Stephen Lendman

Israel wants it both ways. It demands Palestinians agree to their own occupation, subjugation, persecution, and continued status quo affording them no rights. At the same time, it talks peace.

Issues affecting Palestinians include:

• statehood within 1967 borders (22% of historic Palestine);
• East Jerusalem as its capital;
• full de jure UN membership;
• 44 years of illegal occupation;
• decades of unresolved Israeli crimes of war and against humanity;
• daily land theft and dispossessions;
• illegal detentions and torture;
• argeted assassinations;
• horrific levels of oppression and persecution overall; and
• many other longstanding festering grievances.

For Turkey, relations have deteriorated for years. Cast Lead exacerbated them. So did murdering nine Turkish nationals on May 31, 2010, aboard the Mavi Marmara humanitarian aid ship.

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Stephen Lendman

President Shimon Peres welcoming Mahmoud Abbas at
the President's Residence in Jerusalem in October, 2008.

Previous articles discussed likely Palestinian statehood and full UN membership if proper procedures are followed.

They also suggested Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will belie his supportive rhetoric by betrayal at the 11th hour.

When the General Assembly meets later in September, we'll know which Abbas shows up - a leader representing his people or an Israeli collaborationist like so often before. Smart money says the latter.

A September Anne Suciu and Attorney Limor Yehuda Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) paper headlined, "Human Rights in the Occupied Territories: Possible Implications of the Recognition of Palestinian Statehood," explaining future possibilities under statehood.

They depend on what course Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) choose, how Israel and Washington respond, and which side Western, regional, and other countries support.

ACRI agrees that full de jure UN membership is unlikely. Nonetheless, "the very recognition of Palestinian statehood" by a decisive General Assembly two-thirds majority "would have significant repercussions."

In fact, if statehood and full UN membership are granted, Palestine would "become party to international conventions and international courts." As a result, it would have new tools to uphold its rights as do all other recognized nations.

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John Glaser

Iraqi detainees were severely tortured, beaten, and raped in an Iraqi National Police detention complex in 2006, according to a confidential State Department cable released by WikiLeaks. Discovery by US officials of the abuse did not lead to criminal investigations of the perpetrators and much of the mistreatment was permitted to continue.

On May 30, 2006, “a joint US-Iraqi inspection” of an Iraqi detention facility “discovered more than 1,400 detainees in squalid, cramped conditions,” many of whom were illegally detained. Prisoners “displayed bruising, broken bones, and lash-marks, many claimed to have been hung by handcuffs from a hook in the ceiling and beaten on the soles of their feet and their buttocks.”

The inspectors found a torture contraption where ”a hook…on the ceiling of an empty room at the facility” was “attached [to] a chain-and-pulley system ordinarily used for lifting vehicles” and that “apparent bloodspots stained the floor underneath.” All 41 prisoners interviewed by US inspectors had reported being tortured and 37 juveniles were held illegally.

Rape and sexual abuse, primarily of young teenagers, was also widespread. “A number of juvenile detainees,” reads the cable, “alleged…that interrogators had used threats and acts of anal rape to induce confessions and had forced juveniles to fellate them during interrogations.”

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Occupied Palestine | فلسطين

A man walks past murals depicting martyrs on August 22, 2011 in Gaza City, Gaza.

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