Badil Working Paper on Corporate Accountability

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Written by Yasmine Gado, Badil Yasmine Gado, Badil

Published: 04 February 2010 04 February 2010

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From: Badil Resource Center [mailto:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.]
Sent: Thu 2/4/2010 6:26 AM
To: Badil
Subject: New Publication: Working Paper on Corporate Accountability

Badil Releases Paper on Potential Avenues to Challenge Corporate
Involvement in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People

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To download a free copy, go to:
http://badil.org/documents/category/2-working-papers?download=754%3Abadil-wp-11
To purchase a print copy, visit:
http://www.badil.org/publications?page=shop.product_details&flypage=garden_flypage.tpl&product_id=120&category_id=2
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4 February 2010 - BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights has released new working paper under the title: “Principles and Mechanisms to Hold Business Accountable for Human Rights Abuses: Potential Avenues to Challenge Corporate Involvement in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.” The paper is authored by U.S. attorney Yasmine Gado.

About the Working Paper

Palestinians would not be a people displaced, dispossessed and oppressed in 2010 if states and the UN had held Israel accountable for its massive violation of international law and the Nakba over 60 years ago. However, not only governments and the UN, but also business corporations continue to render aid and assistance to Israel's unlawful policies and practices until today. By conducting business as usual with Israel's official and private sector, foreign enterprises help maintain a situation in which Israel abuses Palestinians' basic human rights on a massive scale. Many of those engaged in efforts for justice, have therefore focused their efforts on holding corporations accountable.

These efforts for corporate accountability have begun to reap significant successes in recent months: Dexia Bank (France Belgium) has stopped funding Israeli settlements, BlackRock Bank, TIAA-CREF (US pension fund), and PFZW (Dutch pension fund) have divested from Africa-Israel, Veolia has announced its intention to withdraw from the illegal Jerusalem Light Rail project, and campaigns against other corporate offenders continue.

In examining mechanisms available within the existing legal and economic framework to advance corporate accountability for human rights abuses, and for their conduct in other areas of social concern, this Working Paper focuses on three primary categories: (1) domestic US law regulation and litigation under state domestic legal systems; (2) international law: binding international law governing corporate complicity in international crimes and non-binding international norms on the issue of business and human rights; and (3) market forces: socially responsible investment funds, shareholder activism, consumer boycotts, etc. The paper summarizes the latest developments in each of these areas and assesses the possibilities of building on these past experiences to hold corporations involved in the violation of Palestinians' rights accountable.

This paper was prepared by Badil as a resource for the Palestinian civil society-led Campaign for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it abides by its obligations under international law and all those engaged in efforts to end impunity for egregious human rights abuses.

About Badil Working Papers

BADIL Working Papers provide a means for experts, practitioners and activists to publish research relevant to durable solutions and reparations for Palestinian refugees and IDPs as part of a just and permanent solution of the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli conflict. Working papers do not necessarily reflect the views of BADIL. Past working papers can be downloaded at:
http://badil.org/en/documents/category/2-working-papers

Title: Principles and Mechanisms to Hold Business Accountable for Human
Rights Abuses: Potential Avenues to Challenge Corporate Involvement in
Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People
Author: Yasmine Gado
ISSN:1728-1660

To download a free copy, go to:
http://badil.org/documents/category/2-working-papers?download=754%3Abadil-wp-11

To purchase a print copy, visit:
http://www.badil.org/publications?page=shop.product_details&flypage=garden_flypage.tpl&product_id=120&category_id=2

Time for George Mitchell to resign

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Written by Stephen M. Walt Stephen M. Walt

Published: 01 February 2010 01 February 2010

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If Mideast special envoy George Mitchell wants to end his career with his reputation intact, it is time for him to resign. He had a distinguished tenure in the U.S. Senate -- including a stint as majority leader -- and his post-Senate career has been equally accomplished. He was an effective mediator of the conflict in Northern Ireland, helped shepherd the Disney Corporation through a turbulent period, and led an effective investigation of the steroids scandal afflicting major league baseball. Nobody can expect to be universally admired in the United States, but Mitchell may have come as close as any politician in recent memory.

Why should Mitchell step down now? Because he is wasting his time. The administration's early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. "mediators" who ended up complicit in Israel's self-destructive land grab on the West Bank. Mitchell will turn 77 in August, he has already undergone treatment for prostate cancer, and he's gotten exactly nowhere (or worse) since his mission began. However noble the goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace might be, surely he's got better things to do.

In an interview earlier this week with Time's Joe Klein, President Obama acknowledged that his early commitment to achieving "two states for two peoples" had failed. In his words, "this is as intractable a problem as you get ... Both sides-the Israelis and the Palestinians-have found that the political environments, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that" (my emphasis).

This admission raises an obvious question: who was responsible for this gross miscalculation? It's not as if the dysfunctional condition of Israeli and Palestinian internal politics was a dark mystery when Obama took office, or when Netanyahu formed the most hard-line government in Israeli history. Which advisors told Obama and Mitchell to proceed as they did, raising expectations sky-high in the Cairo speech, publicly insisting on a settlement freeze, and then engaging in a humiliating retreat? Did they ever ask themselves what they would do if Netanyahu dug in his heels, as anyone with a triple-digit IQ should have expected? And if Obama now realizes how badly they screwed up, why do the people who recommended this approach still have their jobs?

As for Mitchell himself, he should resign because it should be clear to him that he was hired under false pretenses. He undoubtedly believed Obama when the president said he was genuinely committed to achieving Israel-Palestinian peace in his first term. Obama probably promised to back him up, and his actions up to the Cairo speech made it look like he meant it. But his performance ever since has exposed him as another U.S. president who is unwilling to do what everyone knows it will take to achieve a just peace. Mitchell has been reduced to the same hapless role that Condoleezza Rice played in the latter stages of the Bush administration -- engaged in endless "talks" and inconclusive haggling over trivialities-and he ought to be furious at having been hung out to dry in this fashion.

The point is not that Obama's initial peace effort in the Middle East has failed; the real lesson is that he didn't really try. The objective was admirably clear from the start -- "two states for two peoples" -- what was missing was a clear strategy for getting there and the political will to push it through. And notwithstanding the various difficulties on the Palestinian side, the main obstacle has been the Netanyahu government's all-too obvious rejection of anything that might look like a viable Palestinian state, combined with its relentless effort to gobble up more land. Unless the U.S. president is willing and able to push Israel as hard as it is pushing the Palestinians (and probably harder), peace will simply not happen. Pressure on Israel is also the best way to defang Hamas, because genuine progress towards a Palestinian state in the one thing that could strengthen Abbas and other Palestinian moderates and force Hamas to move beyond its talk about a long-term hudna (truce) and accept the idea of permanent peace.

It's not as if Obama and Co. don't realize that this is important. National Security Advisor James Jones has made it clear that he sees the Israel-Palestinian issue as absolutely central; it's not our only problem in the Middle East, but it tends to affect most of the others and resolving it would be an enormous boon. And there's every sign that the president is aware of the need to do more than just talk.

Yet U.S. diplomacy in this area remains all talk and no action. When a great power identifies a key interest and is strongly committed to achieving it, it uses all the tools at its disposal to try to bring that outcome about. Needless to say, the use of U.S. leverage has been conspicuously absent over the past year, which means that Mitchell has been operating with both hands tied firmly behind his back. Thus far, the only instrument of influence that Obama has used has been presidential rhetoric, and even that weapon has been used rather sparingly.

And please don't blame this on Congress. Yes, Congress will pander to the lobby, oppose a tougher U.S. stance, and continue to supply Israel with generous economic and military handouts, but a determined president still has many ways of bringing pressure to bear on recalcitrant clients. The problem is that Obama refused to use any of them.

When Netanyahu dug in his heels and refused a complete settlement freeze -- itself a rather innocuous demand if Israel preferred peace to land -- did Obama describe the settlements as "illegal" and contrary to international law? Of course not. Did he fire a warning shot by instructing the Department of Justice to crack down on tax-deductible contributions to settler organizations? Nope. Did he tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to signal his irritation by curtailing U.S. purchases of Israeli arms, downgrading various forms of "strategic cooperation," or canceling a military exchange or two? Not a chance. When Israel continued to evict Palestinians from their homes and announced new settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August, did Obama remind Netanyahu of his dependence on U.S. support by telling U.S. officials to say a few positive things about the Goldstone Report and to use its release as an opportunity to underscore the need for a genuine peace? Hardly; instead, the administration rewarded Netanyau's intransigence by condemning Goldstone and praising Netanyahu for "unprecedented" concessions. (The "concessions," by the way, was an announcement that Israel would freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank "temporarily" while continuing it in East Jerusalem. In other words, they'll just take the land a bit more slowly).

Like the Clinton and Bush administrations, in short, the idea that the United States ought to use its leverage and exert genuine pressure on Israel remains anathema to Obama, to Mitchell and his advisors, and to all those pundits who are trapped in the Washington consensus on this issue. The main organizations in the Israel lobby are of course dead-set against it -- and that goes for J Street as well -- even though there is no reason to expect Israel to change course in the absence of countervailing pressure.

Obama blinked -- leaving Mitchell with nothing to do-because he needed to keep sixty senators on board with his health care initiative (that worked out well, didn't it?), because he didn't want to jeopardize the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party, and because he knew he'd be excoriated by Israel's false friends in the U.S. media if he did the right thing. I suppose I ought to be grateful to have my thesis vindicated in such striking fashion, but there's too much human misery involved on both sides to take any consolation in that.

So what will happen now? Israel has made it clear that it is going to keep building settlements -- including the large blocs (like Ma'ale Adumim) that were consciously designed to carve up the West Bank and make creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and other moderate forces will be increasingly discredited as collaborators or dupes. As Israel increasingly becomes an apartheid state, its international legitimacy will face a growing challenge. Iran's ability to exploit the Palestinian cause will be strengthened, and pro-American regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere will be further weakened by their impotence and by their intimate association with the United States. It might even help give al Qaeda a new lease on life, at least in some places. Jews in other countries will continue to distance themselves from an Israel that they see as a poor embodiment of their own values, and one that can no longer portray itself convincingly as "a light unto the nations." And the real tragedy is that all this might have been avoided, had the leaders of the world's most powerful country been willing to use their influence on both sides more directly.

Looking ahead, one can see two radically different possibilities. The first option is that Israel retains control of the West Bank and Gaza and continues to deny the Palestinians full political rights or economic opportunities. (Netanyahu likes to talk about a long-term "economic peace," but his vision of Palestinian bantustans under complete Israeli control is both a denial of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations and a severe obstacle to their ability to fully develop their own society. Over time, there may be another intifada, which the IDF will crush as ruthlessly as it did the last one. Perhaps the millions of remaining Palestinians will gradually leave -- as hardline Israelis hope and as former House speaker Dick Armey once proposed. If so, then a country founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust -- one of history's greatest crimes-will have completed a dispossession begun in 1948 -- a great crime of its own.

Alternatively, the Palestinians may remain where they are, and begin to demand equal rights in the state under whose authority they have been forced to dwell. If Israel denies them these rights, its claim to being the "only democracy in the Middle East" will be exposed as hollow. If it grants them, it will eventually cease to be a Jewish-majority state (though its culture would undoubtedly retain a heavily Jewish/Israeli character). As a long-time supporter of Israel's existence, I would take no joy in that outcome. Moreover, transforming Israel into a post-Zionist and multinational society would be a wrenching and quite possibly violent experience for all concerned. For both reasons, I've continued to favor "two states for two peoples" instead.

But with the two-state solution looking less and less likely, these other possibilities begin to loom large. Through fear and fecklessness, the United States has been an active enabler of an emerging tragedy. Israelis have no one to blame but themselves for the occupation, but Americans -- who like to think of themselves as a country whose foreign policy reflects deep moral commitments-will be judged harshly for our own role in this endeavor.

The United States will suffer certain consequences as a result-decreased international influence, a somewhat greater risk of anti-American terrorism, tarnished moral reputation, etc.-but it will survive. But Israel may be in the process of drafting its own suicide pact, and its false friends here in the United States have been supplying the paper and ink. By offering his resignation-and insisting that Obama accept it-George Mitchell can escape the onus of complicity in this latest sad chapter of an all-too-familiar story. Small comfort, perhaps, but better than nothing.

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

Israel denies Gaza war crimes in report to UN, only admits to one credit card theft

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Written by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem

Published: 31 January 2010 31 January 2010

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Israel denies Gaza war crimes in report to UN

Israel insists troops did not violate international law despite 'operational lapses and errors'

An Israeli air strike on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, during the January 2009 conflict. Photograph: ABDALRAHEM KHATEB/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Israel has delivered a report to the UN defending its actions in last year's Gaza war and insisting its troops did not violate international law, but has not agreed to hold an independent investigation as demanded.

In the 46-page report, submitted on Friday and released late that night, Israeli authorities admitted some "operational lapses and errors in the exercise of discretion". But they strongly denied allegations of war crimes raised by international human rights groups and by two separate UN investigations.

The report reveals there has so far been only one criminal conviction in relation to the war – one soldier was jailed for seven and a half months for stealing a credit card from a Palestinian home and using it to withdraw £250 in cash.

Last September, the South African judge Richard Goldstone published a highly critical 575-page report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council which accused both Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas of "grave breaches" of the fourth Geneva convention, war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It called on both sides to start their own credible, independent investigations or risk international prosecutions. Neither Israel nor Hamas has done so and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, will report on this to the UN general assembly in the coming days. The three-week war left nearly 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

Last week Hamas officials in Gaza claimed their forces had not committed war crimes because their rockets only hit civilians by mistake because they were crudely built and unguided. Human Rights Watch dismissed that as a "whitewash" and said it was "factually and legally wrong".

But it was Israel that received much sterner criticism in the Goldstone report. Two weeks ago the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, listed the "Goldstone effect" as one of the top three security challenges facing Israel.

The Israeli report seeks to make the case that Israel's investigative system is rigorous and up to international standards. It blames Hamas for a "deliberate strategy … to blend in with the civilian population" and says the Israeli military made "strenuous efforts" to minimise harm to civilians.

It said 150 incidents have been or are being investigated, of which 36 have been referred for criminal investigation. But, apart from the soldier jailed for "looting", there have been no criminal charges.

Some incidents were detailed. Israel defended its attack on the al-Badr flour mill, in northern Gaza, which was severely damaged during the war. The Goldstone report concluded this was a "grave breach" of the fourth Geneva convention and a possible war crime. However, the Israeli report admits the building was hit by tank shells but specifically denies it was hit by an air strike, even though Goldstone found that it was. The Israeli report found no need for a criminal investigation into the military's actions at the mill, but admitted it "could not conclusively determine" whether the building was ever used by Hamas fighters and only claimed "some evidence" of such use.

Israel defended its use of white phosphorus and also found "no basis" to launch criminal investigations over the shelling of UN buildings and staff, even though UN schools were hit during the war, as was the main UN warehouse which was burned to the ground by Israeli white phosphorus shells. Israel has paid more than $10m (£6.25m) to the UN in compensation for the damage.

Oregon Congressman Kurt Schrader: touting the pro-Israel line . . .

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Written by AUPHR AUPHR

Published: 30 January 2010 30 January 2010

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[Oregon congressman Kurt Schrader must have received an A+ from AIPAC for studying their position papers, as witnessed by this letter to one of his constituents . . .]

Thank you for contacting me regarding the ongoing conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories. I appreciate your thoughts and concerns on this issue.

For too many generations, an unending cycle of violence has existed in the heart of the Middle East. With constant war and terrorist attacks, for more than 60 years Israeli's and Palestinian's have lived in a constant state of fear and tension. For these reasons, I strongly feel that the United States must be proactive in working towards a permanent solution to this conflict.

 At the same time, I do believe that dramatic actions must be taken from both Israeli's and Palestinian's to move towards a peaceful solution. The Hamas leadership in Gaza must renounce terrorism and accept Israel's permanent right to exist as a free and sovereign nation with safe, defendable, and recognizable borders. The Palestinian government must also educate their citizens and promote peace, instead of hatred against Jews and Israel. Similarly, the Israeli government must cease building settlements within the West Bank. The Israeli government took a bold step toward peace with their unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. They must demonstrate that they are willing to take similar steps in the West Bank. Israel must also work to guarantee that basic humanitarian supplies are able to get into the Gaza Strip.

Arab and European countries must also be proactive in fighting anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic statements and actions against Israel. I consider boycotts against Israeli corporations, products, government officials, and citizens as being detrimental and a hindrance to solving the conflict. Similarly, one-sided and biased resolutions at the United Nations that unfairly target Israel do nothing to bring Israeli's and Palestinians together. Instead these actions only intensify hatred and mistrust on both sides.

President Obama has shown great leadership in appointing Special Envoy Mitchell as his representative in the Middle East. As your member of Congress, I look forward to working with him, Secretary Clinton, and congressional leadership in promoting a permanent and peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Sincerely,

KURT SCHRADER
Member of Congress

 
KS/ep