The upcoming OECD tourism summit in Jerusalem will test its member countries’ commitment to international law

Sam Bahour and Charles Shamas
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 October 2010

Israel lists tourist sites in occupied territory, such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, as Israeli. Photograph: Michele Falzone/JAI/Corbis

What can be said for the state of international law when international organisations such as the OECD find themselves unable to prevent a member country from bringing its unlawful practice into the life of the organisation itself? In such situations, how can law-abiding member countries avoid being drawn into acquiescence? Later this month, these questions may find answers when Israel hosts an OECD gathering in Jerusalem to discuss global tourism.

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Action Alert : Demand The OECD Cancel Their Planned Tourism Conference in Jerusalem

By Bill Quigley

11 October, 2010
Countercurrents.org

“If it gets any worse,” said Wilda, a homeless Haitian mother, “we’re not going to survive.” Mothers and grandmothers surrounding her nodded solemnly.

We are in a broiling “tent” with a group of women trying to raise their families in a public park. Around the back of the Haitian National Palace, the park hosts a regal statute of Alexandre Petion in its middle. It is now home to five thousand people displaced by the January 2010 earthquake.

Nine months after the quake, over a million people are still homeless in Haiti.

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By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: October 11, 2010

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that a British aid worker killed in an American rescue raid in Afghanistan last week may have been killed by a grenade detonated by a United States special forces unit — not in an explosion of a suicide bomber’s vest detonated by her Taliban captors, as the American command in Afghanistan suggested when it confirmed her death on Saturday.

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JERUSALEM (Ma’an) – Israeli settlers ransacked the home of a Palestinian family in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City early Sunday tossing furniture into the street.

Homeowner Mazin Qirrish said Israeli police provided protection to the settlers as his family and neighbors tried to the prevent the evacuation of their home.

The family’s troubles began 14 September as settlers announced their plan to move in, claiming ownership. An Israeli court recently ruled in favor of the settlers.

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