The Israeli military has charged two soldiers with endangering the life of a Palestinian boy during Israel's Gaza Strip offensive last winter. The army said the soldiers, who had been searching a building, instructed the nine-year-old to open bags they suspected were booby-trapped. This practice, banned by the Israeli military, is known as using someone as a "human shield," and is widely considered a war crime. The soldiers, both staff sergeants, were charged with "engaging in unauthorized conduct in a way that endangered life and health." The bags the boy was forced to open turned out to be harmless.

Israeli warplanes opened fire on the southern Gaza Strip early March 12, striking two targets near the Egyptian border. There were no immediate reports of injury in the attack, which an Israeli military spokesman said targeted sites in Rafah and Khan Younis. De facto authorities in Gaza told the independent Ma'an News Agency that the strikes targeted a smuggling tunnel along the Rafah border and a warehouse used to store oxygen tanks in Khan Younis. The Israeli military spokesman told Ma'an that the Rafah tunnel was used for smuggling weapons and the Khan Younis warehouse was actually a bomb-making lab. The attacks came after a projectile was fired at southern Israel, causing damage, the official said, adding, "We will not accept the firing of rockets at Israel and will response harshly to any attempts to disrupt the calm." A similar strike targeted tunnels near Rafah on March 3. (Ma'an News Agency, March 12)

Israel imposed a full closure of the occupied West Bank for 48 hours on March 12. The decision means those Palestinians with permits will generally not be permitted to access Jerusalem over the weekend. Defense Minister Ehud Barak made the move amid reports about possible new protests by Palestinians around Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque after Friday prayers. Some street clashes were reported around the Old City, and hundreds of men under the age of 50 were prevented from entering al-Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers. Authorities have deployed additional forces at al-Aqsa mosque and the Temple Mount. (AlJazeera, Ma'an News Agency, March 12)

Moroccan authorities "violently" put down peaceful protests in Western Sahara earlier this week, local human rights activist Aminatou Haidar said March 10. The crackdown on the two protests was Rabat's "response" to a request made by EU president Herman Van Rompuy at an EU-Morocco summit in Spain over the weekend that Morocco make progress on human rights, Haidar said in a statement.

Israel's plan to build 1,600 new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem is "dangerous" and has the potential to thwart US efforts to restart peace talks, the Palestinian Authority said March 9. The Israeli Interior Ministry's announcement came one day after it also approved 112 housing units in the Betar Illit settlement in Bethlehem—and a day after US envoy George Mitchell arrived in the region in a bid to reopen the talks. PA presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the move could "derail negotiations and ensure the failure of US efforts before they begin."

From Human Rights Watch, March 10:

Afghanistan: Repeal Amnesty Law
Measure Brought into Force by Karzai Means Atrocities Will Go Unpunished
New York — The Afghan government should urgently act to repeal a law that provides an amnesty to perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a surprise move, Mauritania's Constitutional Council on March 4 rejected 10 articles of an anti-terrorism law passed by country's parliament in January. The 10 articles that were thrown out as unconstitutional would have allowed tapping of telephone calls and e-mail, as well as warrantless home searches and night raids on houses at any time. Other articles would have allowed the incarceration of minors, extended the period of "preventive detention" by the police to four years and barred any challenge to terrorism charges made by police.

A US federal judge has ruled that the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), a USAID-funded organization providing local governance services in Iraq, can be sued in the United States for the deaths of two Iraqi women killed by their security guards in Baghdad in October of 2007. The judge will also allow the victims' attorneys discovery on whether the security company, Unity Resources Group, has sufficient business contacts in the United States to be sued in a US court. Whether Unity Resources Group can be sued should be decided within the next few months.