The Brahimi Panels: The Goldstone Report and the Peace Process

A

Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very, very much indeed for being here for this panel discussion. We are going to talk about the Goldstone Report and about the peace process in the Middle East. The best one in sentence neutral description of the Goldstone Report is to say that it hasn't gone unnoticed. I leave it to these ladies and gentlemen to say the rest. I'm very, very grateful. Adaga Palkam. You can't hear. I'm sorry. So, yeah, how do we. Shall I just shout or can somebody help here with this technology?

B

Just use it.

C

Just be here.

A

Yeah, yeah. But you know, it doesn't go very far. Anyway, that's better, isn't it? Good. So I was saying that, you know, we are going to discuss the Goldstone Report and the peace process in the Middle east and we are very, very fortunate in having this panel by alphabetical order. Amy Ayalon is a former member of the Knesset from 2006 to 2009. He is a navy, I think he was the head of the Navy in Israel for some time. He served in the Israeli Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio. He also was the head of Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency. Christine Chinkin is Professor of International Law here at LSE and the barrister. She is also an overseas affiliated faculty member at the University of Michigan and has been a scholar in residence for Amnesty International as well as visiting professor in Columbia. And you know, I think her cv, you can Google it is much longer than all this. She was most importantly for us tonight, a member of the mission that was set by the United nations under the leadership of Judge Richard Goldstone. Carmen Abulsi is a Fellow in Politics at St. Elmond hall at Oxford and she lectures there. She is director of the Civitas Collective Project on Civic needs for Palestinian refugees and Exiles. She has also served as a PLO representative working at the United Nations, Beirut, Tunis and a representative also in the United Kingdom. I think she also participated in the peace talks in both Madrid and Washington on behalf of the plo. Colonel Desmond Travers is retired from the Irish Armed Forces. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations. He also served in command of troops and in key operational appointments with various UN and European Union peace support missions in the Middle east, in Cyprus and Lebanon and as in the former Yugoslavia, Croatia and Bosnia. He, like Christine, was a member of the UN fact finding mission of Judge Goldstone. Last but not least, let me mention Professor Mary Kaldor. I think we are her guests here. She is the co Director of the LSE Global Governance, where I am a guest. And she is going to help us tonight by collecting your questions, written questions, so that we can take as many of these questions as possible after we listen to the presentations by members of our panel. So if I, you know, let me again say how very, very grateful I am to these four ladies and gentlemen for accepting to be part of this panel. And let us welcome them as warmly as you want to welcome them. Thank you very much indeed. I think we will ask Professor Christine Chinkin to get us started by briefly presenting to us some aspects of the Goldstone Report. She will be followed by Colonel Travers, who will add also a few remarks on the report that he was part of the commission or the mission he was part of who? We will then ask Mr. Ayalon to react and say what he feels that we need to know from his personal perspective. And then Carmen Abulsi will also speak to us. Nobody will speak for more than 10 minutes, hopefully much less than that, so that we have as much time as possible for a dialogue between the members of the panel and also perhaps myself, and then we take as many of your questions as possible.

C

Christine, thank you very much indeed. Lecter the focus of this evening's discussion is the Goldstone Report and the peace process. And one of the many criticisms that we have received for the report is that it interfered with the peace process, that it amounted to an unwarranted intervention into the process by the Human Rights Council. And perhaps one might sort of turn that around a bit and say that more fundamentally it was a mixing of mandates that the Human Rights Council that gave us our original mandate is concerned with human rights issues and issues relating to peace are those concerns of the Security Council and in the particular case, those of the Quartet. Now, the issue of whether the fact finding mission contributed to or detracted from issues relating to the peace process is, of course, part of the much wider debate around peace and justice, accountability, end of impunity, and moves towards peace processes. And I think that one of the big starting points is that this debate has become rather polarized as a peace justice type debate. Instead, we should try not to see them in confrontation, but to try to look at ways in which they contribute to each other. So what I'm going to do is just very briefly make a couple of remarks about the mandate and methodology of the Goldstone mission, and others I'm sure, will pick up more fully on the issues of accountability and the importance of breaking the impunity in order to break the repeated cycle of violence that we see, I'm not going to make inflated claims for fact finding missions. I think what they might be is one of the tools in an armoury of perhaps a bad word to use in this context, but one of the tools that might be used in the whole seeking of peace. Perhaps worth just first of all mentioning that fact finding missions have in fact, a very long genealogy as dispute resolution processes. They are spelled out in the 1899, 1907 Hague Convention relating to specific settlement of disputes and seen very much in the form of institutionalized commissions of inquiry as something that can be used in the context of other peace processes. The idea of having an objective assessment of disputed facts that can then be fed into other processes, mediatory or negotiated processes. They're repeated in this context in the Chapter six of the United Nations Charter, which is the section of the Charter relating to the peaceful settlement of disputes. And I think perhaps the adoption of this underlying idea of seeking objective assessment of the facts by, on the one hand, the human rights bodies exploring issues relating to human rights and international humanitarian law, and on the other hand, the Security Council, the body looking at international peace and security, confirms this notion of the utility of fact finding missions in bringing parties perhaps to confront assessment of the facts that they are disputing. But then turning more specifically to the Fact Finding Mission that we're talking about this evening, sort of two or three main points I want to make about it. I think the first is the importance of the holistic mandate that the peace that the Fact Finding Mission operated under. Now, it's probably common knowledge to people here that the original mandate for the Fact finding mission as it was adopted by the Human Rights Council, was essentially a very one sided mandate. It asked the Fact Finding Mission to investigate all violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by the occupying power. That one sided mandate was rejected by Judge Goldstone when he accepted to become the president of the Fact Finding Mission and he renegotiated the mandate with the President of the Human Rights Council essentially to broaden it and as I said, to make it a holistic mandate. So it's the mandate under which we operated was one that included investigation of, again quote, all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after. So the mandate that we operated in didn't have any preconceived notions, such as occupying power, it just talked about violations that might have been committed. And it expanded the mandate considerably spatially, so that it now includes Gaza, southern Israel, west bank, other areas that might be relevant, and in terms of the people that may be responsible for alleged violations. So it expands the mandate to, for example, the government of Israel, the authorities in Gaza, Hamas, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian militants, and so required a very much fuller analysis than might have been suggested by the original mandate, which I think is important when one's looking forward then, as to how this might be used in terms of any peace process. This holistic approach was carried through to the findings and also to the recommendations. We made a lot of findings, so I'm not going to go through all of those. But of course, we did make findings relating to specific incidents that were direct attacks by Israeli forces, ground forces and air forces launched on civilians with lethal consequences where there was no military advantage or objective to justify the attacks, and thus were contrary to the fundamental principle of distinction. We made findings relating to attacks on infrastructure and food supplies, especially in the context of the blockade on Gaza, that again could not be justified on military grounds. We also suggested that acts that deprived the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip of their means of subsistence, employment, housing, water, freedom of movement, could lead, could, we didn't say it did lead a competent court to make a finding of a crime of persecution as a crime against humanity. We also made the finding that the launching of unguided rockets and mortar breaches, the fundamental principle of international humanitarian law, the principle of distinction that an attack must distinguish between military and civilian targets, and where there is no intended military target, they constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population. Thus, the rocket and mortar attacks that were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel caused terror to the effective communities in southern Israel and in Israel as a whole, and were also contrary to international humanitarian law, constitute a war crime and may have bounced to crimes against humanity. Our recommendations also, particularly the recommendation relating to the requirement of credible and independent investigations to be carried out both by Israel and by the authorities in Gaza. I might note that in the General assembly resolution of last week, 26th of February, the requirement relating to independent investigations was something that was very much taken up by many of the speakers in the General assembly debate and again linking it to the possibility of contribution to the peace process. Okay, in a rather different point, just one very brief comment about methodology and then I think my time's up. Peace processes typically are conducted by the elites in any society, and they are conducted far away from the immediate victims of the Violence on the ground. The voices of victims are only too rarely heard in such processes. And so it was an important part of the fact finding mission to try and provide a vehicle through which the voices of victims could in fact be heard. And this was in particular through the public hearings that we held in Gaza. We held on site mission, investigation and public hearings that were then broadcast and also held similar public hearings in Geneva where in particular we included. We heard from, rather than included people from southern Israel. We would have chosen to go to southern Israel and heard from victims there, but were unable to do so because of the lack of cooperation from the government of Israel. But through the public hearings, it was important that the voices of those people who are affected by what is going on is heard. What they seek from any process is an important part of that. And what we heard very frequently, obviously very different views with respect to anger, anguish, but a very common theme of the desire for life to be normalized, for the violence to stop in various ways. And I think that again, one of the recommendations we made relates to the importance of hearing multiple voices in peace processes, including, for example, the Resolution 1325 of the Security Council relating to particularly women's voices, which are only too often excluded completely from any such peace process. You're looking so my 10 minutes are probably apt. So I'll leave it at that. No, I'll leave it at that. At this particular point.

A

Thank you very, very much indeed for getting us started. Colonel, what can you add to that about the work you have done with this mission?

D

If I'm permitted to stand up, I will add a little.

A

Yeah, why not?

D

Now? We may have the same ignition difficulties at this end. I hope not.

A

Is it all right? Can you hear the coroner? Yes.

D

Have we got sound? Can you hear me? Okay?

E

Okay.

D

Mr. Chairman, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure for me to have this opportunity to talk to you. I've chosen to take specific aspect of the Goldstone report, but in choosing this particular aspect, I hope I do not inadvertently diminish or minimize the sum of all of the recommendations contained in this report. Because these recommendations are very important. They're not disconnected, they are connected. Richard Goldstone explained to me, probably because he knew I wasn't very familiar with the laws, international humanitarian law or human rights law, that our purpose ultimately is to take measures to put an end to impunity. And that if we do a report that does that and ushers in justice mechanisms, we will have taken an important step. I have to say that connected with me immediately but for different non juridical reasons. And the reasons that connected with me was that I had been drifting back and forth to the Middle east since 1964. I was there again in 79 through 82, 84, 85, 87, 88. And I finally observed the Israeli Hezbollah war in 2006. And one of the patterns that emerges, and there are many patterns, but. But one of the patterns that emerges from my perspective as a soldier is that the responses and the response and the reactions are ever escalating. The technologies that have come into play in military forces have been used to optimize lethality, destruction and damage, but that consequence has not forced or delivered solutions. If anything, perversely, the military resource, the more perfect it is, the more it ushers away the dialogue resource from the table. I now think, and I'm a soldier and I'm a devotee of the military profession for defense purposes, I now think we have reached some kind of a crescendo in the Middle East. And that crescendo was brought home to me, I thought, after watching the Lebanon War in 2006. But it was only a precursor of what we observed. Christine and I, my colleagues in Gaza, I would not like to see this repeated. The recommendation, the Goldstone report that particularly drives me is the one on weapons. And the reason I have chosen the weapons one is it was part of my stock and trade for nigh on 42 years as a soldier. I ran a weapons school, I fired weapons, I taught weapons, and sometimes I might even have been targeted by weapons. So I have a reason for choosing the weapons issue. But I also have another reason for choosing the weapons issue tonight. And it's this. The weapons and some of the weapons demonstrated to have been used in Gaza are weapons in commonly found in arsenals of the armies of the world. Most modern armies have these weapons. They are legal, they're within the conventions, they should now be condemned. So the recommendation in the Goldstone report goes as follows. And I read that the General assembly should promote an urgent discussion on the future legality of the use of certain weapons referred to in this report, and in particular white phosphorus flechettes and heavy metals such as tungsten. I'm going to talk about each of those for a minute. The mission further recommends that the government of Israel should undertake a moratorium on the use of such weapons in the light of human suffering and damage they caused in the Gaza Strip. I take that recommendation on board in its entirety and I add two considerations to it tonight, and that is that that moratorium should now be extended to any army that has any one or all of these weapon systems. They should be put on notice that these weapons are not acceptable not only against the civilian population or an undefended area, but also against enemy troops. I would further elaborate on this recommendation in the light of my experiences and in life of reports since our report went in and say that we should also examine the tactical doctrine that inspired or drove these the use of these weapons in this fashion. Because the doctrine that inspires Israeli Defense Forces in their operations are admired throughout the world and are enormously influential in the armies of the West. So if this doctrine is a driver of weapons which might have been overused or misused, it seems to me that Western armies might want to judge a pause on this issue. So there are my caveats. I just want now to talk for a moment about the weapons of concern. But before I do so, the great preponderance of the damage that was done in Gaza was done by conventional weapons, which I don't mention because they are designed to achieve certain purposes. But it is as well to tally the body count of the destruction that went on there. 58,000 houses or homes destroyed, 280 schools, kindergartens, 6 university complexes, 1500 factories and workshops. Approximately 20% of the arable land in Gaza is now destroyed. That was done by conventional weapons. So I do not want to marginalize or minimize conventional weapons that are not on my laundry list of weapons of concern. That's a point I want to make. Now let's talk about the weapons that are specifically mentioned in that recommendation. White phosphorus. White phosphorus was discharged all over Gaza. There is an estimated 3,500 artillery shells discharged white phosphorus over the city the size of a shell exploding in the air over the city and detonating. Its cargo of white phosphorus became an iconic symbol on our television screens for quite a few weeks during the Gaza operation. You may recall seeing this burst in the air and then discharge its wedges of white phosphorus earthwards. By that calculation, some 400,000 of these wedges were dropped. White phosphorus is a highly toxic chemical. It does not need an initiator to ignite. All it needs is oxygen. If it's deprived of oxygen, it remained dormant and active. White phosphorus dumped in the Irish Sea after World War II broke from its moorings. White phosphorus munitions rather broke away from their moorings and came ashore on an Irish coast 50 years later and ignited it on the beach. So it's extremely volatile and dangerous. Nevertheless, most armies use is enormously toxic. If it lands on a person's flesh because it burns straight true to the bone. It will burn for as long as it's in contact with oxygen. Efforts to treat wound victims themselves became nauseated and could in fact have become sick from the toxicities that emanate through the fumes from white phosphorus. People with relatively minor surface area burns as low as 10% would die because the chemical attacked the central nervous system. So as far as I'm concerned, it should be replaced or removed. Not alone from general use, but it should be removed from the arsenals of the armies of the world, even for battlefield use. Let me give you another example. Children in Gaza were attracted to the smoke. Why were they attracted to it? Because it is a pleasant almond smell. I remember even as a soldier running through white phosphorus smokescreen you thought was extremely pleasant, but you are inhaling fumes that are deleterious to your respiratory system. It isn't even good for the troops that it's supposed to be supporting to go through a white phosphorus screen attacking a position because they're inhaling this material. There are substitutes for white phosphorus, such as red phosphorous and such as titanium tetrachloride. These are chemicals. You needn't worry about the technical names, but they do not have the toxicities of white phosphorus. I'm moving on rather quickly because I want to get my pitch and my story told before the ten minute bell. Tungsten. We've always used tungsten in our armies because it was used in sniper bullets to harden the bullet so it would penetrate light, armored vehicles, and so forth. So it was never a controversial metal. But curiously enough, it was only when we had experts come before us that the question of the use of this heavy metal called tungsten became problematic. And the reason it is is that tungsten, in laboratory circumstances and in battlefield circumstances, if it gets into the system, is cancerous, it's highly carcinogenic. And we have had incidences of people who have survived tungsten shrapnel attacks, usually from missiles and surviving, but surviving on intense medication. There was a young man we met at Macadamia Mosque. Remember that young man who had a piece of tungsten lodged in his spine, and the reason it was there was this was too dangerous to remove it. As far as I am concerned, while that's there in his body, he now has to be monitored for the balance of his life to ensure he doesn't develop cancers. There is another version of tungsten which is mixed through in powder form into the explosives, into the explosive of a projectile called DIME D I M E. Dense Inert Metal Explosive. It's an acronym. Now, to be very honest about it, we found no evidence of DIME having been used. But there is anecdotal evidence that this missile with DIME was discharged over Gaza. Whether it was or it wasn't, the same concern arises. And it's this. This munition exists in many armies, perhaps in the British army, the French, the American army, the Soviet army. And this diamondition, because it has tungsten in granular or powder form, is even more hazardous than tungsten in shrapnel form because it will put the victim at risk of cancers, but will also be very, very difficult to trace and to detect and to remove because it's so tiny. So I would be arguing that this munition should be withdrawn from service. My final one is the flechettes. The flechettes we found spattered all over Gaza on walls, and people were hit, were discharged from tanks. They're fired forward of a tank. The shell detonates about 90 meters forward of the muzzle and scatters about 8,000 of these little darts. A dart is about 40 millimeters long, about 1 1/4 inches, 2 millimeters in diameter with the flechette end. The fletched end, about 4 millimeters in diameter, travels at speed. The problem with it is that on impact with flesh, it becomes ballistically unstable and begins to tumble because in the process of tumbling, it's resisted by the flesh. And it's a rather fragile metal alloy device. It breaks up. So a person struck by one of these may find tiny pieces of the dart in different parts of the body. To me, under the conventions, this constitutes a kind of dum dum bullet and should again be considered for removal from the arsenals of the armies of the world. That's my laundry list of four weapons that I would like to see removed. But now we have another problem, and it's this. How did these devices in existence since the Vietnam War, some cases in existence since the Second World War, in some cases in existence since the First World War, be permitted to exist in the arsenals of the armies of the world? How did this happen? The answer is I do not know. But if you look at the Geneva Conventions and the means by which weapons, conventional weapons, are accepted, you will find that the approving authority in the first instance is the country of manufacturer. That to me is self regulation. I don't know about the United Kingdom, but in Ireland we have found out long, long ago that self regulation is no regulation. Probably true everywhere. Time is up.

A

One Half a minute, because it's very informative.

D

For that. I give you 45 seconds.

C

Thank you.

D

Munitions were dropped to affect the damage of deep installations in Gaza, perhaps tunnel systems, perhaps underground caches and so forth, perhaps underground manufacturing facilities. To achieve the penetration involved with Western munitions would suggest strongly that those munitions would contain or be comprised of hardened warheads, which might logically be hardened by radiological devices or depleted uranium or uranium devices. And if so, and these detonations have occurred in Gaza, there are toxic consequences. Mightn't have happened. I don't know whether it happened, but it might have happened. And if it has happened, there is an obligation in the Western world and on the international community to make sure that the environment in Gaza is not worsened any more than it is at the moment, and it's in a terrible situation. By carrying out tests and analysis to ensure that the people who live there, desperate though their lives may be, may not be made more desperate, but by the possibility of birth deformities, reproductive problems, cancer problems, which could emerge in five or six or seven years time. And we're all involved in this problem because it's all Western technology. We all own it. We all have to consider it as part of our responsibility. Thank you very much.

A

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Colonel, for this very graphic description of these extremely lethal weapons and the consequences they have, not only on the day that they are used, but also perhaps even several years later. Mr. Ayalon, want to speak from there or from there? As you wish.

F

Well, thank you very much. It will be the first time when an admiral follow a colonel, so I prefer to speak from here. War is horrible. If we don't understand it, we understand nothing. I have been there for too many years and we have to accept the idea there is no ideal war. I feel that we have to take a decision in the panel or here in this room whether we want to discuss Goldstone. This is one panel, this is one kind of discussion, or whether we should try to discuss peace. We cannot do both. It is a different kind of debate. It is a different atmosphere. It is a different culture. To discuss Goldstone, we have to bring experts. We have to bring people who understand in international law and civil rights.

A

But.

F

They will not create peace in a way because. And I don't blame them. This is what they do. They use the language of blame. They use the language of guilt. This is what they know. They deal with events from the past and the present in order to deal or to try to create peace. We have to Change it. We have to jump into the future, far ahead into the future, and to imagine a peace. And then to go backward, we have to adopt a different dictionary, a dictionary of responsibility, not of blame and guilt. We are killing each other for the last 100 years and we feel great because we blame the other side, all of us in the Middle East. We have to create a new dictionary, a dictionary of responsibility. We should not look for justice. We shed a lot of blood in the place that we look for justice. We have to look for fairness and honesty. And this is a debate in which I came to put my views. I know nothing about international law.

D

But.

F

I have been in battlefields during 40 years. I know Hamas and because I know Hamas and I know Muslim fundamentalism, I met terror everywhere. I was against the Israel operation in Gaza from the very beginning. I met the Prime Minister, I met the President. I tried to do everything to stop it as as soon as possible. Not because we did not have the right to defend our people, this is our duty, but because I know Hamas and I know Hamas strategy. By the way, it is not a secret. You just have to go to the Hamas website. It is written. You can read it in Hebrew, in English and in Arabic. Now, Hamas strategy changed the first principle of war during the last 200 years to separate between combatant and non combatant. According to Hamas, they will avoid confrontation with military in open field and they will do everything in order to bring the Israeli military into the populated area. What is the meaning? The meaning is that they are using their people as a human shield. And because I know Hamas, I know that we do not have the tools in order to win this phenomena. And we failed. We failed because in spite of all the instructions that we gave to our soldiers, we killed civilians, which is horrible. Now what is the lesson? What is the lessons that we have to learn in order not to see it anymore? First of all, yes, we have to investigate independently. I don't need Goldstone to tell me that I have to investigate independently. I said it before many of us, we owe it to ourselves. Second, we have to understand that it is not a military phenomenon. Yes, we have to use power and we have to defend ourselves every time when somebody will attack us. But we have to understand that in order to win Hamas, we have to create a peace process. It is not a secret. In his last interview, Sheikh Yassin speak about it. When people ask him, what are you afraid of? He tells, I am afraid of a political process that will create a situation in which Palestinians will believe that they will achieve freedom and of occupation by using diplomacy. This is what I'm afraid of, he says, because he understand that if we shall bring a new dictionary to the region, if we shall start to speak diplomacy and not only military power on both sides, Hamas will shrink into less than 18% of the Palestinian people. Palestinians do not believe in the fundamental way of Hamas. What they really want is freedom, end of occupation, better life, better education, better economy. But they learn that we understand only the language of power. And the tragedy is that if you will ask the average Israeli, he will tell you the same. So this is the tragedy of our region. Several years ago, Mary asked me to come to the London School of Economics. It was a time when hundreds of people were dying on both sides of the no border. 2002, more than 1,000 Israelis died. More than 3,000 Palestinians died during the second intifada. And we came to London in order to try to see whether we can do something better. And I prepared myself a cup of coffee and everything was great in London. Everything is great. It is not the Middle East. And a Palestinian friend approached me. He's a psychiatrist, used to work with children in Gaza. His name is Eyad Saraj. He's a great friend. And he tells me, ami, finally we won. We Palestinians, we won. And I asked him, are you crazy? Hundreds of Palestinians are dying in the streets. What do you mean you won? And he tells me, you don't understand us all what we want. All what we want is to see you dying. This is our victory. After more than 50 years of suffering, you will suffer. And as long as we shall suffer, you will suffer. And he end by saying, finally we achieved a balance of power. Your F16 versus our suicide bomber. And I was very upset. I came back to the table and I asked Mary Kaldor to postpone the next discussion and to try to understand what is the idea of victory in the Middle East. In the beginning of this century, we did not understand or we did not come with any new idea. But as a result of this meeting, I met Professor Saynusseiba and we launched our initiative. And what we understood is that what we were missing during the 10 years of the negotiated process was a clear vision of the future. It will be very painful because when we touch the future, we touch the most sensitive nerves of our existence. When we touch the future, we have to deal with Jerusalem, with refugees, with settlers, with security. And we have to touch all these nerves. And it will be very painful because we understand the two states that for us is our only Way to see Israel as a Jewish democracy. When we do it, we have to bring back the settlers. We have to give up the idea of settlements. And Palestinians will have to accept the idea that when they will have their freedom and their Palestinian state, they will have to give up the dream of. Of the return of the refugees into the state of Israel. Unless we do it, we will go on trying to look for justice, trying to discuss the past, and our children deserve something better. Now, just to finish. It is very, very easy to be pessimistic these days in the Middle East. What should be done in language of responsibility? We Israelis will have to pass the law of return for the settlers. Not to force them before agreement, but to enable every settler who wish to return to be compensated and to get legitimacy. They deserve it. We send them. It is our duty to bring them back. It will create confidence because for the first time, after 40 years, Palestinians will see settlers moving westward. It is more important then negotiated process. Meetings and diplomacy should come later. For the Palestinians, it is very, very crucial to create unity, to bring Hamas into this process. Unless they will do it, we will never be able to believe that it is possible to deal with two Palestinian people. And for the international community, it is very important to come up with a clear idea, clear vision of the future. Of course, we propose our six principles, which again, will be very painful, but it is for the international community to put it on the table, and it should be the direction for all of us. I used to sail for many years at sea, and sailors used to say, a captain who does not know where he wants to sail, there is no wind on earth that will bring him there.

A

Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much indeed. That many members of the audience have 1,000 questions to ask you. I have probably 3,000 questions to ask you. But you are right. That needs another debate. Karma, it's your turn.

B

Thank you.

A

Thank you very much indeed.

B

I can spread my papers out up here. Can everybody hear me? No.

A

A little bit louder.

B

Can you hear me now? No. Is it this one? Okay. Evening, everyone. I'd like to actually say something a little bit different and take an approach which contradicts the previous speaker in as much as Mr. Ayalon is saying, we can either speak about Goldstone or we can speak about peace. And these are two different debates. I think they are the same. So that's why I think we're all here tonight, because we believe. I believe at least, and I think many of us believe that international law is essential to bring peace it is not the opposite of peace. But why is there such a disagreement? And I wouldn't say that it's really about something technical about the types of munitions, although they're so important. I would say that it's really two ideological models that we're looking at today. And one model would be. I'll just go over them very quickly, and then we can talk about how we can get to peace and how. Because I think the urgency of peace is what we'd like to talk about. So I'll only take five minutes for my presentation, given the time has gone. But I would like to take those five minutes at least. One of those models is that you get peace through law. Law is what guides you to peace. In that model. I would just read one thing from the Goldstone Report, which I thought kind of sums it up. I think Christine could have. We could have just listened to Christine, actually, for an hour, and it would have been so helpful. But there's lots of recommendations in the report. But there's also a small section on accountability. And paragraph 1755 says, the mission, that's the Goldstone mission, is firmly convinced that justice and respect for the rule of law are the indispensable basis for peace. Now, other places you might go to look for this framework, this conceptual framework, this understanding, is the Charter of the United nations, the Geneva Conventions, the basis that human rights, self respect, dignity, proportionality, the rule of law. There is another model which says peace comes through power, through force, it comes through conquest, it comes through force of arms, and it comes through ignoring and rejecting international law as long as you are strong enough. I think some of you remember seeing just recently Gordon Brown at the Chilcot Inquiry, and he didn't advance the normal reasons for going to war, which were weapons of mass destruction. He said, we went to war as we should have, because we must prosecute serial violators of international law. Now, behind that is the common conception that those who continually, egregiously and consistently break international law are following a different model, which is peace through force and not peace through law. The Goldstone Report is well worth reading in its entirety, and I think it actually provides so many mechanisms for us to get to peace. And I think that's why I think it's so important that we're here talking about peace and Goldstone. But Colonel Travers was very interesting in his presentation in that he talked about banning, outright banning of certain weapons, and he talked about white phosphorus in Gaza. I remember if you don't have an understanding of the ideology behind Peace through force as opposed to peace through law, then you would only have to look at this war alone. Whereas if you look at peace through law, you'd only have to go back 25 years, 1982, where, when I was in Beirut, we were shelled by the sea, by land and by air. And many people died, tens of thousands of people died, civilians died in exactly, exactly the same doctrine, exactly the same ambition that was used in Gaza. Phosphorus was used, cluster bombs were used. So there is these two models that we're faced with. And I would say the reason that we haven't had a peace process is that we still have no acceptance, no acceptance on one side that international law can bring peace. And if we want to look at how would international law to bring us peace, I think, you know, there's some suggestion that we look to the future and then read it back. But I would say let's look at the people there today. Let's look at the victims of the wars today, and let's deal with them each as individuals, not as villains, but as the victims that they are. And this isn't about blame, but it's about respect, about dignity and about equality before the law. So I'm going to talk about one thing that some of you who have heard me before know that I speak about. And it's the core of the conflict which I think we have yet to address in a peace process, which is why we are where we are today. And it has to do with international law and about which we should seize our attention and our devotion if we want to solve this issue, and that is the refugees. If, if we wanted to implement international law and the refugees were to return, what would be so terrible? You know, when they had the partition plan in 1947, there was a Jewish state and an Arab state, but the area designated for the Jewish state.

A

Had.

B

Almost a majority of Arabs in them. What's so wrong with that? And in that partition plan, there was no basis for ethnic cleansing, so it'd be exclusively Jewish to maintain that state. The ethnic cleansing happened over largely over the summer of 1948 and the first law, 194, international law that began this conflict in the sense that if that was addressed at that time and the people that were expelled by force from their land were allowed to return home. So you can see the continuation of this conflict happening generation after generation because of the avoidance of international law and because of the desire to hold through power, through conquest and by force. So I highly recommend we try it a different way. Thank You. Thank you.

A

Thank you very, very much. Karma. You know, I think we should have another seminar over three days to discuss some of the very daring points made by Mr. Ayalon and the equally strong views expressed by Karma. Let me ask each one of them one question, and then we will take the questions from the floor. Mr. Ayalon, You know, Israel has refused to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission.

B

But.

A

Not long before that, they cooperated very well with another commission set by the United Nations. It's called the Board of Inquiry about the damage done to UN premises and people killed in the UN and the Israelis cooperated. They didn't like the report. They said so, but they have given compensation to the United nations. They paid immediately 10 million and a half to the United Nations. The United nations, or rather the Secretary General, then said, we have no more claims, which raised a lot of eyebrows because, you know, it was thought that what the Secretary General was saying was that nobody else hitting the UN and so on has the right to make any claims which is not true. You know, the Secretary General made claims about his own premises, and fortunately, nobody from the UN was killed. Why did. I think if they had cooperated with Goldstone, they probably would have made, you know, their views. I'm talking about the government, not about you. They would have made their views known. They would have discussed with the Commission their conclusions, and they probably, at the end of the day, would not have been entirely happy, but probably would have had a much better situation than we have now. The question is, why do you think, as somebody who is not in the government, the Israelis refused to. To cooperate with Goldstone?

F

Well, I have no idea. I think. But again, I do not represent the government of Israel in this case. I think that the government of Israel had the impression that the report was written before the nomination of the committee.

A

That's very unfair.

F

And you asked me. I am trying. I am trying to give you an honest answered. I cannot prove it, but this is my feeling. You have to understand that people in the region, Israelis and Palestinians, whether we call it Muammara or whether we call it conspiracy, they believe that there is a conspiracy. Everybody is against us. The world is against us. I think that this is the main reason. I think, by the way, that this is the main problem of the people who are living in this region.

A

Thank you very much indeed. You know, there is much, again to say about that. But Karma, you know, you made a very, very good point. Point about. I think Christine started by making that point about, you know, no peace without justice. We do not accept any more impunity. People have got to be accounted accountable for what they have done. And this is a huge progress that has been made internationally. And. And I think it is very good that the international community is trying everywhere to make sure that this is, you know, this becomes the norm. We are not there yet. We have not reached that stage where it has become the norm yet. But I think it is very welcome development. There is always a tension between justice and peace in the case of conflict, but, you know, it's on the Palestinian side. I think there are many, many problems. And one issue that you haven't discussed is this unbelievable, unacceptable, impossible to understand division between the Palestinians. Why are the Palestinians so divided? And when are they going to be a little bit better than they are? Okay.

B

Where to start, huh? In one short answer? In half a minute? Yeah. You know, I don't want to go too far back, but I would like to go back to the year that Yasser Arafat died and Abu Mazen took over as chair of the PLO and was elected in a landslide as the PA president on a mandate of negotiations only, no resistance, and put himself entirely in the hands of the Israelis to push forward a peace process. And what happened by the end of that year where that approach was entirely rejected? He did not make any more advances on peace. And what happened at the elections when Hamas won the majority not in Gaza, but in the west bank, in Gaza. Small. And if you look at the platform that Hamas ran was a national consensus platform. It did not run anything but the national consensus on refugees, on prisoners, on Jerusalem, on everything. It ran a representative campaign. There was a national unity government. The pressures. The pressures on breaking the national unity government were not internal, but external. Entirely external. We had people in the prisons going on strike, hunger strike, demanding national unity. The entire people want national unity. So the story I would tell, which goes on for generations, is that one side does not want us to represent ourselves, and our side is a struggle to represent ourselves. We have over 10,000 Palestinians in prison. Our leaderships are in prison. They have been assassinated. The attempt is always to represent ourselves and on the other side, to divide and fragment us. So I would say that the picture of what the Palestinians want and what's happening under a coercive occupation is very classic in classic colonial occupations. Thank you.

A

Thank you very, very much. You know, as somebody who was in the liberation movement a long time ago, I both understand what you are saying, but I'm sure you will allow me to say that the people of Palestine and Everybody else has every right to expect a little better from the people who call themselves leaders of the Palestinian people. Now, Mary, do you have a.

G

Unfortunately, I've told everybody they have to write their questions down and hand them to me and say who they are. So while we're doing that, I've got one question from Shimrat, who's in Detroit.

E

Yeah.

A

Okay. Yeah. Your question. Then we have. We have only 10 minutes, you know, because they will put the light off and throw us out. So let's hurry up, please.

F

Go ahead.

H

This is a. It's a question to ami. You say. You say that you were against the operation in Gaza. And my question is, where were you?

F

In Israel.

H

Me, too.

F

Me, too.

H

And there were Israelis, both Jews and Palestinians, that were protesting the operation. They were marching. We were marching through the streets in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem and in Haifa every day. And I didn't see you there because you weren't there. And I didn't hear you in the media saying anything about the operation. And so my question is, where were you, and where were the people that voted for you?

G

Now I've got John Hoffman, but can I say to him, you can only ask one, one of your five questions. I don't know where he is.

C

First one.

G

Okay, ask the first question. But we can't because of time. I'm very sorry. You can't have more.

A

Yes, Mr. Hoffman? Yeah, over there.

D

Thank you.

I

Mr. Chairman, this is a question for Desmond Travers. Colonel Desmond Travers, in your interview with Middle East Monitor last month, you derided the report of Colonel Tim Collins, who visited a mosque that you'd previously investigated. Tim Collins said there was evidence of secondary explosions in the basement, which was an indication to be used to store weapons. You call Collins findings drivel and propaganda. Are you saying all that evidence is spurious and falsified? And if not, is the credibility of your assertions not undercut by your next statement in that interview? Britain's foreign policy interest in the Middle east seems to be influenced strongly by Jewish lobbyists. That is what you said. Is that not disgraceful? Is that not an indictment of your. Thank you very much indeed on the commission.

A

Thank you. Whichever question you like.

G

Question comes, comes from B. Miller, lse.

A

So we'll take another question. What?

D

Hi.

E

Ms. Nabulzi, you propose a view that law is the path towards peace. And I would question that because I think in the international realm, conceptions of law don't operate in a vacuum. They're a function of politics. If law was the solution, then surely the Easiest thing to do is simply outlaw war. And yet the Kellogg Brion pact failed spectacularly simply because there are underlying pressures and forces and dynamics that lead to those outcomes that you can't tame with law. So don't you think that your view is short sighted?

A

Thank you very much. A third question you want? No. Yeah, why don't you answer? Mr. Hoffman.

D

Can you hear me okay? Yeah. With respect to the comments I made with regard to my fellow countryman, Colonel Collins, I think you were also very economical in selecting what I did say about him and what I didn't say about him. I spoke admiringly about his military record, his fantastic military reputation, his second very successful career as a military historian. What I said, was it related to an opinion he conveyed about the possibility that the mosque he was standing in contained weapons? I teach war crime investigation in the Hague. I've been doing it for the last eight years. And I understand, and I know full well that to make a statement like that requires some forensic laboratory backup. If you don't have that, you ought not to make a statement like that and make an opinion like that. Fourteen mosques were destroyed in Gaza. We visited two destroyed mosques. There was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that those two mosques that had been destroyed contained any explosive material whatsoever. I then formed the opinion as a soldier that if I was an insurgent, and I have insurgent ancestors, the last place I would put military material into is a place of worship. Because it's an unreliable repository for military material. It's too open and too insecure, be it mosque or Roman Catholic, church or synagogue. That's the point I was making.

A

Thank you very much. Thank you. Karma. Low, low. And just one. Yeah, please, please, please, please, please. Yeah, all right. Karma, please.

B

We have a realist back there, I think.

A

Yeah.

B

There's always some people that get persuaded by the parsimony and the elegance of the realist position. But I would say that.

C

All of.

B

International law that we have at the moment always is underwriting a certain principle that underpins it, that if we cannot be guided by it, the alternative is that force triumphs. And I said, there's two models. And I didn't say the other model wasn't law. I said peace through international law and international mechanisms that we have. Or there is an ideology that force is law. So what I'm saying is the international legal system that we have as the cornerstone is the only one that succeeds. We do not succeed through conquest and ethnic cleansing and through force. It doesn't work. I mean, if we. If we learn anything from what the panel was saying about Goldstone, But I was talking about 1982. There was the Sean McBride Commission against that. It didn't solve the conflict. It doesn't solve it. It makes it worse. Thank you.

A

Thank you very much. I'm sure you agree, karma, that there often is when you are trying to make peace, there is tension between the priority of peace and the priority of justice. The United nations refuses to be any part, even a witness, to a peace agreement that gives blanket amnesty for past crimes. And this is what I call, you know, important progress that has been made. But, you know, when are you going to have, you know, a little bit of peace and a little bit of justice? How you are going to work that out? You cannot always do it at the same time.

B

That tension, a little less peace process and a little more justice would get us to that.

A

Well, that is one view. What I mean is that, you know, there is. That tension is real. But you are 100% right that you cannot have. You cannot have peace based on injustice. Yes. Definitely not. Mary, I've got lot. Yeah, just two or three questions, because that's what all we have time for. Just one second question.

G

The question to.

A

I am sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah.

F

Well, I have three answers to one question. First of all, I was in Israel. I spoke to the radio at least three times every day.

A

When?

F

What hours? Sorry. No, no, from the first day. From the first day, by the way, during the third day. I mean, when the French foreign minister, it was on the third day, came with his initiative. I even went to the television. But I found something very interesting. On ourselves, we hear only what we want to hear. So I tell you where I was and what I said. I understand that you did not hear me. I want to say something on the two model approach. I don't think that we can achieve peace by using power. I think that if this was what people understood from my presentation, I was wrong. But I don't believe that international law is the solution. I don't believe it because. Let me tell you a story, short story. When we tried to convince Palestinians and Israelis to get signatures on our vision, and we got about 450,000 signatures on both sides. We visited almost everybody. So we went to Washington and we met very important people. One of them, Paul Volfovic, he was a deputy defense minister and he gave us his vision. It was before the Iraq invasion. And he explained us how America will bring law and democracy to the Middle East. And he said, once you get rid of tyranny, law and democracy shall explode. So Professor Nusseiba was smiling. He asked him, why do you smile? And Sari tells him, can I tell you really what I think he said? Of course. He said, look, my family tree starts somewhere during the seventh century in Jerusalem, so I know something about the Middle East. Probably you are right. When you speak about London or Washington, let me tell you, in the Middle east, when you will get rid of tyranny, everything explode. But democracy and law. Since Americans came to Iraq and Afghanistan in order. I had it in politics. It did not help. Anyhow, since America invaded Iraq in order to bring law and democracy, hundreds of thousands lost their lives. Probably Professor Na was right.

A

Yeah. I can assure you that karma did not speak the same language as Mr. Wolfowitz. Yes.

G

Mary, I'm just going to give you two questions because we're running out of time. One comes from Richard Millett.

C

Is he here?

D

What?

G

Shall I read it?

A

Yes, please.

G

It's to Colonel Travers. Did you investigate suicide bombings as a weapon, and do you seek to have them banned?

A

The other question is.

G

What other question? I can't quite read his or her name. A Al Qadi or Al Qaedi or something.

C

Al Qaeda.

G

How can we make the Arab peace initiative palatable to the Israeli public?

A

Thank you very much.

D

Well, I think the first question is directed at me, and the second question is at somebody else. Is that right? Yeah, I think so, yeah. We determined our mandate in time, distance, prior to Operation castle ed on the 27th of December to June of that year, June 2008, so that we could examine all of the implications leading up to that operation, all of the implications leading up to that operation, and perhaps to determine the justifications for that military operation. And in so doing, we had to examine very carefully the actions of Hamas and indeed of other dissident groups in Gaza. That included rocket attacks into southern Israel and martyr attacks into southern Israel. And we examined those insofar as we could without being able to visit the impact sites. And we would have wanted to visit the impact sites. We were unable to do so. But we did invite and we did receive submissions and visits to our inquiries in Port Geneva and in Amman from people who had direct experience of the constant terror and. And difficulty associated with these attacks on kibbutz and towns and villages in southern Israel. And we were very, very captured and taken. We took on board their commons. And we were very sympathetic. And our findings reflect that very definitely. May I also say that when I lived In Israel and 1981, 82, we came under Katushka attack from south Lebanon, and in one instance, Katushka rocket landed very, very close to our home. So not alone do I have an understanding from the target end of what these are like, but so do my wife and four children. So we have a full. A very definite appreciation of what terrorist attacks are like. We did not investigate suicide bombing incidents because, as far as I'm aware, none occurred during that period. Had they occurred during that period, we would most certainly have investigated them. The defense that Hamas have offered us during our interviews was that the rocket and mortar attacks into southern Israel are the only resources we have available. They have available to them. We judge that that is not excuse enough for that kind of action. It's indiscriminate and attacks an undefended civilian population. But the direct answer about suicide bombing, we did not investigate because we didn't encounter any. Thank you.

A

Thank you very much. Christine, you want to say. To add something.

C

I just wanted to add one other remark about international law. The suggestion has been made that the Goldstein report allocates blame, and a preferred model would be to look at responsibility. What international law does, of course, is allocate responsibility. It allocates state responsibility. It allocates individual responsibility on the basis of law. And I think it's extremely important that the emphasis is not just on various participants in this particular situation, but the responsibility of the international community itself. Colonel Travers referred to the international community with respect to the manufacture and sale of weapons. I would also emphasise that the international community recently. Recently has talked a great deal about the responsibility to protect. And the responsibility to protect, yes. It is first upon individual states with respect to their own citizens. It is also on the international community to take measures to protect civilians wherever they are, when they are not being protected within their own communities. And I think that we tend to ignore those parts of international law that do not necessarily conform with the sort of straightforward model and need to look at who has got responsibility, where, in what circumstances and how that should be allocated.

A

Thank you very much indeed. Do I understand that you wanted to say a few words about the Arab peace plan?

B

I think you should answer.

A

I will say something, as.

F

I think that it is the right strategy. I think that we did a mistake. We Israelis, we did a mistake when. When we were not listening. I think that we do not understand the change within the Arab world which is reflected in this initiative. We do not see the change from Khartoum to Beirut. And it is quite a problem. I think that today, many years, probably too late, we understand it. So it is part of Annapolis process. It is part, of course, of Geneva initiative and of our initiative. And I believe that every political process of peace process will start with the vision of the Arab Peace Initiative.

A

Thank you very, very much indeed. I would like to add one or two points to that. I think it is good to hear from an Israeli former minister that the Israelis have made a mistake in not picking up, having ignored for now 10 years that initiative that offered Israel total peace. Is it 2002?

F

Yes.

A

I thought it was 2000 that offered Israel total peace and diplomatic relations. It hasn't been picked up. But I think, you know, as an Arab myself, I think we have to blame also the Arab governments that they didn't carry that ball. You know, they put it on the table and practically walked away. I think they should have carried it a little bit better than they had. But you see, I take one or two points that have been said by both karma and Mr. Ayalon. We need peace. If we do not have peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the whole region will see much, much worse developments than we have seen until now. The priority of that problem, I think, cannot be ignored. It is unfortunately ignored. I will add one thing. The Israelis and the Palestinians are definitely the most intelligent people in our region. I recognize that. But it happens in history. It has happened in other regions. And it is definitely true in that in this particular case, they cannot solve their problem alone. They are incapable of solving it alone. So this legend of putting the Israelis and the Palestinians together and hoping that they will somehow wake up one day and say, let's embrace an and make peace is nonsense. And I think that the international community knows that or should know that. They need a catalyst, they need support, they need mediators. They need. I think Mr. Allen said it in so many words. The international community has got to really raise its voice in talking to the Israelis and the Palestinians and saying peace is not only necessary for you, it is necessary for all of us. That is not happening. That must happen. And I think the purpose of meetings like this is to make people aware that there is a responsibility of the international community at large, governments, civil society, academics, everybody else, to help push, if necessary, the Palestinians and the Israelis to make the peace that they and we all need. Having said that, I would like to thank you all very, very much for being here and ask you to thank our panelists for contribution.