"[I am] very pessimistic about the future... There is no more trust in the Israeli policy".
Amr Moussa
Egyptian Foreign Minister

Amr Moussa and the Arab political elite representing the "client regimes" have been deceived and acted foolishingly, as well as selfishly, for quite a long time now. The above statement could have been made a very long time ago, but Moussa and those he represents have preferred to allow themselves and their countries to be manipulated and co-opted for many years now -- with terrible results for millions of people, many now dead or wounded, throughout the region from Iraq to Algeria.

For having been so gullible and mislead (at the least), Moussa should be forced to retire or resign in infamy. Instead he is likely to be rewarded (with America's OK) as the next Secretary-General of the Arab League. Meanwhile, the U.N. remains unwilling to follow the recommendations of its own Commission, as the second article below outlines, and today in Palestine:

JERUSALEM (Reuters - 23 March) - Palestinians planned to march on Friday in protest against Jewish settlements in territories occupied by Israel and against Israeli blockades of Palestinians living near them.

Israeli police lined the streets of Arab East Jerusalem and checked the documents of Palestinians trying to enter the walled Old City for Muslim Friday prayers, often a flashpoint for clashes in the last six months of violence.

A member of the Palestinian security forces was reported shot dead in the latest bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli army denied it had killed the man.

Marwan Barghouthi, a leader of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, said Palestinians were trying to broaden the uprising to encourage peaceful demonstrations.

"You have Palestinians who prefer not to participate in a stone-throwing protest so we want to give them a chance to participate in other peaceful ways," Barghouthi told Reuters.

Israel's intermittent blockades of Palestinian areas range in intensity from almost total bans on movement through army checkpoints to selective controls on vehicles or to unmanned obstacles on roads which slow journeys to a crawl.

Under international pressure, Israel has in recent days allowed some trenches dug by its troops across highways around Palestinian areas to be filled in.

But rubble barricades and trenches still block vehicle traffic in and out of many areas of the West Bank, and Palestinians are barred from some stretches of highway near Jewish settlements.

Palestinians say the tactic is a collective punishment for an almost six-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation which paralyzes their economy. Israeli forces call it a security measure to reduce attacks.

About 200,000 Israeli Jews have settled among the three million Palestinian inhabitants of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since the 1967 Middle East war. The settlements were built in violation of international law.

At the United Nations, Western European countries proposed an alternative to Palestinian calls for a U.N. observer force to be sent to the West Bank and Gaza, saying Secretary-General Kofi Annan should explore other ways to protect civilians.

The action by Britain, France, Norway and Ireland was an effort to avoid a U.S. veto of an observer force. But it appeared unlikely to satisfy either the Palestinians or Israel, which strongly opposes any international intervention.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned on Thursday from a visit to the United States, repeating his insistence that he would not talk peace until violence ceased.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, which has played a crucial role in the Middle East peace process, said in comments published on Friday it was still too early to judge Sharon, whose broad coalition government took power early this month.

But Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa told an Israeli newspaper he was "very pessimistic about the future."

"There is no more trust in the Israeli policy," he said.

A White House spokesman said President George W. Bush, who met Sharon this week, had ordered the CIA to stop brokering security cooperation between the Palestinians and Israel in an effort to encourage the parties to deal directly.

The decision was the latest in a series of signs the Bush administration plans to take a more hands-off approach to Middle East peacemaking, after years of intense and direct U.S. involvement under former President Clinton.

A member of the Palestinian national security force was shot dead by Israeli troops on Friday in Gaza near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, hospital and Palestinian police sources said. The army could not confirm the report.

Elsewhere in Gaza overnight, Palestinians hurled two explosive devices at an Israeli army outpost on the border with Egypt and fired anti-tank grenades at two other outposts in the southern Gaza Strip, an army spokesman said.

Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, the military wing of the Islamic Hamas group, claimed responsibility for a mortar attack on Jewish settlements in Gaza on Wednesday. It was the first public acknowledgement by the group that it had mortars.

The death toll in the uprising against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is more than 400 -- at least 349 Palestinians, 66 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs.

The Palestinian cabinet issued a statement late on Thursday alleging a new Israeli offensive was imminent. "This military siege around cities and villages...reveals an Israeli decision to strike the Palestinian Authority territories and to target the national authority and its leaders," it said.

An international pressure group on press freedom condemned Arafat's administration for closing down a television channel's office in the West Bank.

The Qatari Al-Jazeera station said the office had apparently been shut down because of an unflattering depiction of Arafat in a trailer for a documentary. The Committee to Protect Journalists called the closure "a crude attempt at censorship."

In a sixty page report submitted this week to the 57th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, the special UN Commission of Inquiry, established (Resolution E/CN.4/S-5/1, 19 October 2000) to investigate human rights violations committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, emphasized the urgent need for international protection for Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian people.

The report covers the legal status of the conflict, Israel's excessive use of force, extra-judicial executions/political assassinations, settlements, and the deprivation of the enjoyment of economic and social rights (effect of closures, curfews, restrictions and movement, and destruction of property in addition) and includes a separate section which emphasizes the "distinctive vulnerability" of Palestinian refugees.

The Commission of Inquiry report notes that "no other refugee community in the world is so excluded ... from the protective mechanisms and responsibility of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)" and concludes, on the basis of a legal analysis of the status of Palestinian refugees in international refugee law, that urgent international efforts are required to extend UNHCR protection to Palestinian refugees under Article 1D(2) of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The Commission report further notes that while the question of the right of return is mostly beyond the scope of the Commission's mandate, a "comprehensive settlement must deal equitably with the issue of Palestinian refugees and their rightful claims" including those living outside of the occupied territories.

The Commission of Inquiry further recommends that an adequate and effective international presence should be established immediately in the occupied Palestinian territories to monitor and regularly report on compliance by all parties with human rights and humanitarian law standards. The commission members also recommend that protection should be accorded in strict compliance with the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and that the High Contracting Parties to the Convention should act with urgency to establish an effective international mechanism for taking the urgent measures needed.

Among its other recommendations the report notes that a comprehensive, just and durable peace should be guided at all stages by respect for human rights and humanitarian law and the full application of international human rights standards and is linked to the end of the Israeli occupation and realization of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The report concludes that Israeli security forces (i.e., military and police) have used "excessive and disproportionate force" from the outset of the al-Aqsa intifada and recommends that Israeli forces should not resort to the use of rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition, except as a last resort; that provision of protection for settlers cannot be used for preemptive shooting of unarmed civilians in areas near settlements or on access and bypass roads leading to settlements or for the destruction of Palestinian property; an immediate end to Israel's extrajudicial execution/assassinations; investigation and prosecution of persons found responsible for the use of lethal force or the excessive use of force which has caused death or serious injury; an immediate end to Israeli closures, curfews and other restrictions on freedom of movement; respect for Palestinian economic and social rights; an end to measures that amount to collective punishment; freedom of movement and safety for the provision of medical relief and treatment and in providing humanitarian assistance including that of UNRWA; special protection for children; and, free access to all places of worship and holy sites. [BADIL Resource Center, 23-3-2001]