Israeli forces have attacked a flotilla of aid-carrying ships aiming to break the country’s siege on Gaza. At least 15 people were killed and dozens injured when troops intercepted the convoy of ships dubbed the Freedom Flotilla early on Monday, the Israeli military said. The flotilla was attacked in international waters, 65km off the Gaza coast. Footage from the flotilla’s lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showed armed Israeli soldiers boarding the ship and helicopters flying overhead.

Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families – a practice it said ended in the 1990s – it emerged at the weekend. The admission, by the former head of the country’s forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called “antisemitic”.

Britain pledged Tuesday to reform a peculiar legal power that lets judges order the arrest of visiting politicians and generals — a threat currently focused on Israeli visitors that, one day, might be invoked against Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin. Lawyers working with Palestinian activists in recent years have sought the arrest of senior Israeli civilian and military figures under terms of “universal jurisdiction.” This ill-defined legal concept empowers judges to issue arrest warrants for visiting officials accused of war crimes in a foreign conflict. Their latest target is Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister and current opposition leader, who staunchly defends Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. Israel’s government confirmed Tuesday that she canceled a planned London trip this month after her office received news of a secretly issued arrest warrant awaiting her arrival.

This document has been prepared by the Palestinian National Authority’s Ministry of Planning with support from all line ministries, UN agencies, the EC, the World Bank and other partners. This plan will be used to consolidate resources and responses to help the Palestinian people in Gaza rebuild their lives and livelihoods, and as such will form the basis for mobilizing resources and efforts at the international conference in Egypt on March 2, 2009 and provide the guiding framework for all early recovery and reconstruction interventions.

Britain’s UN envoy urged Israel to hold “full, credible and impartial” investigations, echoing similar calls from his US and French counterparts. A report by a UN mission led by Richard Goldstone accused both Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes. The UN Human Rights Council is set to discuss the report again later today. The findings were originally presented by Mr Goldstone, a veteran South African judge and war crimes prosecutor, to the Council two weeks ago, but it decided to defer its response until March. However it reconsidered because of anger among Palestinians that allegations in the report were being ignored. Israel has rejected the Goldstone report as biased and favouring terrorism.

A detailed and damning UN inquiry into January’s war in Gaza has found evidence that war crimes and possible crimes against humanity were committed by Israel and Hamas. The investigation, led by the former South African judge Richard Goldstone, is the most serious international inquiry into the three-week war in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died, and which triggered criticism across the world. It presses for prosecutions.

Several months have passed since the end of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and many Israelis are still not aware of what really happened there. For lack of basic facts, we are forced to accept unconditionally the positions of the official bodies, which assure us that in spite of any doubts, the IDF’s conduct was faultless and public accountability is uncalled for.