Just in case the world has forgotten what the Arab-Israel conflict is about, Professor Bashir Bashir, 32, is quick to remind that it is about half-a-century of forcible occupation of Palestinian homes by Israel. It is also about the daily humiliation and brutalisation of the Palestinian people who are forced to live in the biggest open air prison on the face of the earth. The Palestinian professor is an alumni of the London School of Economics and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is an Israeli citizen and a research fellow in the Gilo Centre for Citizenship, Democracy and Civic Education at the Hebrew University and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Bashir is co-editor of ‘The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies', (Oxford University Press, 2008). Hardnews caught up with the professor mid-January in Vienna at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue where Bashir spoke passionately about the Palestinian cause.
 

The Agony of Palestine

international law. The Israeli military are accused of using powerful shells in civilian areas which they knew would cause casualties; using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs; holding civilians as human shields; attacking medical facilities, killing 12 ambulance men, and killing policemen with no military role. The Red Cross protested after the army moved a Palestinian family into a building and shelled it, killing 30. The surviving children clung to the bodies of their dead mothers for four days while the army blocked rescuers from reaching the wounded. One extended family has lost 48 members.

Human Rights Watch has called on the UN Security Council to set up a commission of inquiry. Amnesty International says hitting residential areas with shells that send blasts and shrapnel over a wide area constitutes "prima facie evidence of war crimes". Two leading Israeli human rights organisations have written to the country's attorney-general demanding he investigate the allegations. Almost 540 Israeli citizens have announced that "Israel has returned to openly committing war crimes, worse than what we have seen in a long time", and called for "massive intervention by the international community", asking the world to "condem and not become an accomplice in Israel's crimes".