Palestinians blast PA decree targeting civil society groups
The Palestinian Authority is facing criticism for issuing a decree that allows it to tighten its grip on Palestinian civil society organizations, effectively turning them into government-controlled departments.
The decree was published on March 2, one week after it was secretly approved by the PA government.
Palestinian civil society organizations said they learned about the decree only when it was published in the PA’s official gazette.
Critics described the decree as a vicious assault on public freedoms ahead of the Palestinian general elections.
The new decree obligates civil society organizations to present to the PA an annual action plan and estimated budget for the new fiscal year.
“This means that these groups will be working for Palestinian ministries and not in accordance with their own vision, mission, goals or programs,” several Palestinian society organizations said in a joint statement.
“In other words, the civil society organizations will be treated as government departments of ministries, to whom they will report to. This undermines the professionalism, independence and freedom of civic activity, including the organizations’ monitoring role over the performance of the executive authority and their objective to hold this authority accountable for its violations.”
The controversial decree also stipulates that employee salaries and running costs of the civil society organizations cannot exceed 25% of the annual budget.
“This means that the executive authority is now in control of the groups’ budgets, how they are distributed, their ceiling within the overall budget and the amount of expenses,” the civil society organizations said. “This will result in civic work becoming more like contracting and commercial projects, aimed at stripping them of their national, rights-oriented core. Furthermore, the decree, which granted the government the power to issue regulations on conditions for funding, revealed its attempts to override and dissolve civil society organizations.”
The organizations complained that the decree was issued “within the framework of several ongoing decrees that are drafted in full secrecy and in the midst of the major and accelerating deterioration of the Palestinian political system.”
They pointed out that the decree contradicted the agreement reached last month in Cairo between Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian factions to boost public freedoms ahead of the parliamentary and presidential elections, slated for May 22 and July 31 respectively.
“Additionally, the decree hinders the right of assembly and organization and the right to exercise activities independent of ministries and the executive authority,” the civil society organizations charged. “It also transfers the civil society organizations to ministry branches, which will confiscate the role of their boards of directors. The decree violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 20) and The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 22), which confirms the basic right of freedom of association, independence of activities and financial sources. It also violates several resolutions issued by the UN Human Rights Council, including Resolution (22/6) of 21/03/2013, which calls on states not to impede the functional independence of associations and not to impose restrictions on potential sources of funding in a discriminatory manner.”
Other Palestinian human rights groups and factions said that PA President Mahmoud Abbas was not entitled to issue such decrees on the eve of the parliamentary election. The parliament, known as the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), is the only body authorized to pass legislation, they added.
The PLC, however, has been paralyzed since 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip after overthrowing the PA and expelling its security forces. Since then, Abbas has taken advantage of the absence of a functioning parliament to pass more than 300 laws through “presidential decrees.”
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said that the latest decree was a “continuation of the attempts by the Palestinian Authority leadership to control all fields of public work and tighten its grip on the political system.”
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization also criticized the decree and said it would give the PA more tools to curtail public freedoms and impose restrictions on civil society groups. • demonstrate how Hezbollah has “hundreds of thousands of missiles” and asked “what is going to happen to Lebanon?”
“We are ready to fight,” he informed his interviewer, Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst.
The map was blurred for the audience back home, but Yingst seemed very interested in its content. The former IDF chief of staff said that the map contains the locations of Hezbollah ground forces, launching sites and command posts.
“Everything (they have) is directed at civilian targets and is being conducted from civilian infrastructure,” he said.
Gantz added that each one of these locations has been examined by Israel from all aspects, including the legality of striking it, and that Jerusalem is willing to do so in the event that a new war erupts with Hezbollah.
“This is a target map. Each one of them has been checked legally, operationally, intelligence-wise and we are ready to fight,” Gantz said.
Unlike Gantz, the European Union and the three European signatories to the deal – Germany, France and the UK – were hopeful that progress could be made to return the US to the deal and ensure Iranian compliance with its dictates.
“Things are moving in the right direction and we have had positive signals this week and especially in last few days,” a French diplomatic source said.
The source added the objective was to get everyone around the table before the start of
the Iranian New Year,
on March 20, when Iran slows down administratively.
He added that the window would also narrow from midApril when Iran’s presidential election campaign kicks in.
“We are pooling all our efforts so that this (meeting) can take place in the days or coming weeks,” the source said.
A second European source also said there had been positive signals from the Iranian side.
Diplomats said the obstacle for talks was that Iran was setting preconditions for attending to ensure that there would be a pathway to sanctions relief after the meeting, something the US could not accept.
“It’s not a matter of giving an assurance of something that we’d do. It’s sitting down and making sure that both sides do – as a first step, as a second step, whatever it is – that both sides are taking positive steps,” a senior US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
“We can’t tell them in advance what we’re going to do if we don’t know what they are going to do,” the official said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is also due to meet Coveney during the trip, on Friday said Iran would soon present a “constructive” plan of action.
“As Iran’s FM (foreign minister) & chief nuclear negotiator, I will shortly present our constructive concrete plan of action – through proper diplomatic channels,” Zarif said on Twitter.
Britain, France and Germany decided to suspend the submission of a resolution critical of Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday so as not to harm the prospects for diplomacy after what they said were concessions gained from Iran to deal with outstanding nuclear issues.
In Washington, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said he was “neither optimistic nor pessimistic.”
The Biden administration has put forward a proposal to return both the US and Tehran to the deal, Price said. That proposal was proffered by three European signatories to the deal known as the E3, he said.
“If Iran resumes its full compliance with the JCPOA, the United States will be prepared to do the same,” Price said.
He added that the Biden administration’s overarching objective, “is to ensure that Iran is subject to permanent, verifiable restrictions that prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Sophisticated scanning technology is revealing intriguing secrets about Little Foot, the remarkable fossil of an early human forerunner that inhabited South Africa 3.67 million years ago during a critical juncture in our evolutionary history.
Scientists said last month they examined key parts of the nearly complete and well-preserved fossil at Britain’s national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source. The scanning focused upon Little Foot’s cranial vault – the upper part of her braincase – and her lower jaw, or mandible.
The researchers gained insight not only into the biology of Little Foot’s species but also into the hardships that this individual, an adult female, encountered during her life.
Little Foot’s species blended ape-like and human-like traits and is considered a possible direct ancestor of humans. University of the Witwatersrand paleoanthropologist Ron Clarke, who unearthed the fossil in the 1990s in the Sterkfontein Caves northwest of Johannesburg, and who is a co-author of the new study, has identified the species as Australopithecus prometheus.
“In the cranial vault, we could identify the vascular canals in the spongious bone that are probably involved in brain thermoregulation – how the brain cools down,” said University of
Cambridge paleoanthropologist Amélie Beaudet, who led the study published in the journal e-Life.
“This is very interesting as we did not have much information about that system,” Beaudet added, noting that it likely played a key role in the threefold brain size increase from Australopithecus to modern humans.
Little Foot’s teeth also were revealing.
“The dental tissues are really well-preserved. She was relatively old since her teeth are quite worn,” Beaudet said, though Little Foot’s precise age has not yet been determined.
The researchers spotted defects in the tooth enamel indicative of two childhood bouts of physiological
stress such as disease or malnutrition.
“There is still a lot to learn about early hominin biology,” said study co-author Thomas Connolley, principal beamline scientist at Diamond, using a term encompassing modern humans and certain extinct members of the human evolutionary lineage.
“Synchrotron X-ray imaging enables examination of fossil specimens in a similar way to a hospital X-ray CT-scan of a patient, but in much greater detail.”
Little Foot, whose moniker reflects the small foot bones that were among the first elements of the skeleton found, stood roughly 4’ 3” (130 cm) tall. Little Foot has been compared in importance to the fossil called Lucy that is about 3.2 million years old and less complete.
Both are species of the genus Australopithecus but possessed different biological traits, just as modern humans and Neanderthals are species of the same genus – Homo – but had different characteristics. Lucy’s species is called Australopithecus afarensis.
“Australopithecus could be the direct ancestor of Homo – humans – and we really need to learn more about the different species of Australopithecus to be able to decide which one would be the best candidate to be our direct ancestor,” Beaudet said.
Our own species, Homo sapiens, first appeared roughly 300,000 years ago.
The synchrotron findings build on previous research on Little Foot.
The species was able to walk fully upright, but had traits suggesting it also still climbed trees, perhaps sleeping there to avoid large predators. It had gorilla-like facial features and powerful hands for climbing. Its legs were longer than its arms, as in modern humans, making this the most-ancient hominin definitively known to have that trait.
“All previous Australopithecus skeletal remains have been partial and fragmentary,” Clarke said. (Reuters)