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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 3/31/14

Israel to consider war crimes case

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Of the criminal prosecutions, the longest sentence, at seven and a half months, was imposed on a soldier who stole a credit card. 

Israeli prosecutors have so far not considered the evidence of war crimes committed by its leaders. 

"No discussion"

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B'Tselem, an Israeli organization that documents human rights abuses in the occupied territories, said the impunity of senior Israeli officials was a great concern.

"There has been no discussion in Israel of the responsibility of high-ranking officials for issuing apparently illegal orders such as using white phosphorus in built-up areas, the adoption of flexible open-fire regulations, and a policy of targeting certain population groups, such as males over a certain age."

Dalal has had previous high-profile successes against the Israeli military in Israel's Supreme Court. In 2005, the court ordered the Israeli army to stop the practice of using Palestinians as "human shields" during military operations. 

Grotius has sent an advisory paper to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah detailing the status of Israeli settlement-building in the occupied territories as a war crime.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Al Jazeera in February that the Palestinians' first approach to the International Criminal Court (ICC) would be to ask it to investigate Israeli officials for sanctioning the construction of settlements and moving Israelis into the occupied territories. 

Sharon Weill, an international law expert at the Sciences Po in Paris, said that the ICC is only authorized to consider war crimes that occur after a party ratifies its establishing treaty, the Rome Statute.

"It seems clear that in international law the settlements are a war crime, and an ongoing one as they are being continuously built and expanded. So the Palestinians could bring a case after they decide to join the ICC."

Dalal conceded that he expected "judicial resistance" in Israel to his current petition.

In 2003, the Supreme Court rejected a petition from Yesh Gvul, a group of Israeli combat veterans who refuse to serve in the occupied territories, which argued that the head of the Israeli air force should be investigated for breaches of international law. 

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Dan Halutz had approved dropping a one-tonne bomb on a residential district of Gaza in 2002 that killed 14 people, many of them children. 

However, Dalal and other leading lawyers note that refusal by the court to order an investigation could suggest that Israel lacks a reliable domestic procedure for holding officials accountable for war crimes.

Universal values

Several countries, including most prominently, the UK, the Netherlands and Spain, have adopted the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows them to prosecute war crimes that took place outside their territory and did not involve any of their nationals. 

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Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the 2011 winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: (more...)
 

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