By WILLIAM A. COOK
On the third anniversary of America's invasion of Iraq broadcast in full shock and awe to the world via green TV screens that all might see the night devastation of the city, another invasion was underway in Gaza, a silent invasion of human rights that, in its barbarity, casts its own shock and awe, the starvation of the people of Gaza by closure of that prison's gates by Israeli IDF. David Shearer of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHA) stated, 'What we were warning before was that stocks (of wheat) were getting low. Today we are saying stocks are gone, and the end point has been reached.' Israel has closed Gaza's commercial lifeline, the Al-Minter Crossing, these past 50 days in peak harvest time, preventing the export of goods and stopping the import of bread supplies. 3,594 MT of wheat flour contracted to local mills did not enter. Now there is no bread and the 70% of Palestinians living below the poverty line have no food. This barbarity one does not expect from the people who cried for protection from fascist forces when they were under siege." ...
GENEVA (AP) - Jewish settlers are terrorizing Palestinians with impunity, attacking children on their way to school and destroying farmers' trees and crops, a U.N. expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict said in a report.
John Dugard, a South African lawyer, called the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip last summer a positive step. But the Jewish state effectively controls Gaza through targeted killings and sonic booms from warplanes flying over the region, Dugard said in a report prepared ahead of next week's annual meeting of the 53-member U.N. Human Rights Commission.
Itzhak Levanon, Israel's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, rejected Dugard's allegations as 'misinformed and inaccurate.'
Dugard's report 'is guided by a clear political agenda, and bears little relation either to the facts or existing principles of international law,' Levanon said in an e-mailed statement to The Associated Press."
Israel has previously rejected Dugard's reports on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute as being one-sided, noting that he has been assigned only to investigate violations by the Israeli side.
Dugard said settler violence has been particularly egregious in the West Bank city of Hebron. His 22-page report made no reference to Palestinian terrorism, but said Hebron settlers "terrorize the few Palestinians that have not left the old city and assault and traumatize children on the way to school."
"It seems that settlers are able to terrorize Palestinians and destroy their trees and crops with impunity," Dugard said, adding that he himself was a victim of settler abuse while visiting the city in June 2005.
Dugard prepares regular reports for the U.N.'s human rights watchdog during visits to the region, but receives no cooperation from the Israeli government.
Next week's meeting comes as U.N. member states debate replacing the discredited Human Rights Commission with a new body. The commission has been widely criticized for allowing some of the worst rights-offending countries to use their membership to shield each other from condemnation. ...
