BAGHDAD, March 20 — Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint
KIRK SEMPLE
Published: March 21, 2007
Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Joint Staff, said American soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat.
“Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said, according to a transcript. “We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back.”
General Barbaro offered no further details.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a top American military spokesman in Baghdad, said late Tuesday that his office had no record of the bombing but that it was researching it. “I don’t know what event he’s talking about,” Colonel Garver said.
Agence France-Presse, quoting an unidentified American military official, said the incident occurred Sunday. The bombers parked the vehicle across the street from a school then ran away, leaving the children inside, the official told the news agency. The blast killed the children and three other civilians and wounded seven, the official said.
The American command on Tuesday gave its account of a disputed raid on a Shiite mosque in Baghdad late Monday that infuriated many in the Shiite community and led some to question their cooperation with the latest American-led security plan.
According to an American military statement, Iraqi soldiers stormed the mosque, in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya in northwestern Baghdad, in search of suspected militants. About 50 people were temporarily detained during the raid, but nobody was arrested and no bomb-making materials were discovered, military officials said.
Contrary to claims made by neighbors and Shiite community leaders, the American command said its soldiers had remained outside the building during the entire operation. Past American raids of mosques have provoked bitterness among Muslims here, who resent having their sacred spaces dragged into the war.
After the raid, the joint American-Iraqi force came under attack by about 20 gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms, according to the military statement. The Americans returned fire, the statement said, killing three people it described as insurgents.
Shiite community leaders and residents in the neighborhood of the raid gave a significantly different account. They said American forces had stormed not one but two mosques, both linked to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric.
As the soldiers entered one of the mosques they opened fire on worshipers who tried to flee, said Salah Abdul Qadir, the spokesman for the Shiite Endowment, a government organization that supervises all Shiite mosques in Iraq.
Mr. Sadr, who commands a powerful and often unruly militia, has instructed his fighters not to resist the latest security plan. At the same time, he has publicly denounced the expanded American presence in Baghdad and demanded that American troops stay out of the neighborhoods he controls.
The reaction to the raid among much of the elected Shiite leadership was muted, suggesting either that the American account held up in their view or that they were not willing to create a stir that could risk imperiling the new American-Iraqi security plan.
Fierce clashes on Tuesday near Falluja, pitting Sunni Arab tribal fighters and the Iraqi police on one side and insurgents from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia on the other, killed 32 insurgents, 10 tribesmen and 8 police officers, according to officials in the Falluja police department.
The fighting, in the contested area of Amiriya near Falluja, involved members of the Anbar Salvation Council, a federation of tribes that banded together last September to resist the Sunni jihadists of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
Hamid al-Eesouwi, the leader of one of the tribes, said in a telephone interview that the tribal federation decided to carry out its assault on the insurgents after suicide truck bombers struck in tribal territory south of Falluja on Friday using vehicles laden with chlorine gas and explosives.
A concealed bomb exploded next to an American patrol near the Jadriya Bridge in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing one American soldier, an official at the Interior Ministry said.
Three car bombs in the capital — near a mosque in the Obaydie neighborhood, in an industrial area of Sheik Omar Street and near the 14th of July Bridge, leading to the Green Zone — killed at least eight people and wounded at least 28, the ministry official said.
Mortar shells landed in the Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad, killing at least six people and wounding 15, the official said, and 32 bodies were found in various locations around Baghdad. Gunmen assassinated Capt. Hussain Abdullah, an officer in the intelligence service of the Interior Ministry, the official said.
The body of Taha Yassin Ramadan, Saddam Hussein’s vice president, who was hanged before dawn on Tuesday, was flown by American helicopter to an American military base outside Tikrit. Mr. Ramadan’s body, wrapped in an Iraqi flag, was buried in the village of Awja near a marble tomb where Mr. Hussein’s body was interred after he was hanged in December. Last week the bodies of Mr. Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, were unearthed and reburied outside the tomb.
Alissa J. Rubin and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Falluja, Ramadi and Tikrit contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
mercredi 21 mars 2007
mardi 20 mars 2007
Freed Hamas leader shuns terror tactics
By Joshua Mitnick in Aroura, West Bank, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:20pm GMT 17/03/2007
A prominent Hamas leader released after 15 years in Israeli jails is urging the Islamic group to abandon bus bombings and start talking to the Jewish state.
The last time Salah Arouri was free, he was a Hamas commander raising money and winning recruits for the violent militant group, on the fringe of the first Palestinian uprising.
As his first five-year sentence was extended by successive Israeli military orders, he became the voice for thousands of Palestinian inmates in talks with the Israeli prison authorities and rubbed shoulders with almost all of Hamas's jailed leaders. He was released unexpectedly last weekend, on the eve of Hamas's unity coalition agreement with Fatah which made it the senior partner in the Palestinian government.
The accord has been criticised by Israel, America and Europe for not recognising the Jewish state or committing to honour peace agreements with it, and for failing to renounce violence.
But Arouri, 40, insisted that Hamas's rise to the forefront of Palestinian politics, triggered by its election victory last year, signalled a shift away from violence in favour of political process and the attempt to establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He also admitted that the campaign of bomb attacks against Israeli civilians had harmed the Palestinians' cause, and expressed hope that it would end.
"We are harmed if we target civilians," he said, adding that political progress would be easier if Israel would also show restraint. "At the end of the day, the fruit of military actions is political action," he said. "All wars end with truces and negotiations."
Arouri's release was celebrated on the front pages of Palestinian newspapers. He gave a press conference and received visits from leading Palestinian figures spanning the political spectrum.
Yet the more moderate tone he now adopts towards the struggle with Israel, compared with that of some Hamas leaders, suggests a possible advantage for Israel in releasing others among its 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, whose views may have changed during their incarceration - like the former IRA and Protestant paramilitary prisoners who eventually backed political engagement in Northern Ireland.
"The development of the Islamic movement from a militarilyoriented party into a political movement is a desirable outcome," he said. "It is a natural process."
In prison Arouri learned Hebrew and took correspondence courses on Israeli politics through the Hebrew University. As he held court after his release, with male relatives and acquaintances seated around a table spread with coconut chocolate bars, he insisted that Hamas was now resigned to the de facto acceptance of peace accords reached with Israel under the leadership of the rival Fatah faction.
Hamas's leaders have refused to recognise the legitimacy of Israel or to discuss the possibility of negotiations with it, offering instead an extended truce in return for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from all territory occupied since 1967.
In the policy guidelines of the unity government, confirmed by the Palestinian parliament yesterday, Hamas would agree only a vague reference to respecting the peace agreements with Israel negotiated under Fatah. Arouri said: "Israel is a reality, but not a legitimate reality." However, Arouri, who was consulted about the unity deal while in prison, added: "It is political participation, whether it is labelled as respect of agreements, or resolutions, or commitment to summit decisions."
Hamas has demanded the release of more than 1,000 security prisoners like Arouri in return for Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit, abducted last June at the Gaza Strip border. Israel is thought to be in indirect talks with the Islamic militants on a prisoner swap, but a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, denied that Arouri's release was connected. Returning last week to his home village of Aroura, a West Bank hamlet of 3,000, Arouri realised how much he had missed while in jail. Village elders, including his father, had died, while he had never met young relatives such as his 11-year-old niece Aya.
Some are tipping him as a shoo-in on Hamas's parliamentary slate in the next election. But Arouri admitted that more pressing was his imminent wedding to the woman who has been waiting years for his prison release. "All I can see is the near future, and that is my wedding tonight," he said. Was he nervous? "No," he replied with a grin. "In prison, you learn how to keep cool under pressure."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/18/wmid18.xml
Last Updated: 11:20pm GMT 17/03/2007
A prominent Hamas leader released after 15 years in Israeli jails is urging the Islamic group to abandon bus bombings and start talking to the Jewish state.
The last time Salah Arouri was free, he was a Hamas commander raising money and winning recruits for the violent militant group, on the fringe of the first Palestinian uprising.
As his first five-year sentence was extended by successive Israeli military orders, he became the voice for thousands of Palestinian inmates in talks with the Israeli prison authorities and rubbed shoulders with almost all of Hamas's jailed leaders. He was released unexpectedly last weekend, on the eve of Hamas's unity coalition agreement with Fatah which made it the senior partner in the Palestinian government.
The accord has been criticised by Israel, America and Europe for not recognising the Jewish state or committing to honour peace agreements with it, and for failing to renounce violence.
But Arouri, 40, insisted that Hamas's rise to the forefront of Palestinian politics, triggered by its election victory last year, signalled a shift away from violence in favour of political process and the attempt to establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He also admitted that the campaign of bomb attacks against Israeli civilians had harmed the Palestinians' cause, and expressed hope that it would end.
"We are harmed if we target civilians," he said, adding that political progress would be easier if Israel would also show restraint. "At the end of the day, the fruit of military actions is political action," he said. "All wars end with truces and negotiations."
Arouri's release was celebrated on the front pages of Palestinian newspapers. He gave a press conference and received visits from leading Palestinian figures spanning the political spectrum.
Yet the more moderate tone he now adopts towards the struggle with Israel, compared with that of some Hamas leaders, suggests a possible advantage for Israel in releasing others among its 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, whose views may have changed during their incarceration - like the former IRA and Protestant paramilitary prisoners who eventually backed political engagement in Northern Ireland.
"The development of the Islamic movement from a militarilyoriented party into a political movement is a desirable outcome," he said. "It is a natural process."
In prison Arouri learned Hebrew and took correspondence courses on Israeli politics through the Hebrew University. As he held court after his release, with male relatives and acquaintances seated around a table spread with coconut chocolate bars, he insisted that Hamas was now resigned to the de facto acceptance of peace accords reached with Israel under the leadership of the rival Fatah faction.
Hamas's leaders have refused to recognise the legitimacy of Israel or to discuss the possibility of negotiations with it, offering instead an extended truce in return for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from all territory occupied since 1967.
In the policy guidelines of the unity government, confirmed by the Palestinian parliament yesterday, Hamas would agree only a vague reference to respecting the peace agreements with Israel negotiated under Fatah. Arouri said: "Israel is a reality, but not a legitimate reality." However, Arouri, who was consulted about the unity deal while in prison, added: "It is political participation, whether it is labelled as respect of agreements, or resolutions, or commitment to summit decisions."
Hamas has demanded the release of more than 1,000 security prisoners like Arouri in return for Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit, abducted last June at the Gaza Strip border. Israel is thought to be in indirect talks with the Islamic militants on a prisoner swap, but a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, denied that Arouri's release was connected. Returning last week to his home village of Aroura, a West Bank hamlet of 3,000, Arouri realised how much he had missed while in jail. Village elders, including his father, had died, while he had never met young relatives such as his 11-year-old niece Aya.
Some are tipping him as a shoo-in on Hamas's parliamentary slate in the next election. But Arouri admitted that more pressing was his imminent wedding to the woman who has been waiting years for his prison release. "All I can see is the near future, and that is my wedding tonight," he said. Was he nervous? "No," he replied with a grin. "In prison, you learn how to keep cool under pressure."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/18/wmid18.xml
lundi 19 mars 2007
Israeli TV documentary: Egyptians killed captured Israeli soldiers in 1973 war
The Associated Press
Published: March 18, 2007
JERUSALEM: Egyptians killed "dozens, if not hundreds" of captured Israeli soldiers in the 1973 Mideast war, according excerpts of an Israeli TV documentary screened Sunday, responding to charges that Israeli forces killed captured Egyptian soldiers in an earlier conflict.
Channel 10 TV showed parts of interviews with Israelis who served in the 1973 conflict, relating specific cases in which they said Egyptian forces killed soldiers who had been captured or had surrendered.
The Israeli commercial TV channel said its documentary was a response to the outcry over a different program shown earlier this month on Israeli state TV about the 1967 conflict.
Egyptian media said that the program showed that Israeli forces executed 250 captured Egyptian soldiers, sparking widespread outrage in Egypt and a crisis in relations between the two countries, which signed a peace treaty in 1978.
The documentary producer denied that his film made such an allegation. Participants said the 250 were armed Palestinian fighters killed in a battle, but senior Egyptian officials demanded an investigation.
In the 1973 war, Israeli forces were caught by surprise in a two-front lighting attack by Egyptian and Syrian armies. Thousands of Israeli soldiers on the front lines were killed, wounded or captured.
The Channel 10 documentary showed film of what it said were Israeli soldiers, their hands bound behind their backs, shot to death in the Golan Heights and the Sinai desert.
Defense correspondent Alon Ben-David concluded, "Investigations of the Egyptian army's behavior in wars against Israel will find dozens, if not hundreds, of cases of captured Israeli soldiers murdered in cold blood by their Egyptians captors."
Egyptian government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
One of the ex-soldiers, Issachar Ben-Gavriel, said he witnessed one of the incidents. He said he was one of a group of 19 Israeli soldiers who surrendered at the Suez Canal, flying white flags and raising their hands. "They (Egyptians) just shot them," he said, "11 guys."
Another Israeli who fought in the 1973 war, Eitan Mor-Gan, said he was in a group of captured soldiers who were lined up against a wall. Mor-Gan said before opening fire at them, an Egyptian officer told the soldiers, "I will kill whoever stays on the ground. Whoever manages to get up will be saved."
In another case, an ex-soldier told of a fighter in his unit who was captured alive but beaten to death during interrogation.
Ben-David said the interviews were done during a visit by the ex-soldiers to the sites of the Sinai desert battles, which have been turned into museums by the Egyptians.
Published: March 18, 2007
JERUSALEM: Egyptians killed "dozens, if not hundreds" of captured Israeli soldiers in the 1973 Mideast war, according excerpts of an Israeli TV documentary screened Sunday, responding to charges that Israeli forces killed captured Egyptian soldiers in an earlier conflict.
Channel 10 TV showed parts of interviews with Israelis who served in the 1973 conflict, relating specific cases in which they said Egyptian forces killed soldiers who had been captured or had surrendered.
The Israeli commercial TV channel said its documentary was a response to the outcry over a different program shown earlier this month on Israeli state TV about the 1967 conflict.
Egyptian media said that the program showed that Israeli forces executed 250 captured Egyptian soldiers, sparking widespread outrage in Egypt and a crisis in relations between the two countries, which signed a peace treaty in 1978.
The documentary producer denied that his film made such an allegation. Participants said the 250 were armed Palestinian fighters killed in a battle, but senior Egyptian officials demanded an investigation.
In the 1973 war, Israeli forces were caught by surprise in a two-front lighting attack by Egyptian and Syrian armies. Thousands of Israeli soldiers on the front lines were killed, wounded or captured.
The Channel 10 documentary showed film of what it said were Israeli soldiers, their hands bound behind their backs, shot to death in the Golan Heights and the Sinai desert.
Defense correspondent Alon Ben-David concluded, "Investigations of the Egyptian army's behavior in wars against Israel will find dozens, if not hundreds, of cases of captured Israeli soldiers murdered in cold blood by their Egyptians captors."
Egyptian government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
One of the ex-soldiers, Issachar Ben-Gavriel, said he witnessed one of the incidents. He said he was one of a group of 19 Israeli soldiers who surrendered at the Suez Canal, flying white flags and raising their hands. "They (Egyptians) just shot them," he said, "11 guys."
Another Israeli who fought in the 1973 war, Eitan Mor-Gan, said he was in a group of captured soldiers who were lined up against a wall. Mor-Gan said before opening fire at them, an Egyptian officer told the soldiers, "I will kill whoever stays on the ground. Whoever manages to get up will be saved."
In another case, an ex-soldier told of a fighter in his unit who was captured alive but beaten to death during interrogation.
Ben-David said the interviews were done during a visit by the ex-soldiers to the sites of the Sinai desert battles, which have been turned into museums by the Egyptians.
mardi 13 mars 2007
Dispute Halts Delivery Of Atomic Fuel to Iran
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign ServiceTuesday
March 13, 2007
MOSCOW, March 12 -- Russian officials said Monday that nuclear fuel will not be delivered to Iran this month as planned and that the September completion of a Russian-built nuclear power plant will be postponed because of an escalating dispute between the two countries.
Moscow and Tehran have been arguing for weeks over what Russia calls Iran's failure to make $25 million monthly payments on the $1 billion plant in the southern city of Bushehr. Iran insists that it has made all scheduled payments.
"It will be impossible to launch the reactor in September, and there can be no talk about supplying fuel this month," the state-owned Russian contractor Atomstroiexport said in a statement Monday.
Underlying the financial dispute appears to be increasing Russian hostility to Iran's suspected desire to build nuclear weapons and its flouting of international demands that it stop the enrichment of uranium and cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The delivery of nuclear fuel would be a major boost for the Iranians. "We hope the Russians won't politicize" the delivery, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Sunday, according to news agencies. "This should be done within the next two weeks. We expect the Russians to fulfill their commitments."
The U.N. Security Council imposed limited sanctions on Iran in December after it refused to stop uranium enrichment. Iran says it has no intention of producing highly enriched uranium necessary for making nuclear weapons. Construction of the Bushehr plant was not affected by the sanctions, but Russia has in the past slowed construction as a lever to pressure Iran.
The Security Council is considering further penalties against Tehran.
"We do not need a nuclear Iran or an Iran with the potential to create them," a Russian official whose name was not disclosed told Russian news agencies Monday. "We will not play any anti-U.S. games with it, should [Iran] decide against giving any answers to the IAEA's questions. Let them answer for themselves."
The unidentified source accused Iran of abusing its good relations with Moscow. The Iranians "have done nothing to help us convince our colleagues of Tehran's consistency," the official said. "This is detrimental to us, especially to our foreign policy and our image."
Russia has been building the Bushehr nuclear plant under a contract signed in 1995, and the two countries have close economic ties. Russia has repeatedly defended Iran's right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program and has resisted efforts by the United States and the European Union to level harsher sanctions against the country.
Iran reportedly wants to make payments in euros, not dollars, which Russia has refused to accept without renegotiating the contract. There are reports here that the contract has become unprofitable and Russia may want to extract additional financial and political concessions.
Talks broke down last week when Russian officials became angered by public statements from the head of the Iranian delegation blaming Moscow for the standoff.
Iran's central bank issued a new bank note Monday that includes a nuclear symbol, the Associated Press reported. The note shows electrons flying around a nucleus on a map of Iran.
Washington Post Foreign ServiceTuesday
March 13, 2007
MOSCOW, March 12 -- Russian officials said Monday that nuclear fuel will not be delivered to Iran this month as planned and that the September completion of a Russian-built nuclear power plant will be postponed because of an escalating dispute between the two countries.
Moscow and Tehran have been arguing for weeks over what Russia calls Iran's failure to make $25 million monthly payments on the $1 billion plant in the southern city of Bushehr. Iran insists that it has made all scheduled payments.
"It will be impossible to launch the reactor in September, and there can be no talk about supplying fuel this month," the state-owned Russian contractor Atomstroiexport said in a statement Monday.
Underlying the financial dispute appears to be increasing Russian hostility to Iran's suspected desire to build nuclear weapons and its flouting of international demands that it stop the enrichment of uranium and cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The delivery of nuclear fuel would be a major boost for the Iranians. "We hope the Russians won't politicize" the delivery, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Sunday, according to news agencies. "This should be done within the next two weeks. We expect the Russians to fulfill their commitments."
The U.N. Security Council imposed limited sanctions on Iran in December after it refused to stop uranium enrichment. Iran says it has no intention of producing highly enriched uranium necessary for making nuclear weapons. Construction of the Bushehr plant was not affected by the sanctions, but Russia has in the past slowed construction as a lever to pressure Iran.
The Security Council is considering further penalties against Tehran.
"We do not need a nuclear Iran or an Iran with the potential to create them," a Russian official whose name was not disclosed told Russian news agencies Monday. "We will not play any anti-U.S. games with it, should [Iran] decide against giving any answers to the IAEA's questions. Let them answer for themselves."
The unidentified source accused Iran of abusing its good relations with Moscow. The Iranians "have done nothing to help us convince our colleagues of Tehran's consistency," the official said. "This is detrimental to us, especially to our foreign policy and our image."
Russia has been building the Bushehr nuclear plant under a contract signed in 1995, and the two countries have close economic ties. Russia has repeatedly defended Iran's right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program and has resisted efforts by the United States and the European Union to level harsher sanctions against the country.
Iran reportedly wants to make payments in euros, not dollars, which Russia has refused to accept without renegotiating the contract. There are reports here that the contract has become unprofitable and Russia may want to extract additional financial and political concessions.
Talks broke down last week when Russian officials became angered by public statements from the head of the Iranian delegation blaming Moscow for the standoff.
Iran's central bank issued a new bank note Monday that includes a nuclear symbol, the Associated Press reported. The note shows electrons flying around a nucleus on a map of Iran.
UN to open permanent probe on Israel
Mar. 13, 2007
By TOVAH LAZAROFF
The United Nation's Human Rights Council is expected to place Israel under permanent investigation for its "violations" of international law in the territories - until such time as it withdraws to the pre-1967 border - according to Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
Neuer added that he received that information from diplomatic sources.
It's one of at least four anti-Israel actions he expects the council to take during its fourth session, which started in Geneva on Monday and runs through April 5, Neuer told The Jerusalem Post from Geneva.
The UN body was created in June to replace the Human Rights Commission, which was scrapped because it had a faulty membership composition and repeatedly singled out Israel.
But since its inception, the 47-member body - which includes Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China - has continued to single out the Jewish State. It has issued eight anti-Israel resolutions, and none against any other nation. It has also held three special sessions on Israel.
Neuer and Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Yitzhak Levanon, said they expected this session to continue in that same pattern, although the council is also expected to discuss human rights abuses in other parts of the world, including in Darfur, Sudan.
"I'm expecting there will be some clashes concerning Israel," Levanon told the Post.
Neuer said Israel would be rapped for the Antiquities Authority's construction of an access ramp to the Temple Mount's Mughrabi Gate.
The work has been widely condemned throughout the Muslim world.
Neuer said the council would also take Israel to task for refusing entry to inquiry teams in July and in November. The first team was sent to investigate Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip following the kidnapping by Hamas of Cpl. Gilad Schalit in June.
The second team was dispatched to investigate the accidental discharge of an IDF artillery barrage that killed 19 civilians in Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip in November.
Levanon said the investigators were denied entry because they were overtly biased against Israel.
The Human Rights Council is also set to hear a report compiled by UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard that compares Israeli actions in the territories to that of the former apartheid system in South Africa.
By TOVAH LAZAROFF
The United Nation's Human Rights Council is expected to place Israel under permanent investigation for its "violations" of international law in the territories - until such time as it withdraws to the pre-1967 border - according to Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
Neuer added that he received that information from diplomatic sources.
It's one of at least four anti-Israel actions he expects the council to take during its fourth session, which started in Geneva on Monday and runs through April 5, Neuer told The Jerusalem Post from Geneva.
The UN body was created in June to replace the Human Rights Commission, which was scrapped because it had a faulty membership composition and repeatedly singled out Israel.
But since its inception, the 47-member body - which includes Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China - has continued to single out the Jewish State. It has issued eight anti-Israel resolutions, and none against any other nation. It has also held three special sessions on Israel.
Neuer and Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Yitzhak Levanon, said they expected this session to continue in that same pattern, although the council is also expected to discuss human rights abuses in other parts of the world, including in Darfur, Sudan.
"I'm expecting there will be some clashes concerning Israel," Levanon told the Post.
Neuer said Israel would be rapped for the Antiquities Authority's construction of an access ramp to the Temple Mount's Mughrabi Gate.
The work has been widely condemned throughout the Muslim world.
Neuer said the council would also take Israel to task for refusing entry to inquiry teams in July and in November. The first team was sent to investigate Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip following the kidnapping by Hamas of Cpl. Gilad Schalit in June.
The second team was dispatched to investigate the accidental discharge of an IDF artillery barrage that killed 19 civilians in Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip in November.
Levanon said the investigators were denied entry because they were overtly biased against Israel.
The Human Rights Council is also set to hear a report compiled by UN Special Rapporteur John Dugard that compares Israeli actions in the territories to that of the former apartheid system in South Africa.
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