AFP reports UN should talk to Hamas to end Gaza violence: expert
The United Nations should talk directly to the Islamist Hamas movement in a bid to end the bloody violence in Gaza, the body’s advisor on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories said Monday.The world body can not currently hold direct talks with Hamas, which runs Gaza after winning Palestinian elections but which is considered an illegal extremist group by many UN member states.
“It is imperative that every effort be made to bring the violence to an end. This can be done only by negotiation and mediation,” said John Dugard, the special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
“The United Nations is the obvious body to initiate such talks between Hamas in Gaza, the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah,” Dugard said in a statement.
This Ongoing War provided a personal glimpse of the UN “expert” John Dugard.
Those final words of Dugard, apart from their impact on me, were helpful in letting me put some perspective around the agenda-driven statements we all hear from people in high places. They sound like they know their subject but they are frequently as ill-informed as the most prejudiced partisan.Since his visit here and our meeting, I have closely read some of Dugard’s many reports and speeches as well as compilations (by invaluable watchdogs like Eye on the UN) of some of the outrageous and partisan pronouncements he’s made about Israel’s position and policies in this ongoing war. And I have come to the conclusion he meant what he said. The Israeli side, for him, truly is terra incognita. Completely unknown and mostly not understood.
That is, as Roth explains because Dugard’s job, by definition, is “looking exclusively at one side of a multi-sided conflict.”
Crossposted at Soccer Dad.
