22 April 2009

Palestinian premier Ismail Haneyya on Tuesday called on the international criminal court to bring Israeli leaders to trial, noting that Israeli soldiers confessed to receiving orders to commit war crimes against unarmed Palestinian civilians during the war on Gaza.

In a speech addressed to the second conference of general attorneys of Islamic states held in Tehran, premier Haneyya said that what happened in Gaza was a shameful affront to humanity, where Palestinian civilians were subjected to Israeli land, naval and aerial attacks over 20 days of a massive war during which IOF troops committed heinous war crimes and violated all norms and laws.

The premier added that the IOF troops killed children and women, burned and bombed unarmed civilians in houses, markets, schools and hospitals, and destroyed civil, security and government buildings all over Gaza.

He underlined that Israel became accustomed to committing crimes against the Palestinian people without being punished by the international community, stressing that Israeli leaders must be prosecuted in international courts for the atrocities they committed in Gaza.

In another context, Jordanian soldier Ahmed Al- Daqamseh, who is serving a life sentence, said Monday that he intends to file a lawsuit with local courts to demand the abolition of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty signed in 1994 and its consequent obligations.

In a press interview conducted with him by Al-Ghad newspaper inside the prison, Daqamseh explained that he wants to take this step because Israel violated the treaty twice in 1998 and last month through polluting Jordanian water with waste materials and sewage disposed from Israeli settlements.

Soldier Daqamseh was sent to jail by the Jordanian state security court in 1997 after he killed seven Israeli female settlers on a visit to Jordan and wounded others when they deliberately and provocatively mocked him as he was performing prayer.

Hamas won't allow foreign interventions to disrupt reconciliation

Khaled Mashaal, the head of the Hamas political bureau, stated Monday that his Movement would not allow the disruption of the inter-Palestinian reconciliation because of the external interventions, highlighting that all Palestinian parties must not use the foreign interference as a key factor in judging the reconciliation.

At the opening of a photo exhibition organized in the Yarmouk refugee camp within the activities held to commemorate the Palestinian prisoner day, Mashaal said that his Movement condemns the international quartet's intrusion and its attempt to impose its conditions on the Palestinian reconciliation.

He also pointed out that the Arabs and Palestinians should not accept that the dialog turns into a never-ending situation especially since the new American administration gives the Arab-Israeli conflict low priority.

In the context of the prisoner day, the Hamas leader underlined that the Palestinian people at home and abroad along with the Arab and Islamic nation and the world's free people will keep their struggle by all means in order to reach the moment of complete freedom for all Palestinian prisoners.

The Hamas leader stressed that there is one price that must be paid by any Israeli premier, which is the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for their soldier Gilad Shalit, adding that the Palestinian resistance is steadfast and knows how to extract the freedom of prisoners.