Palestinian youth look at a destroyed building following an Israeli air strike on Gaza City, Jan. 18.

UN reaction--ranging from concern to condemnation--to the latest Israeli aggression, is much needed in this time of unbridled Israeli savagery against Gaza and its citizens.
When John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied territories, describes Israel’s targeting of a Hamas building that killed women and children as a war crime that should not go unpunished, and when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns that the Israeli government’s decision to close border crossings into Gaza will only worsen the humanitarian situation, it is all in keeping with close, fair and just UN involvement since the Arab-Israeli crisis began 60 years ago.
President Bush’s vision of a two-state solution actually goes back 60 years to when the UN partition plan not only provided for two states in Palestine but also made the proclamation of Israel contingent on the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Bush’s unwillingness not to refer to the status of Beit-ul-Moqaddas or Israeli settlements on Palestinian land is a far cry from steadfast US policy since 1967 that considers all Israeli settlements as “illegal and an obstacle to peace“, as stated by several US permanent representatives to the UN Security Council.
Lastly, and most seriously, Bush adopted the latest Israeli position that demands recognition of Israel as “a Jewish state“--which goes against UN Resolution 194 of 1948, guaranteeing the return of Palestinian refugees and compensation for those who do not wish to return.
The recent UN declarations also appear to be trying to make a point, to counter remarks made by Bush on his Middle East tour that countless UN speeches and resolutions have not worked to resolve the dispute and that, instead, his way is vastly better.
Of course, it would be welcome if Palestinians and Israelis could negotiate an agreement on the so-called two-state vision of the US president.
But Bush pressed upon the Palestinians to accept that there would be no deal granting them even the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 war, and that there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees. He also shrugged off the rights and fate of the close to two million 1948 Arabs who were in Israel by insisting on the Jewish character of Israel.
Bush made no real demands on the Israeli government to stop its settlement activities. Nor did he demand a halt to Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territories that are taking a serious humanitarian toll on civilians.
Bush’s only point of substance, if it can be called that, was to advise both Israeli prime minister and Palestinian Authority president to “make tough choices.“
There are many who consider Bush the most important guarantee for Israel’s continuing its aggression against the Palestinian people. The UN has never been seen as such.
True, the UN has never been able to settle the problem and its appeals and urgings and declarations have been consistently ignored--by Israel.
The difference, though, is that the UN tries; US administrations, including this one, don’t even do that.
ARABNEWS.COM

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, pressure to combat terrorism effectively, speedily, and decisively has warped--or even rendered unrecognizable--basic legal rules and institutions. Suspects taken into U.S. custody have, in some instances, been “disappeared“ and tortured rather than arrested, investigated, and prosecuted.
Hundreds of others have been held in indefinite detention at Guantanamo, without explicit congressional or judicial authorization.
Ad hoc military commission proceedings have, for some of these people, replaced fair trials.
Even some of the proposed remedies for these abuses are worrying. The alternative of preventive (administrative) detention, recommended by some commentators as the best way to deal with terrorist suspects--or, more modestly, as a means of closing Guantanamo without releasing dangerous men--is of particular concern.
Let’s quickly run through the possible legal methods for handling suspected terrorists (leaving out disappearance and other methods that have nothing to do with the law).
There is the option of prosecution (either in regular courts, in specialized courts, in courts-martial or in military commissions). There is detention as an enemy combatant, prisoner of war, security internee, or in another category whose purported justification is found in the laws of war.
And there is the preventive detention option, which does not currently exist under U.S. law.
Now, in assessing the various alternative approaches, let’s ignore their labels, and even put aside their theoretical frameworks (backward-looking vs. forward-looking, wartime vs. peacetime, etc.).
Let’s simply examine what, concretely and specifically, each approach offers in terms of the process by which detention decisions are made.
Criminal prosecutions, whatever the court, have certain common characteristics.
First, the burden is on the government to prove guilt, and guilt must be shown beyond a reasonable doubt.
Second, while rules of evidence vary from court to court, in general the evidence relied upon by the prosecution must be disclosed to the defendant: convictions cannot be based on secret evidence.
And third, the assistance of counsel must be allowed.
So-called enemy combatants held at Guantanamo (like security internees held in Iraq) have a very different--and quite inferior--set of procedural rights.
First, the Combatant Status Review Tribunal proceedings, or CSRTs, held at Guantanamo effectively place the burden of proof on the detainee.
Second, secret evidence is not just allowed; it plays a determinative role in all of the
proceedings.
Third, although detainees at Guantanamo now have access to legal counsel for proceedings in federal court, lawyers are not allowed to represent detainees at CSRT proceedings.
So where does preventive detention fit on this scale of procedural rights? Obviously, it varies according to the specific detention scheme at issue, and most commentators who have recommended the option have not fleshed out their proposals in any great detail.
Yet it’s possible to sketch out a basic outline of the option based on how it has been used in other countries, and also judging by the objections that proponents of preventive detention have made to the option of a criminal trial.
First, a clear difference from the CSRT system is that most proponents of preventive detention are willing to accept that detainees be granted the assistance of counsel.
While there may be varying views as to when this right would attach--many proponents would permit an initial interrogation period during which a detainee’s lawyer is barred--the right to counsel during the actual adjudicative proceedings seems secure.
Second, a clear difference from the criminal justice system lies in the standard of proof. Preventive detention, almost by definition, implies a standard of proof short of “beyond a reasonable doubt.“ In large part, this is a basic consequence of preventive detention’s forward-looking character.
No one has an accurate crystal ball, and without one it is difficult to prove anyone’s future behavior beyond a reasonable doubt. The past is stable; the future is always contingent.
Joanne Mariner
ANTIWAR.COM

Pakistanis shout anti-Musharraf slogans during a demonstration in Islamabad, Jan. 5.

Talking to six top editors in Rawalpindi, President Pervez Musharraf linked the current “turbulent“ times to “three crises facing Pakistan“:
1) the crisis of the transition to democracy, 2) the crisis of the war against terrorism and extremism and 3) the crisis of the economy if the first two crises could not be contained and resolved.
He expressed fear about the rejection of the February 18 elections on charges of rigging if the results didn’t conform to the expectations of the key opposition players, and was pessimistic about any coalition government working efficiently after the polls inevitably produce a hung parliament.
Significantly, he conceded that, in theory, if Al Qaeda ever managed to defeat the Pakistan Army militarily, or if the Talibanised elements succeeded in contesting and winning the elections in Pakistan, then the nuclear programme could be hijacked.
He rejected the idea of a pre-election national government but offered to put together such a government after the elections, if necessary, which didn’t jibe with his earlier observation that a coalition would be unstable.
If a coalition--let us say, between the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim Leaque Nawaz (PMLN)--is expected to be noisy and fractured, how can a “national government“ be stable, even if the president gets to be the fulcrum of power in the midst of brawling politicians?
As to his fear that “there could be no bigger tragedy for Pakistan than one resulting from a rejection of the poll results by the mainstream parties after contesting them on February 18 just because they didn’t reflect their hopes and desires rather than ground realities“, one must keep in mind that it is only on the condition of “free and fair“ polls that the election experts have so far steadily predicted a hung parliament.
The mainstream parties are talking of forming a coalition only because they accept the possibility of a hung parliament with no single party getting the numbers right for forming a government.
The storm will break on Pakistan if the Pakistan Muslim League Qaaid-e-Azam (PMLQ) gets a clear majority in the coming elections or repeats the 2002 performance, giving the mainstream PPP and PMLN no space to rope in enough seats for forming their government.
That is where the problem of rigging finds its true locus. And circumstantial evidence in the shape of the caretakers and the Election Commission plus some hard evidence of bias placed before the Election Commission foreshadow what might happen.
The first crisis therefore will not hit Pakistan if the polls deliver a hung parliament and all the parties accept the reality of it.
As for the second crisis, that of fighting the war against terrorism, the “case law“ on it places the blame squarely on President Musharraf himself.
It is during the six years of anti-terrorist government in his tutelage that the state of Pakistan has lost ground in the face of insurgency in the Tribal Areas and Balochistan.
It is in these six years when most of the people of Pakistan reposed trust in him that the writ of the state was lost in most of Pakistan and “no go“ areas created even inside the normally administered regions. Without being polemical about the right and wrong of presidential actions--or blunders, as some would say--the sheer burden of incumbency points to a transition away from him, even at the risk of getting the war on terrorism wrong.
DAILYTIMES.COM.PK