In March 2014, ICHR monitored 22 deaths, 15 of which took place in the Gaza Strip and the remainder in the West Bank. The causes of death were distributed as follows:

(1) death in a detention center (Gaza Strip);
(3)deaths under mysterious circumstances (1/West Bank; 2 cases of women/Gaza Strip);
(7) deaths due to negligence of public safety precautions (4/Gaza Strip; 3/ West Bank);
(3) deaths due to family disputes (West Bank);
(7) deaths due to misuse of firearms and internal explosions;
(1) death due to a tunnel incident (Gaza Strip).

Ombudsman, The Independent Commission for Human Rights.  “Monthly Report on Violations of Human Rights and Freedoms.”  PDF.  March 2014.

Related: Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “Palestinian Authority Human Rights Violations Ignored by Media, West.” Gatestone Institution, International Policy Council, February 11, 2014.  Toameh’s article summarizes aspects of the January monthly report:

The report also lists cases of torture and mistreatment in PA and Hamas prisons. ICHR pointed to an increase in the number of torture cases in prisons belonging to the PA’s much-feared Preventive Security Service in the West Bank.

During January, ICHR wrote that it received 56 complaints about torture and mistreatment in Palestinian prisons: 36 in the Gaza Strip and 19 in the West Bank. In addition, the human rights organization received innumerable complaints about arbitrary and unlawful arrests of Palestinians by the PA and Hamas.

Link to “Monthly Reports” (current for 2014), The Independent Commission for Human Rights.

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The “Middle East Conflict (MEC)” — it’s never about Syria, for example, is it? — has been both a real and potential vortex for me since co-moderating an “Israel-Palestine Peace Group” (the initial creator and moderator of the forum turned out a lawyer contracting in the territories and positioned opposite the Jewish State — “Zionist Entity”, “Jewish-majority state”, “Little Satan”, yawn, etc.). hosted on a Georgetown University computer serving an “International Peace and Collaborative Development Network” community.  Now defunct, so both co-moderators may hope, that endeavor bogged down, as do so many of what I call “hate peace peace groups” on Facebook, in deeply bigoted banter.

For the most part, I leave the MEC’s online “intellectual battlespace” to others for scrapping, but it finds me now and then as it did this morning while chatyping with a correspondent about the two-state solution and the impossibility of creating that reality given an 1) Arab bloc that refuses to accept the possibility of a “Jewish State”, 2) the architecture and economy of two governments and multiple entities that derive both substantial income and power from keeping the conflict sustained — no matter what the cost to the refugee generations from 1948 — and 3) the continuing threat of violence against politicos (like Mudar Zahran) positioned as realistic peacemakers but essentially meddling and muddling from exile.

Add the match: Arab Islamic supremacist thought undergirding Arab anti-Semitism in service to Islamic supersession.

Related and recent on that last note: Cohen, Richard.  “Hamas must repudiate the anti-Semitism in its charter.”  Op-Ed.  The Washington Post, April 28, 2014:  “And yet in a corner of the world, the Holocaust is considered no mystery at all. The Jews did it to themselves to foster the creation of Israel. This is what Hamas believes”.

Additional Reference

Boum, Aomar.  “Arab Demonization of Jews Is a Historical Anomaly — and Shows the Limits of Today’s Leaders.”  Tablet, February 21, 2014.

Bowen, Jeremy.  “Have MidEast talks failure killed two-state goal?”  BBC Middle East, April 29, 2014.  “Both sides say they want peace, and there is no reason to doubt them.”  Yes, Mr. Bowen, there is.  Judaism and Israel stall Islamism and Hamas; democracy and Israel stand against pan-Arab nationalist ambition and further dictatorship.  Which is the anachronism: democracy, Judaism, Israel?  Autocracy, Islam, blood-and-soil nationalism, Fatah and Hamas?

FLAME.  “Muslim Arab Anti-Semitism: Why it makes peace very difficult — almost impossible.”

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