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Another sign the Iranian government doesn't really expect Russia to ever finalize the S-300 surface-to-air missile sale: The Iranian government has ordered all Russian pilots working in Iran to leave the country within two months.

Iran says it's a safety measure, because several Russian-made planes -- with Russian pilots -- have crashed in the country in recent years. That's not untrue: A Taban Air Tupolev 154 crashed in January, killing more than 45 people; a Caspian Airlines Tupolev 154 crashed in July, killing 168 people; and at least two other Tu-154 planes have crashed in the last decade.

We try to keep things civil around here, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman is either an idiot or a morally bankrupt asshole. Or both. He seems to think a Cuban-style embargo is the best policy against Iran.

"I think that from now on Israel should perhaps change its Iran policy a little, and we should ask the United States to adopt the Cuban model ... Here the United States alone can do everything in order to stop this (Iranian) programme."

The obvious rejoinder is to point out that the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which was imposed in the early 1960s to topple the Castro regime, still hasn't toppled the Castro regime. El jefe ceded power to el hermano, and the Castro family is still living a pretty good life, by all accounts -- which is more than we can say for the Cuban people, who are caught in between Havana's bad economic policies and Washington's brutal embargo.

John Holmes, the United Nations' chief humanitarian official, visited Gaza today and held a press conference. He also did an interview with Al-Jazeera, the video of which is after the jump. Holmes talks about some limited signs of "progress" in Gaza: There's a factory recycling rubble into cement (new cement, of course, being prohibited by the Israelis), and other Gazans are building mud huts to replace their demolished dwellings. This is what constitutes progress in Gaza in 2010.

And here's the thing -- nobody cares. The Arabic-language media covered his visit -- here (عربي), for example -- but it got basically no press in the West. The immoral and illegal Gaza blockade grinds on, the people of Gaza continue to suffer, and nobody's really paying attention, or pressuring Israel to stop.

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly today to give Israel and the Palestinians five months to finish investigating the Goldstone Report's claims.

The final vote was 98-7; 31 countries abstained, and another 56 didn't bother to vote. The seven "no" votes were Canada, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Panama, Macedonia, and the United States. Most of the abstentions were European states (a full list of results is here).

The U.N. resolution gives Israel and "the Palestinian side" five months to finish investigating; as we noted earlier this week, it doesn't specify whether that demand is directed at Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

Human Rights Watch issued a short statement earlier in support of a new United Nations resolution -- scheduled for a vote on Friday -- which gives Israel and the Palestinians five months to finish investigating the Goldstone Report's findings.

"Israel and Hamas have failed to conduct credible investigations thus far, so UN members need to ensure justice for civilian victims on all sides," said Steve Crawshaw, UN advocate at Human Rights Watch. "All states that support justice should endorse the resolution and maintain pressure on the parties to hold perpetrators of war crimes to account."

As we said yesterday, the resolution doesn't actually advance the report. It won't lead to a Security Council vote or an International Criminal Court referral or anything like that. But it does keep Goldstone on the UN's radar, and it guarantees another vote on the report in July.

I said it two weeks ago, and I'll say it again: The West is really not serious about implementing a holistic Yemen policy.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees just approved a $5 million "bridge loan" so it can keep providing basic services to refugees and IDPs in northern Yemen. It's shifting money away from one UNHCR program, in other words, to keep its Yemen program afloat. UNHCR helps more than 250,000 people in Sa'ada province displaced by the Yemeni-Huthi and Saudi-Huthi fighting.

Why was this necessary? Because international donors have contributed less than 10 percent of the $40 million UNHCR needs to provide basic services this year -- and less than 3 percent of the $177 million it needs for longer-term efforts.

The United Nations General Assembly will vote Friday on whether to give Israel and Palestine another five months to finish investigating the Goldstone Report's findings.

A resolution authorizing the delay was offered by Arab states, mostly to keep the report on the UN's agenda. It calls on Israel to conduct a "credible investigation" within five months, and makes the same demand of "the Palestinian side," though it doesn't say whether it's referring to Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

The previous resolution (pdf), approved in November, gave both sides three months to report on their investigations. They submitted their preliminary findings last month, and human rights groups panned both the Israeli and Palestinian reports as whitewashes.

Grumpy week for United Nations aid workers. U.N. officials in Kabul complained yesterday about the militarization of Afghan aid (Joshua Foust has a good take on the subject). In Somalia, meanwhile, they complained that U.S. aid rules make it impossible to help the population.

Humanitarian co-ordinator Mark Bowden said the US was trying to ensure that aid was not diverted to Islamist insurgents fighting the government.

But he said this had politicised their work in a country where hundreds of thousands of people rely on food aid.

The issue here is whether U.N. contractors divert food aid to the al-Shabab militia, which sells the food to buy weapons. U.S. officials say it happens regularly; the U.N. denies that charge.

Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri's supporters descended on Beirut's Martyrs Square to mark the fifth anniversary of his father's assassination -- even though nobody is quite sure whether the younger Hariri's March 14 alliance has a future.

The rally, in the shadow of the Mohammed al-Amin mosque, has become an annual event in Beirut in the five years since Rafiq Hariri was killed by a massive car bomb. Television news reports say the crowd was smaller than in previous years -- but it still numbered in the tens of thousands.

The Israeli government will not conduct an independent investigation of the Goldstone Report's findings, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.

It's a single-source report, and it still hasn't been confirmed by the Israeli government. But an unnamed senior official in prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Bibi is satisfied with the IDF's internal probe, the preliminary results of which were submitted to the United Nations earlier this month.

United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon can't say whether Israel and the Palestinian Authority are on the right track when it comes to investigating the Goldstone Report's conclusions.

Israel and Hamas, you'll remember, last month released preliminary results of their investigations. Neither was particularly convincing: Hamas absolved itself of any wrongdoing, and Israel rejected most of Goldstone's findings.

We've heard a lot of well-intentioned talk since Dec. 25, and some not so well-intentioned talk, about an international effort to help Yemen. But after all the conferences and congressional hearings and op-eds and speeches -- Western countries don't seem interested in matching that talk with action.

United Nations aid chiefs warn that donors are failing to fund relief efforts in Yemen and they may have to reduce support to those displaced by fighting between government and rebel forces in Arabia's poorest nation.

The humanitarian situation in northern Yemen is grave. The UNHCR estimated recently that 250,000 people have been displaced by fighting in Saada province (and across the border in southern Saudi Arabia). 7,000 new refugees and IDPs flee their homes every week.

I've been waiting rather eagerly for the IDF's response to the Goldstone Report (probably a sign I need to find new hobbies); it was rumored to be ready for release as early as this afternoon.

Looks like we'll have to wait a while longer, though. Israel gave United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon a response today -- but it's only a 40-page explanation of how the IDF investigated allegations of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, and not the results of the investigations themselves.

Diplomatic officials stressed that this letter is not the IDF's answer to the Goldstone Commission report. The IDF rebuttal is currently being completed, will number more than 1,000 pages and will answer point-by-point all the allegations in the Goldstone Report.

Israeli officials haven't said much about Goldstone this winter -- happy to see it recede from the headlines, I'm sure -- but they've stepped up their criticism over the last few days. Barak denounced it as "warped" in a press briefing earlier today.

Nine days after a coalition of human rights groups asked the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government in Gaza to investigate alleged war crimes committed against Israeli civilians during Israel's most recent incursion into the Strip, Hamas has cleared itself of any responsibility.

The speed and result of the Hamas "investigation" is certain not to please Israeli officials or the authors of the Goldstone Report, which recommended that its findings of war crimes on both sides be turned over to the International Criminal Court if Israel and Hamas "failed to carry out credible, independent investigations," according to the AFP.

Afghanistan's Independent Electoral Commission has postponed the parliamentary election scheduled for May 22 -- because of a $50 million hole in the IEC's budget.

The commission is hoping to raise the money from international donors; indeed, foreign countries have already donated tens of millions of dollars into an account run by the United Nations. But that money won't be released until the IEC carries out electoral reforms, and the commission doesn't have enough time to implement those reforms by May.

The presidents of Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia touched down in Israel this morning to start a week-long visit.

The two presidents -- Marcus Stephen and Emanuel Mori, respectively -- will meet top Israeli officials, tour the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, visit Christian sites in Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee, and spend a day at a Dead Sea spa. The whole thing is being orchestrated by the Israeli foreign ministry and the American Jewish Committee.

The recent de-Ba'athification decisions made by Ali Faysal al-Lami's Justice and Accountability Commission are illegal, according to Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi (maybe he's been reading Reidar Visser's blog?).

We were never terribly optimistic that the Goldstone Report would lead to meaningful punishments for the perpetrators of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. Four months after its release, it has largely disappeared from the headlines; it doesn't appear destined for any immediate action at the United Nations.

Still, it continues to nudge both Israel and Hamas towards a measure of accountability.

We've long wondered why Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas asked the United Nations Human Rights Council to delay the Goldstone Report. Al-Jazeera reported at the time that Abbas bowed to U.S. pressure. But this morning Akiva Eldar presents a different theory in Ha'aretz -- one that reflects badly on the Israeli government, but probably won't help to boost Abbas' public image.

Ongoing fallout from Operation Cast Lead: Israel has agreed to pay the United Nations $10 million for damage to U.N. facilities caused during the war. A spokesman for the U.N. declined to provide any more details.