Global Arab Network | Gaza - Israel may be made to pay for war crimes

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Gaza - Israel may be made to pay for war crimes

Global Arab Network - - Adam Turner

Sunday, 20 September 2009 22:01

Israel has been censured by the United Nations for its actions against the Palestinians and its neighbours on so many occasions that it has become immune to such condemnation. It has come to view the world body as biased and hopelessly irrelevant.

The recent United Nations report on the Gaza War yet again condemned Israel, but this time the language was unusually forceful in tone and sweeping in scope.

The UN fact-finding mission that investigated Israel's actions in Gaza was headed by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge of Jewish background who served as the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Goldstone told reporters that his mission concluded that Israel committed "actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly & crimes against humanity". Israel, which refused to cooperate with the mission, dismissed its findings as biased.

The UN report also said that Palestinian fighters who fired rockets into Israel failed to distinguish between civilian and military targets, and that this also constituted war crimes, and perhaps crimes against humanity.

Hamas leader Esmail Haniya defended the actions of his people, saying they constituted legitimate self-defence against the occupation. He pointed out that Israel had used almost half of its air force against the people of Gaza.

Mostly, the report focused on Israeli actions in Gaza. The war, the report concluded, was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole. The military operations were planned "as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise the civilian population".

The mission also found that Israel used white phosphorous weapons in civilian areas, intentionally fired high-explosive shells at Al Quds hospital, and deliberately targeted Palestinian food supplies in Gaza.

It is relevant to recall here three facts. First, the Gaza War resulted in vastly disproportionate casualties - about 1,400 dead on the Palestinian side, of which, according to the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, 773 "did not take part in the hostilities" and 320 were minors. On the Israeli side, 13 people were killed - 10 of them soldiers.

Second, and not withstanding Israeli denials, the Israeli army's use of banned weapons during the war - especially white phosphorous - in areas that had civilian populations had previously been documented by human-rights organisations.

Human Rights Watch found that Israel's army used white phosphorus in civilian areas of Gaza "repeatedly and indiscriminately", and did this even when its troops were not in the area, thus "killing and injuring civilians and committing war crimes".

The organisation found 24 spent white phosphorus shells in Gaza. Markings on them indicated that they were made in the US in 1989 by Thiokol.

Third, the UN report finding that the war had been carefully planned as a deliberate attack against the civilian population of Gaza had also been documented independently by Amnesty International. Amnesty found that many of the war's victims were killed when "their homes were bombed while they slept", "children were struck while playing" and that "ambulances were repeatedly attacked while attempting to rescue the wounded or recover the dead".

The Israeli army's conduct during previous wars and assaults against the Palestinians followed similar patterns and resulted in similar accusations. But this is the first time, to my knowledge, that Israel has been accused by the UN of having committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this report is its recommendation that the UN Security Council request that Israel and the Palestinian National Authority order independent investigations of their conduct during the war. Failure to comply could result in the UN Security Council referring the matter to the International Criminal Court.

This is an unprecedented development that could potentially mean that the era of Israeli impunity may be coming to an end. This led one Israeli commentator to wonder, "In light of the Gaza probe, how can Israel go to war again?" This is clearly of concern to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that he intended to study the UN report, and would pay particular attention to the sections that make mention of the International Criminal Court.

Equally worrisome for Israeli leaders is the possibility, rather remote in my opinion, that US President Barack Obama may deviate from his country's traditional policy of defending Israel to the UN.

The well known position of the Obama administration regarding the Palestinian conflict, as well as the UN report findings that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza represent a sea change in the international environment. As Goldstone pointed out, "We live in a world today where there is accountability for war crimes. This is a very new situation." It would be utterly myopic for Israeli leaders to ignore this fact.

Global Arab Network

Adel Safty's new book Might Over Right: How the Zionists Took Over Palestine, is endorsed by Noam Chomsky. Special to Gulf News

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