ICC prosecutions can deliver justice
After the recent events at the Gaza border, the Palestinian case offers insurmountable evidence
These past weeks at border crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel, scores of Palestinians have been massacred by Israeli occupation forces and snipers firing indiscriminately at unarmed protesters. The death toll so far is more than 100, and hundreds more have been injured in what can only be described as “open season” on Palestinians. For its part, Israel dismisses those who died as terrorists, dubbing them Hamas protesters, and turning a blind eye to the murderous acts carried out by its occupation forces.
What is obvious to the rest of the world — save the Washington administration that views its allies in Tel Aviv through rose-tinted glasses — is that the actions of the occupation forces breach the threshold of Article IV of the Geneva Conventions on excessive force against a civilian population, amounting morally if not legally to war crimes, and certainly cry out for a full and impartial investigation, with prosecutions to follow where proven. And the only means of adequately following this impartial line of legal retreat and remedy is to pursue complaints against Israel and its occupation forces through the International Criminal Court (ICC).
On Tuesday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al Maliki set formal proceedings in motion at the ICC in The Hague, submitting a so-called ‘referral’ to prosecutors to allow them to move beyond a preliminary inquiry that had been started there in January 2015. Certainly, as the events of these past weeks have clearly shown — Al Makiki referred to the evidence of human rights abuses against Palestinians as “insurmountable” — ICC prosecutors have no shortage of events to investigate and ultimately, depending on their findings, prosecute to the fullest extent of the laws available to the court under international jurisprudence.
The ICC has the authority to hear cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the 123 countries who have signed up to it. Israel is not a signatory to ICC conventions — but because Palestine is, the ICC has the jurisdiction to investigate events that occurred on Palestinian soil, as is the case with the recent murderous incidents in the Gaza Strip.
Make no mistake, try as Israel might to reject the ICC investigation as lacking legitimacy because it isn’t a member, this ICC investigation must proceed without undue influence, meddling, delays or ambiguities. It represents a rare and real opportunity for Palestinians — and the world — to hold Israel to account, and for justice — denied for so long against so many — to be done.