Head of panel probing leader’s death says ‘those whose policy is assassinations’ will be brought to justice
Ilan Ben Zion
The Times of Israel
11/28/2012
With the Palestinian Authority on the cusp of submitting its request for nonmember status to the United Nations General Assembly, one Palestinian official on Tuesday said the future state’s first move in the international arena will be trying Israel in court for Yasser Arafat’s death.
The Palestinian Authority exhumed Arafat’s remains on Tuesday, just over eight years after he died from an unidentified illness, in order to determine the cause of his death. Al Jazeera published a report earlier this year positing a Swiss university team had discovered traces of radioactive polonium on Arafat’s effects, prompting Palestinian leaders to unearth his remains and learn whether Arafat was assassinated by poisoning.
Tawfiq Tirawi, the head of the Palestinian investigation committee responsible for conducting Arafat’s autopsy, said the Palestinians would take Israel to task for his assassination at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
“We need proof in order to find those who are behind this assassination and take it to the ICC,” Tirawi told Reuters…
The article continue at The Times of Israel.
Related: With ‘a heavy heart,’ Stevie Wonder pulls out of Friends of the IDF concert
Stevie Wonder is calling off a concert for a group that raises money for the Israeli military.
Wonder had been scheduled to perform Dec. 6 for Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, which raises money for Israeli soldiers and their families.
Wonder said the United Nations recommended canceling his performance because he is an official “Messenger of Peace” for the organization. The United Nations overwhelmingly voted to recognize a Palestinian state on Thursday over vehement US and Israeli objections as hopes for Mideast peace talks stalled…
Also, Dershowitz: Legal Implication of the UN Resolution on Palestine
The General Assembly vote declaring that Palestine, within the pre-1967 borders, is a “state,” at least for some purposes, would have nasty legal implications, if it were ever to be taken seriously by the international community.
It would mean that Israel, which captured some Jordanian territory after Jordan attacked West Jerusalem in 1967, is illegally occupying the Western Wall (Judaism’s holiest site), the Jewish Quarter of old Jerusalem (where Jews have lived for thousands of years), the access road to the Hebrew University (which was established well before Israel even became a state) and other areas necessary to the security of its citizens.
It would also mean that Security Council Resolution 242, whose purpose it was to allow Israel to hold onto some of the territories captured during its defensive 1967 war, would be overruled by a General Assembly vote — something the United Nations Charter explicitly forbids. It would be the first time in history that a nation was required to return all land lawfully captured in a defensive war…
There was never much doubt that the U.N. General Assembly would overwhelmingly vote to upgrade the Palestinian Authority to the status of nonmember state on Nov. 29. The big surprise of the event was that a number of key Western European countries did not join the United States and vote against the resolution. The Czech Republic was the only European country to vote against the upgrade, and shockingly, the normally staunchly pro-Israeli governments of Germany and Britain decided to abstain…
Update: Hillary Clinton Accuses Israel of Lacking Generosity and Empathy with “Oppressed” Palestinians But she does give Israeli leaders credit for their “honest, good-faith effort [that was not] reciprocated in the way that was needed.”
Update 2: UN rewards terrorism. A video by Canadian Ezra Levant.
