civilians", the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), as the military in Israel is called, said in a statement.
It said it conducted five separate investigations into some of its actions during the war, including attacks on and near UN and international facilities and the use in densely populated areas of white phosphorous, a chemical agent that causes severe burns.
"The enemy booby-trapped its houses with explosives, fired from the schools attended by its own children and used its own people as human shields while cynically abusing the IDF legal and ethical commitment to avoid injuring uninvolved civilians," the Israeli military said.The military said its investigations "revealed a very small number of incidents in which intelligence or operational errors took place during the fighting".
Major-General Dan Harel, the army's deputy chief of staff, said among these incidents was
an attack on a residence in the southern Gaza City neighbourhood of Zeitun, in which 21 people were killed."These unfortunate incidents were unavoidable and occur in all combat situations," the military said.
Courtesy: Al Jazeera
CANCELS TRIPS, OBAMA WON'T MEET NETANYAHU
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled his visit to the US to attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference after he learned that President Barak Obama will not meet on the scheduled time, Arabs48 quoted Israeli sources as saying.Sources, according to the internet site, said last week that Obama refuses to meet Netanyahu in the time being and that every Israeli effort to make the gathering possible was to no avail.
The sources also said that
Netanyahu's silence to his FM statement was understood in Washington as support to Avigdor Lieberman's conditional restoration of talks between Israel and the Palestinian.Lieberman does not want to go on with a two-state solution and wants the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state as a precondition for renewing talks. The US firmly rejects the notion as recently expressed by special envoy Geroge Mitchell and the US State Department.
The US is indirectly telling Israel that the chaos
that characterized Bush's 8-year term has ended and that Israel is required to stick to its commitments to the US by evacuating settlements and adopting the two-state solution, if Israel really wants Washington's support,the source told Arabs48 site.The sites report said that Netanyahu had asked President Shimon Peres, not Lieberman, to represent Israel during the AIPAC conference, for his capability to better promote Netanyahu's government.
The Israel Army Radio said that despite Netanyahu's statements following his meeting with Mitchell, the PM is ready to start contact with the Palestinians without pre-set conditions.
Course: Al Jazeera
