[News] Could Israel finally be held accountable?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/could-israel-finally-be-held-accountable.html* 



  Could Israel finally be held accountable?

Audrey Bomse

In a highly unusual pretrial chamber ruling on July 16, International 
Criminal Court (ICC) judges reversed a decision by the court’s chief 
prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda 
<http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/press%20and%20media/press%20releases/pages/otp-statement-06-11-2014.aspx>, 
not to investigate Israel’s assault on a Gaza-bound flotilla in 2010, 
which left 10 people dead.

The judges said she committed “errors of fact,” reached “simplistic 
conclusions” by ignoring war crimes complaints and the “unnecessarily 
cruel treatment of the ships’ passengers” and failed to seriously 
consider the possibility that the deaths and injuries caused by Israeli 
navy commandos were “systematic or resulted from a deliberate plan or 
policy to attack, kill or injure civilians 
<http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/press%20and%20media/press%20releases/Pages/PR1133.aspx>.”

But Bensouda on Monday said she would not launch a full criminal 
investigation into allegations of war crimes against Israeli military 
and political leaders and naval forces. She has appealed the judges’ 
ruling, which Israeli politicians and commentators denounced as shocking 
<http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/ICC-orders-its-prosecutor-to-consider-Mavi-Marmara-war-crimes-allegations-against-IDF-409265>. 
Yonah Jeremy Bob wrote in The Jerusalem Post 
<http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/ICC-orders-its-prosecutor-to-consider-Mavi-Marmara-war-crimes-allegations-against-IDF-409265>, 
“The decision puts the ICC the closest it has ever been to intervening 
directly in the Israeli-Arab conflict.”

It is now up to an ICC appeals court to decide whether to end Israel’s 
impunity. Upholding the pretrial chamber’s decision would pave the way 
for considering the Palestinian Foreign Ministry’s submissions presented 
to the ICC in June, after Palestine’s accession in April to the Rome 
Statute, which established the ICC. The dossier provides extensive 
evidence regarding Israel’s brutal 2014 assault on Gaza, its treatment 
of Palestinian prisoners and the expansion 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2015/07/israeli-settlements-dodges> of Jewish 
settlements in the occupied West Bank.

No Israeli official has been held accountable for Israel’s 
indiscriminate attacks during its 2014 Gaza offensive, in which 2,251 
Palestinians were killed — most of them civilians, including more than 
500 children. No serious investigation has been initiated to date. 
Israel’s internal report 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/israel-probe-gaza-offensive-lawful-legitimate-150615032007899.html>published 
last month adopts the official narrative, which whitewashes and 
justifies the crimes by blaming the victims. In light of the legal cover 
by Israel’s judicial system, the ICC offers the only avenue for possible 
accountability.

The court’s decision on Bensouda’s appeal could go a long way in 
determining the future of the ICC, which is criticized as a venue to 
investigate and prosecute mainly African human rights violators. The 
court has ignored allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity 
committed by Western leaders. If international law is to function as an 
impediment to violence and high crimes, it must function evenhandedly. 
The ICC has a chance to show that can happen.


    Israel’s assault on Gaza

Since 2008, the Israeli military has launched three lethal assaults on 
Gaza, killing thousands of people. Israel knew that its military 
campaigns would cause significant civilian fatalities and injuries, 
destroy civilian property and damage infrastructure and the environment. 
There is strong evidence that Israel was applying the Dahiya doctrine, a 
military strategy that, according to the United Nations Human Rights 
Council 
<http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/A-HRC-12-48.pdf>, 
involves “the application of disproportionate force and causing of great 
damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure and 
suffering to civilian populations.”

Such attacks violate the principle of proportionality and distinction, 
which forbids the deliberate targeting of civilians or civilian 
property. Nearly 10,000 Palestinians were wounded during the 51-day 
assault on Gaza. Israel forces bombed 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/world/middleeast/un-reports-dire-impact-on-children-in-gaza-strip.html> 
142 schools, including six U.N. schools where civilians took refuge, the 
coordinates of which were repeatedly communicated 
<http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/230160.htm> to Israeli officials. 
Israeli soldiers shot and killed fleeing civilians and those working to 
recover the bodies of the dead. Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombed 
Gaza’s only power plant, destroyed one-third of Gaza’s hospitals, 29 
ambulances <http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48395> and 14 
primary health care clinics, demolished 41 mosques and damaged an 
additional 120.

Nothing symbolized more the horror that was unleashed on the people of 
Gaza than the repeated shelling of U.N. facilities harboring civilians 
who had been explicitly told to seek a safe haven there.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

There is no question that Israel willfully caused wanton destruction, 
great suffering and serious injury to body and health. Tens of thousands 
of Palestinians lost their homes 
<http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/03/world/middleeast/assessing-the-damage-and-destruction-in-gaza.html>. 
Damage to sewage and water infrastructure affected 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/04/us-mideast-gaza-reconstruction-idUSKBN0G40PS20140804> 
two-thirds of the people of Gaza. UNICEF said 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/4/disgraceful_criminal_act_israel_condemned_as> 
the Israeli offensive has had a “catastrophic and tragic impact” on 
children in Gaza; about 373,000 children had traumatic experiences and 
needed psychological help. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency has warned 
about a public health catastrophe 
<http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48395#.Vbjng0JViko>.

“The massive death and destruction in Gaza have shocked and shamed the 
world,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said last year 
<http://www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=7913>. “Nothing 
symbolized more the horror that was unleashed on the people of Gaza than 
the repeated shelling of U.N. facilities harboring civilians who had 
been explicitly told to seek a safe haven there. These attacks were 
outrageous, unacceptable and unjustifiable.”


    Holding Israel accountable

Ban and former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay have 
called for accountability and justice. And there is a growing body of 
evidence compiled by U.N. agencies and other nongovernmental 
organizations that strongly suggest Israel’s crimes in Gaza fall under 
the ICC’s jurisdiction.

In a report released on Wednesday, London-based advocacy group Amnesty 
International said, “Israeli forces carried out war crimes 
<http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/black-friday-carnage-in-rafah-during-2014-israelgaza-conflict>” 
during its offensive in Gaza’s Rafah. “There is strong evidence that 
Israeli forces committed war crimes in their relentless and massive 
bombardment of residential areas of Rafah in order to foil the capture 
of Lt. Hadar Goldin, displaying a shocking disregard for civilian 
lives,” said Philip Luther, the director of the Middle East and North 
Africa program at Amnesty International. “They carried out a series of 
disproportionate or otherwise indiscriminate attacks, which they have 
completely failed to investigate independently.”

The National Lawyers Guild Palestine subcommittee recently sent its 
revised submission 
<http://www.nlginternational.org/report/Neither_facts_nor_law_support_Israeli_self-defense_claim_submission_to_ICC.pdf> 
to Bensouda, based on new reports and materials highlighting why 
Israeli’s self-defense claims are false and are not supported by fact or 
any law. Another report 
<http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/protective-edge>by Breaking the 
Silence, an advocacy group made up of current and former Israeli 
soldiers, includes dozens of testimonies that show the Israeli military 
did not meet its obligations to protect civilians in wartime. A similar 
report by the U.N. Independent Commission of Inquiry in Gaza also 
contains evidence of possible war crimes 
<http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoIGazaConflict/Pages/CommissionOfInquiry.aspx> 
and concludes that the mass destruction and killing inflicted by Israeli 
forces “may have constituted military tactics reflective of a broader 
policy, approved at least tacitly by decision-makers at the highest 
levels of the government of Israel.”

To be clear, Israel is not the only liable party. Any investigation into 
war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israeli officials 
should also look into whether U.S. officials aided and abetted these 
crimes. The U.S. Congress, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama 
and key members of their administrations — who provided financial 
assistance, weapons and other military support to Israel — were all 
aiders and abettors of Israel’s crimes in the Gaza Strip. For example, 
on July 20, 2014, in the midst of its offensive in Gaza, Israel, 
apparently running short on military supplies, requested 
<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/u-s-has-sold-ammunition-to-israel-since-start-of-gaza-conflict/> 
additional ammunition, including 140-mm tank rounds and 40-mm 
illumination grenades from the United States. Three days later, the U.S. 
Defense Department authorized the transfer of munitions stored in Israel 
to the Israeli authorities. In early August, Congress passed 
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-backs-225m-bill-to-replenish-israels-iron-dome-missile-defense/>__an 
appropriation of $225 million for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense 
system without a debate; Obama immediately signed the bill.

A full criminal investigation by the ICC would send a clear message to 
all involved either in committing or in aiding and abetting Israel’s 
egregious crimes against Palestinian civilians and civilian 
infrastructure that they could be held accountable for their 
involvement. This could help end the continuing breaches of 
international law and the impunity that has underpinned Israel’s 
ever-intensifying aggression, which has caused and continues to cause 
extreme suffering to Palestinians. A full probe by the ICC prosecutor 
into Israel’s actions and the role of its American enablers would be a 
first step toward redeeming the court’s tainted reputation.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not 
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.

-- 
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