West Bank toll
As investigations into the events in Jenin continued to stall, the cost of Israels military campaign in the West Bank became clearer this week. The UN Development Programme, in co-operation with the governments of Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the United States, reported that the offensive caused up to $300 million of damage to Palestinian property. Reconstruction will take over a year.
The report suggests that Nablus was hardest hit. There, the eighteen day occupation produced an estimated $110 million of damage.
Now comes the reconstruction. The report is aimed to pave the way for an injection of donor cash. The UN says that it has already been promised $1.2 billion, in principle, from a variety of sources. But the BBC says that both the UNDP and the head of the World Banks programme in Gaza are remaining realistic. Without an end to the conflict, hopes of reconstruction are meaningless, and the money unlikely to come.
One of the major casualties has been the network of Palestinian websites operating from the territories. At the beginning of April, Israel destroyed the Nablus headquarters of the Palestinian telecoms network, built with EU, US and, more surprisingly, Chinese money. This took out most of the government sites, and most traffic was redirected through the US-based ElectronicIntifada.
According to the BBC, a June 2001 report estimated that twelve thousand Palestinians use the net (one per cent of the population); 3.9 per cent of households have a computer; with 333,867 computers operating in the West Bank and Gaza. But that was then.
(Read or join openDemocracys Witnessing the Middle-East debate)
Unsigning the signed
In another move that has critics accusing the United States of short-sighted unilateralism, the Bush administration announced this week that it will have no formal involvement in the establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC), and will not consider itself bound by the treaty.
The ICC, which will be the worlds first permanent war crimes tribunal, will be based in The Hague and comes into being on 1 July, beginning work early next year. One hundred nations have signed up to the treaty and sixty-six have ratified it. Judge Richard Goldstone, the first chief prosecutor at The Hague war crimes tribunal, said: The US have really isolated themselves and are putting themselves into bed with the likes of China, the Yemen and other undemocratic countries.
Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch agreed, saying, The administration is putting itself on the wrong side of history. Unsigning the treaty will not stop the court. It will only throw the United States into opposition against the most important new institution for enforcing human rights in fifty years. And the Washington Working Group on the ICC described the decision as rash action signalling to the world that America is turning its back on decades of US leadership in prosecuting war criminals since the Nuremberg trials.
So whats the defence? Well, after announcing how the move would neutralise the signature that Bill Clinton put to the treaty in 2000 (before failing to send it for ratification to the Senate), and that the Bush administration was no longer bound in any way to its purpose and objective, US senior diplomat Pierre-Richard Prosper offered some explanation.
First, by unsigning the treaty the US would not be forced to extradite people wanted by the court. This stretches back a long way. From the outset, US opposition to the ICC has been based on fears that it would be used as a political tool to prosecute American soldiers and diplomats. Colin Powell agreed, stating that the court would not be accountable to any higher authority, not even the UN Security Council, and could second-guess the United States after we have tried somebody.
But there was also a more recent logic. What weve learnt from the war on terror, Prosper said, is that rather than creating an international mechanism to deal with these issues, it is better to organise an international mandate that authorises states to use their unilateral tools to tackle the problems we have.
This is a powerful illumination of US thinking, and helps to explain the seeming contradiction between seeking to build an international coalition for the war on terror and the unilateral rejection of so many international treaties.
How the ICC fares without US involvement remains to be seen, but it is more than likely that, without the support of the worlds lone superpower, its authority will be significantly weakened.
Surfin PRC
Meanwhile, web surfers in Shanghai have suffered another clampdown on their net freedoms. The authorities have reportedly shut down two hundred internet cafés in the suburbs of Chinas second largest city. The move is thought to be the opening offensive in a new drive by the central government against harmful content on the web. The aim: to stop the corruption of the young.
The figures are inconclusive, but it is thought that home internet use in China is second only to the US in number. The Chinese Government estimates about thirty million of Chinas 1.3 billion population are logging on. But the authorities want to promote the net as a commercial medium, minimising the space for political dissent.
Much web content is banned pro-democracy sites, foreign news organisations and last year, Chinese authorities are said to have closed down seventeen thousand internet bars that failed to install the Governments compulsory restrictive software, which bans many sites and records user activity. But are they fighting a losing battle?
bin Laden with troubles
Grave-digging in Tora Bora. Four hundred Canadian troops, assisted by a small number of US investigators, have been searching the cave-complexes, tunnels and bunkers in eastern Afghanistan, looking for the remains of one Osama bin Laden.
It is likely that bin Laden fled the region late last year for Pakistan. But the allies just want to check they havent already disposed of the al-Qaeda frontman. This involves a complex process of DNA gathering and testing. Samples taken from the bodies of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are being compared with a list of most wanted bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other nasties.
Of course, the investigators have made it hard for themselves. Many of the cave complexes were sealed by the bombing campaigns. To get in, they need to be re-opened. They have already taken samples from the bodies of twenty-three fighters unearthed from a village cemetery. It is thought these corpses may have been bin Ladens bodyguards.
One grave, prominently marked, caused some excitement. Inspectors thought it might have been that of Osama himself. But, as the BBC put it, visual inspection of the body within apparently showed that was not the case. In other words, the beard wasnt big enough.
The operation hasnt been entirely wasted though. Substantial information has been found lying around about future dastardly plots, and the coalition forces have left everything in a worse state than they found it, destroying bunkers and caves after they have finished there. Oh, and for anyone squeamish, after the grave-digs and bodily inspections, the dead have been re-buried, left to rest in, er, peace.
Im on the brain
Hands up if youve been driven to the point of madness by a fellow commuter with a mobile phone. Well now, youve got more to be mad about. The New Scientist reports alarming new research by Tsuyoshi Hondou, a physicist from Tohokun University in Sendai, Japan, who is currently working at the Curie institute in Paris. Hondou has been testing the electromagnetic radiation levels in the carriages of commuter trains in Tokyo. The trains are usually packed with people using their mobile phones, often to surf the web.
Hondou has found that, taking into consideration the reflection of microwave radiation from the carriage windows and the cumulative effect of the radio waves, the electromagnetic field in a train carriage could exceed the maximum exposure level recommended by the International Committee for Non-Ionising Radiation (ICNIRP).
But this isnt just under extraordinary circumstances. Its possible even if the train is not crowded, Hondou told the New Scientist. If only thirty people, each with a mobile phone that emits radio waves at a power of 0.4 watts, all use their phones at the same time, it is still possible to exceed ICNIRP exposure limits. For the record, phones are allowed to produce two watts of power.
Is this a new environmental issue? Hondou certainly thinks so, adding buses and lifts to his potentially hazardous areas. And the problem is only set to get worse with the proliferation of wireless devices and the like flooding the market. Think that one over as you travel home tonight.
Quotes of the week
Its a new dawn for the country
we only hope the dawn will move very quickly.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmas pro-democracy opposition leader, on being released after nineteen months of house arrest.
Enough is enough.
Dutch hard-right leader, Pim Fortuyn, summarising his views on immigration to the Sunday Times of London, a day before he was assassinated as he left a radio station in Hilversum in the Netherlands.
Useful, frank and focused.
Foreign Minister Naji Sabri of Iraq, describing the three days of talks between his country and the United Nations on the issue of arms inspections. No breakthrough was announced.
Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?
Prince Philip, gaffe-prone husband of Queen Elizabeth II, speaking to Susan Edwards, a wheelchair-bound blind woman who was accompanied by her guide dog.
Contact the Diary editor: dominic.hilton@opendemocracy.net
