Venezuela and Bolivia break diplomatic relations with Israel

 

On Tuesday, January 6th, Venezuela ordered Israel’s ambassador expelled from the country on Tuesday in protest over the Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Last Wednesday, January 14th, Venezuela and Bolivia formally broke diplomatic relations with Israel due to the Gazan Offensive. 

Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that Bolivia was breaking diplomatic relations with Israel and urged that Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert be declared war criminals.

The decision by President Hugo Chavez to expel the diplomat appeared to be the strongest reaction yet to the Gaza offensive by any country with ties to Israel.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry announced the move in a statement, saying it “has decided to expel the Israeli ambassador and part of the Israeli Embassy’s personnel.”

“How far will this barbarism go?” Chavez asked on state television before the ambassador’s expulsion was announced. “The president of Israel should be taken before an international court together with the president of the United States, if the world had any conscience.”

Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said its U.N. mission is joining with other countries in demanding the Security Council “apply urgent and necessary measures to stop this invasion.”

While many countries have protested Israel’s offensive, none besides Venezuela so far have expelled the ambassador.

Mauritania, which established relations with Israel in 1999, called home its ambassador from the Jewish state on Monday.

Jordan and Egypt, the other two Arab nations with relations with Israel, summoned their Israeli ambassadors to protest the Gaza attacks, but they have resisted popular calls to expel them.

In the announcement issued by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry, on January 14th, the government cited “the gravity of the atrocities against the Palestinian people.”

The statement accused the Israelis of having “ignored, systematically, calls from the United Nations, violating in a repeated and shameless manner the resolutions approved by the overwhelming majority of their members and placing themselves ever more on the margin of international law.”

It described “19 days of continuous bombardment, the assassination of more than 1,000 people and the destruction of the infrastructure of the population of Gaza,” calling it “a human catastrophe that is unraveling before the eyes of the entire world.”

It further accused Israel of participating in “state terrorism” against “the most weak and innocent human beings: children, women and the aged.”

The statement called for Israeli leaders be tried before an international court for crimes against humanity.

Sources:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/6197446.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/01/14/bolivia.israel/index.html

Total War in Gaza – One thousand dead

 

The official figure of Palestinian dead has now risen to over a thousand. The number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza conflict has reached an “unbearable point” according to UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon.

Ban Ki-Moon also expressed outrage that the UN compound was hit by Israeli fire twice injuring three UN workers.

Israeli forces have moved deeper into Gaza City pounding densely populated neighbourhoods with artillery and tank shells.

The main UN compound in Gaza was in flames today after being struck by Israeli artillery fire, and a spokesman said that the building had been hit by shells containing the incendiary agent white phosphorus.

The attack on the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) came as Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, arrived in Israel on a peace mission and plunged Israel’s relations with the world body to a new low.

Mr Ban told reporters in Tel Aviv that he had expressed “strong protest and outrage” to the Israeli Government over the shelling of the compound and was demanding an investigation. He said that Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, had told him that it was “a grave mistake”.

 

The Israeli military has denied using white phosphorus shells in the Gaza offensive, although an investigation by The Times has revealed that dozens of Palestinians in Gaza have sustained serious injuries from the substance, which burns at extremely high temperatures.

The Geneva Convention of 1980 proscribes the use of white phosphorus as a weapon of war in civilian areas, although it can be used to create a smokescreen. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said today that all weapons used in Gaza were “within the scope of international law”.

The attack on the UN compound came as Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza City and unleashed their heaviest shelling on its crowded neighbourhoods in three weeks of war. At least 15 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attacks, medical officials said, pushing the death toll up towards 1,100

There were reports that the al-Quds hospital in the Tal El Hawa district, Gaza’s second-largest, had been shelled, while more than 500 patients were being treated inside.

An explosion also blasted a tower block that houses the offices of Reuters and several other media organisations, injuring a journalist working for the Abu Dhabi television channel.

 

Sources:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5521925.ece

http://thousand-shades-of-grey.blogspot.com/2009/01/people-in-palestine-are-burying-dead.html

 

In Mexico, State Oil Corporation privatisation measure is halted due to mass protests

In April 2008, a mass demonstration at the Mexican Senate, protested a petroleum privatisation measure which President Felipe Calderon sent onto the Senate for fast-track ratification at the tag end of the session this April.

With More Details:

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/749/38727

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