Posted on June 17th, 2011 by Marian Houk
The UN Secretary-General’s new report raises more questions than answers about two protests that turned deadly in the Golan Heights in the past month in which people who the UN report identified as “civilians”, and “largely young unarmed Palestinians” overran Syrian, UN, and Israeli lines — in an attempt to enter an area under Israeli [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, International Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC, Israel, Landmines, Palestine & Palestinians, Syria, UN Peacekeeping, UN Secretary-General
Posted on June 16th, 2011 by Marian Houk
AFP has written a story from UNHQ/NY, based on an as-yet-unpublished UN report, that apparently says that Palestinian and Syrian demonstrators coming from Syria crossed an “unmarked minefield” in the Golan Heights on May 15 — the day that Israeli forces were surprised by the breach. From the AFP story, published here, it is not [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel, Landmines, Palestine & Palestinians, Syria, UN Peacekeeping, United Nations
Posted on June 7th, 2011 by Marian Houk
There were several Israeli media reports published yesterday (in English) and today (in Hebrew) that the IDF has, in recent weeks, laid new minefields in the Golan — as part of the military preparations against continuing demonstrations at the “border”. According to these reports, new minefields were laid in the weeks between the May 15 [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Syria, UN Peacekeeping, United Nations
Posted on August 15th, 2010 by Marian Houk
An Associated Press report this morning indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have launched a new information offensive against Hizballah. The IDF has taken journalists to the the northern “border” [though there is no agreed border as yet] between Israel and Lebanon, and shown what the IDF claims is evidence that “Hezbollah is moving fighters [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Lebanon, UN Peacekeeping
Posted on August 9th, 2010 by Marian Houk
lsraeli political and security analyst Shlomo Brom, [Brig-Gen {Res}], of the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, INSS, has just written that: “Underlying this incident is the dispute between Israel and Lebanon over the demarcation of the Blue Line separating Lebanon and Israel, as well as Lebanon’s political reality. In its unilateral withdrawal from [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Lebanon, UN Peacekeeping, United Nations
Posted on August 6th, 2010 by Marian Houk
Here is another example of Israeli extreme imprecision about the nature of the demarcation between its territory and Lebanese, in a Haaretz editorial whose sub-headline says: “The government and IDF must understand that not every time is right for demonstrating Israeli sovereignty right up to the last millimeter, certainly not when tension is rising on [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine & Palestinians, UN Peacekeeping
Posted on August 5th, 2010 by Marian Houk
This is what the UN likes best – holding meetings… [This one was, unsurprisingly, "constructive"]. That, and calling on both sides to exercise “maximum restraint” [safely, after the most senior officials in the U.S. administration already used the exact same language]… Here is a statement issued today by the UNIFIL spokesperson in Naqoura, Lebanon: “UNIFIL [...]
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Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Israel, Lebanon, UN Peacekeeping, USA
Posted on January 13th, 2010 by Marian Houk
According to a statement made by the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the French Ambassador to Haiti has visited the “devastated UN headquarters building in Port-au-Prince and said ‘everyone who was in the building is apparently dead’.” The Associated Press (AP) picked up reported Kouchner’s remarks to RFI (or perhaps to RTL, or both) in [...]
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Filed under: Haiti, UN Peacekeeping
Posted on June 26th, 2009 by Marian Houk
The Free Gaza movement has been warned not to try to sail to Gaza — its latest expedition of two ships was supposed to leave Cyprus yesterday but did not, after Cypriot authorities required additional detailed inspections — but the international activists say they “will not back down from Israel’s threats and intimidation” According to [...]
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Filed under: Cyprus, Gaza, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Israel, Law of the Sea Convention, Palestine & Palestinians, Sanctions, UN Peacekeeping, USA
Posted on October 13th, 2008 by Marian Houk
Reports today in the Australian press state that “East Timor president Jose Ramos-Horta has said he wants the United Nations to drop its investigation into bloodshed surrounding a 1999 independence vote from Indonesia. Leaders in East Timor and Indonesia said in July that the issue was closed after expressing regret at the findings of a [...]
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Filed under: East Timor, UN Peacekeeping, UN Security Council
