The Goldstone Report: Legal and Political Dimensions
The Institute of Law and the Department of Political Science at BZU organized a legal encounter entitled: "The Goldstone Report: Legal and Political Dimensions" on 20 October 2009.
The French Expert in International Law, addressed the content and structure of the Goldstone report, which was released on the Israeli war on Gaza Strip, and he also referred to the investigations and reports issued by Israel with regard to the war, two months before the Goldstone report.
The expert analyzed the report and its structural divisions, stating the report pointed to the Qassam missiles that were fired by Hamas, as mentioned in 24 pages and 97 paragraphs of the report, less than 5% of the entire report, and the report prepared by Israel contained 35% of the activities of Hamas.
He also pointed to the American and Israeli objections to the said report, and the importance of the report legally, which considered the Israeli war on Gaza as crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The Acting Chairperson of the Political Science Department at BZU, Professor Sameeh Hammoudeh, addressed the political implications of the Goldstone report, dividing the topic into five themes: the search for truth and the stand of the world, international legitimacy and Western dominance, while the 2nd theme entitled "between power and truth," which dealt with the idea of providing information, knowledge and truth in the age of images, international network and computers, as well as the new role of images and media, taking Al-Jazeera as an example. Through the 3rd theme, Hammoudeh explained international relations and the international system between Stability and change, global openness (globalization of humanity), in addition to the new concept of force, human rights organizations and civil society. As to the 4th theme, he talked about the mechanism of the Palestinian political decision-making. While the 5th theme discussed the relationship with reality and to what extent can we tolerate the will of power.
Hammoudeh called for the activation of the universities' role in building the required renaissance.
