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Comments (0)The U.N. Secretary-General’s interim report on investigations into the 2009 Gaza War does not include a direct investigation of Hamas’ role.
Ban Ki-moon attached an interim Israeli account of its investigations and a lengthy report by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in his submission this week to the U.N. General Assembly, but there was no sign of any investigation by the authorities in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip of the organization’s role in the war, which resulted in between 1,000-1,400 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths.
Israel says Hamas launched the war with a massive intensification of rocket attacks on Israel’s south. Richard Goldstone, the U.N.-appointed investigator who charged both sides with war crimes, has said it is incumbent on both sides to make good-faith efforts to set up independent inquiries.
Ban did not explain the omission. “I have called upon all of the parties to carry out credible, independent domestic investigations into the conduct and consequences of the Gaza conflict,” he wrote in his interim report. “I hope that such steps will be taken wherever there are credible allegations of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.”
Human Rights Watch, an independent group, chided Ban for not going further. “Israeli investigations still fall far short of being thorough and impartial, while Hamas appears to have done nothing at all to investigate alleged violations,” it said in a statement. “We regret that the secretary-general merely passed on the reports he received from Israel and the Palestinian side instead of making the failings of these investigations clear.”
The Israeli report included in Ban’s submission summarizes what it says is progress in military and civilian inquiries into the war.
The Palestinian Authority report focuses mostly on what is says are Israel’s violations, and then on Hamas violations of civil liberties in Gaza; it exonerates the Palestinian Authority of any excesses in the West Bank, although human rights groups say the P.A. is cracking down on opponents. Hamas drove the Fatah-led P.A. out of Gaza in 2007.
The P.A. report says that Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians would violate human rights but adds that it does not have proof that these occurred—this, despite the fact that such attacks have been subject to extensive media scrutiny.
The P.A. commission was not allowed access to the Gaza Strip.
Hebrew U. Prof. Garners Top Math Prize
A Hebrew University professor was one of four winners of a prize considered the Nobel of mathematics.
Hebrew University professor Elon Lindenstrauss won the International Mathematical Union’s Fields Medal for his work in numbers theory. Lindenstrauss was cited for his work in ergodic theory, the statistical study of dynamical systems, which formulate models relating time and space.
The IMU, holding its quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians this week in Hyderabad, India, also awarded the medal to Ngô Bao Châu of Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France; Stanislav Smirnov of the University of Geneva, Switzerland; and Cedric Villani of the Henri Poincaré Institute in Paris.
The medal is named for Canadian mathematician J.C. Fields and carries a cash prize of about $15,000.
Planner of Munich Olympic Massacre Dies
A planner of the 1972 attack on Israel’s Olympic team in Munich and one of the founders of the Palestinian security services has died.
Amin al-Hindi died in a hospital in Amman on Tuesday night of liver and pancreatic cancer. He was 70.
Eleven Israeli athletes were kidnapped and later killed during the Munich Olympics, along with five Palestinians and a German policeman.
Al-Hindi was head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service and close to former Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. During the 1970s he also served as a senior security officer in Fatah. He supported the peace process with Israel and the Oslo Accords after the Palestinian Authority’s founding in the 1990s.
Al-Hindi slipped into a coma following surgery last week, according to the Palestinian Envoy to Jordan. He will be buried in his native Gaza Strip.
The main architect of the massacre, Mohammed Daoud Odeh, also known as Abu Daoud, died last month at age 73.