Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, has issued a 1-1/2 page report to the General Assembly on the progress in the implementation of the Goldstone Report. This is his response to General Assembly resolution 64/10 calling upon Israel and the Palestinians to carry on internal investigations of the violations of international law documented in the Goldstone Report. (1) The substance of the report is contained in 4 paragraphs on pages 2-3. Under the subheading of “Observations”, the gist of the 4 paragraphs is:

1) At the beginning of 2009 he “visited both Gaza and South Israel in order to help end the fighting and to show my respect and concern for the deaths and injuries of so many people during the conflict in and around Gaza.” He goes on to say he was and remains, “deeply affected by the widespread death, destruction and suffering in the Gaza… weiter lesen

On Saturday Evening, January 3 the President of the General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, arrived at the UN as the Security Council was preparing to hold a closed door meeting about the Gaza Crisis.

Earlier in the day, Israel had escalated the previous 8 days of bombing of Gaza by beginning a ground invasion into Gaza.

The situation in Gaza is that the 1.5 million civilians are trapped in a virtual prison as for the past 18 months prior to the invasion Israel has blockaded the crossing points into Gaza that it controls, and Egypt has closed the one crossing point it has control over.

Responding to the question from a journalist about what his reaction was to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Israeli ground attack,  Brockmann said, “I think it’s a monstrosity. There’s no other way to name it.” (1)

He went on to explain that “once… weiter lesen