HADARIM PRISON, Israel — Having spent the last 15 years in an Israeli prison, I have been both a witness to and a victim of Israel’s illegal system of mass arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners. After exhausting all other options, I decided there was no choice but to resist these abuses by going on a hunger strike. Some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners have decided to take part in this hunger strike, which begins today, the day we observe here as Prisoners’ Day.

Read more: Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons – The New York Times

When Murray McCully this week predicted there would be some international organisations popping champagne corks when he steps down on May 1, he under sold himself.

The list will be a lot longer than that.

Read more: Audrey Young: Long list of people glad to see Murray McCully gone – National – NZ Herald News

The Trump Administration should withdraw the US from the Council

The U.N. “Human Rights” Council starts its main annual session on Monday in Geneva with elected members and human-rights aficionados such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Qatar settling into their seats. The question hanging over the head of President Trump is whether his administration will take its place beside these other states and legitimize the most anti-Israel, twisted bastion of moral relativism in the U.N. system.Barack Obama deliberately designed a quicksand trap before leaving office. He put the U.S. forward for Human Rights Council membership in a U.N. election that occurred just ten days before the American presidential election. Attempting to rule from the grave, Obama knew full well that the U.S. would be occupying a three-year spot that officially commenced on January 1, 2017. The Bush administration had refused to join the Council, or to pay for it, when the Council was first created as a faux renovation of the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission back in 2006. Joining the Council was one of Obama’s very first foreign-policy moves in 2009.

Read more: U.N. Human Rights Council — Trump Administration Should Withdraw | National Review

OPINION: Dov Bing and Colin Rubenstein (This won’t give peace a chance, February 15) make a number of untruthful claims regarding New Zealand’s principled leadership in co-sponsoring UN Security Council resolution 2334 and our reported letter to the New Zealand foreign minister advising support for the resolution.

As specialists in international conflict resolution and Palestine-Israel we believe that when addressing issues of international conflict it’s crucial to apply an evidence-based approach.

It is unfortunate that Bing and Rubenstein appear to disagree. They claim that New Zealand’s role in co-sponsoring resolution UN2334 only “damages prospects for peace” and that chances for successful peace negotiations are “made fainter by this resolution”.

Unfortunately they ignore what we actually know from research on the conditions for successful peace negotiations.

Read more: Opinion: Evidence-based policy, not double standards, drives peace | Stuff.co.nz

OPINION: New Zealand’s role in co-sponsoring United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2334 isn’t anything to cheer about for those who care more about peace than symbolism. In fact, it damages prospects for peace.In fact, we have already seen in recent days the backlash that has occurred in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in the form of reciprocal, unilateral moves regarding how Israeli law treats unauthorised outposts built on private Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Israel’s High Court is expected to strike down this unhelpful law – but the popular anger that motivated the vote has the hallmarks of a symbolic protest as a response, in no small part, to UN Resolution 2334. Many Israelis viewed the resolution itself as a unilateral diplomatic move on behalf of Palestinian interests, as well as a total disregard for the statistically verifiable restraint Israel placed on settlement activity during the Obama years – contrary to the media narrative promoted by politicised NGOs.

Now, we have seen a few New Zealand-based activist academics calling on Wellington to compound one mistake with a far greater one and impose sanctions on Israel. They insist that their demand would only mean translating the spirit of the resolution into action – thus proving hollow Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully’s claim that his resolution wasn’t one-sidedly anti-Israel.

Read more: Dov Bing and Colin Rubenstein: UN resolution only makes settlement issue harder to resolve | Stuff.co.nz

Thought provoking…

The author walks past Ofer Prison near Ramallah, during a Palestinian protest outside the facility in November 2015. (photo credit:COURTESY / JONATHAN BROWN)

By HUNTER STUART

February 15, 2017 12:17

IN THE summer of 2015, just three days after I moved to Israel for a year-and-a-half stint freelance reporting in the region, I wrote down my feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A friend of mine in New York had mentioned that it would be interesting to see if living in Israel would change the way I felt. My friend probably suspected that things would look differently from the front-row seat, so to speak.

Boy was he right.

Before I moved to Jerusalem, I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was. I grew up Protestant in a quaint, politically correct New England town; almost everyone around me was liberal. And being liberal in America comes with a pantheon of beliefs: You support pluralism, tolerance and diversity. You support gay rights, access to abortion and gun control.

Read more: How a pro-Palestinian American reporter changed his views on Israel and the conflict – Arab-Israeli Conflict – Jerusalem Post

By YISHAI FLEISHER

FEB. 14, 2017

HEBRON, West Bank — Last week, Israel’s Parliament passed a controversial bill that allows the government to retroactively authorize contested West Bank Jewish communities by compensating previous Palestinian land claimants. Opposition parties warn that this law could open Israel to prosecution at The Hague, and the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said, “Israel’s Parliament has just approved a law to legalize theft of Palestinian land.” This theme has been echoed recently at the Paris peace conference, in a United Nations Security Council resolution and by a major policy speech by then Secretary of State John Kerry, which all condemned settlements.

Israel never seems to have a good answer to accusations against the settlement enterprise. Whenever the claim that Israel stole Palestinian lands is heard, Israel’s answers inevitably are: “We invented the cellphone,” “We have gay rights,” “We fly to help Haiti after an earthquake.” Obvious obfuscation. And when pushed to explain why the much-promised two-state solution is perennially stuck, the response is always to blame Arab obstructionism.

Read more