It is quite legitimate in the positive law and an urgent necessity in international law to make Israeli leaders and members of Israel’s defence forces stand for trial in a war crime tribunal either in the ICC or in some other special tribunal for their murderous policies, actions and war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity, argues DR. ARSHI KHAN
Recent destruction of Gaza has once again revealed the crimes of Israel against peace and humanity since this entity was planted on the Palestinian land in April 1948. Palestinians have already documented evidences for the International Criminal Court and Special Tribunal for War Crimes against the Palestinians either by the UN or the United States. Remarkably, on a complaint filed by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in January 2009, the Spanish Court on February 27 decided to investigate the case against senior Israeli officials for their alleged involvement in crimes against humanity committed in July 2002. This decision was taken due to ‘no investigation of war crimes in Israel’. Earlier Ariel Sharon was accused of war crimes in Europe. These are the beginnings of a new humanitarian move of the West for disciplining Israel to act as a normal member of the international community.
GAZA: FROM DISENGAGEMENT TO DESTRUCTION
Israel had vacated Gaza in 2005 but the future plan was its destruction. When the Palestinians’ grassroots political party HAMAS won the parliamentary elections in 2007, they were put under Israeli economic blockade for 19 months (since June 2007) and Israel closed entry points of all the crossings to Egypt and Israel. Israel targeted “hospitals, United Nations premises, Press offices, theatres and densely populated buildings in west of Gaza. Additionally, people are being used as human shields.” Massive, brutal and deliberate attack on Gaza for complete 23 days (27 December 2008-18 January 2009) has caused a large scale destruction of their life, dignity, liberty, property, security, health and prosperity. Israel killed over 1335 people, over 400 children, over 150 women, old age people, medics and journalists. There are over 5500 injured persons.
Despite declaring unilateral ceasefire, Israel has continued to violate international law by keeping on its war crimes against Palestinians. Before the death of an Israeli soldier on January 27, Israeli forces had already violated the ceasefire at least seven times till January 24, 2009 as it is recorded in the Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
What is more than painful is the use of the war weapons found at the upper shelf of Pentagon such as White Phosphorus, the 250lb “smart” GBU-39 bombs, Apache helicopter, F-16s, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium. Israel also used Dense Inert Metal Explosive (Dime) weapons in urban areas, causing horrific abdominal and leg injuries. When detonated, a Dime device expels a blade of charged tungsten dust that burns and destroys everything within a four-meter radius. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said to investigate whether Israel used depleted uranium.
Injured Gazans were dying in damaged hospital corridors, bleeding to death because rescuers were not permitted to reach them or were endangered themselves. Thousands of units of blood donated by Jordanians were stopped by the Israeli blockade. Israel has kept the international press out of the Gazan killing fields. Over 2000 targets were shelled or bombed in 23 days. Estimating the damages of only 12 days attack, former American President Jimmy Carter, in a Washington Post article (January 9), said 17 mosques, American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area were destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties were reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operated on the wounded by light from diesel-powered generators.
Gaza’s gross domestic product was slashed by 85 per cent during the 23 days of war, and it could take a year for the economy to recover. This savage attack was widely condemned by major public demonstrations all over the world including the UN humanitarian and relief officials, Human Rights Watch, many other human rights and media organisations including the Haaretz Daily in Israel. The media, outraged by the Israeli government’s news blackout from Gaza, has focused Israel’s disregard for international law and the disproportionate body count – 13 Israelis against 1300 Palestinians. Increasingly strident condemnation from the UN and its agencies has culminated in a call for war crimes investigations.
The F-16 jet fighters, the 250lb “smart” GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making “aid”, give Washington de facto control. Outspoken about Russia’s war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama has maintained a silence on Palestine that marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state and principal Middle East advisers.
Prominent Israeli writer Gideon Levy called “a brutal and violent operation…far beyond what was needed for protecting the people in its south.” Mr. Levy observed what the president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann called a war against “a helpless and defenceless imprisoned population.” World-wide public condemnation of attack is basically the indictment of Israel for its war crimes. Iran, which does not recognise Israel, has openly shouted at Israel. Not only this, American journalists posed some unfriendly questions to Israel foreign minister Tzipi Livni at a press conference in Washington on January 16, 2009. When a journalist was asked to finish his question, he asked since when the US has been hosting ‘terrorists’. And outside the press briefing building, anti-war group – Code Pink – repeatedly chanted that ‘there is a war criminal in this building’.
GAZA GENOCIDE IN EARLY 2008
Israeli military forces commenced widespread operations against Gaza on February 27, 2008, following the death of an Israeli civilian by a Qassam. As a result of these operations 101 Palestinians were killed against the death of two Israeli soldiers. This number of casualties is the highest since the start of the Al Aqsa Intifada in 2000. Israeli forces also shelled the compound of the Ministry of Interior destroying two civilian structures: the Palestinian Medical Relief Society office and dispensary, including its Mobile Clinic vehicle, and the offices of Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Mezan. Both organisations are long-term partners of Physicians For Human Rights in Israel (PHR). 7-month-old baby Muhammad al-Burai was killed in the same attack, when his home, adjacent to the compound, collapsed on top of him. Following a weekend of continuous air strikes, shellings and limited land strikes, hospitals in Gaza were finding it almost impossible to function due to massive overload of injured people continuing to arrive for admission.
The larger hospitals in Gaza were fully occupied. According to medical information received from Shifaa’ hospital, the majority of injuries were a result of direct hits, shrapnel and shock waves caused by bombardments by the Israeli air force, as well as the collapse of buildings on their inhabitants. PHR-Israel condemned the blatant attack on patients and medical installations and demands its immediate cessation by the Israeli government. PHR-Israel condemned any attack against civilians and civilian structures and demanded that all sides respect this principle.
PHR-Israel demanded that the government of Israel immediately ensure free access for patients and injured persons to medical centres outside Gaza, in order to ensure treatment both for them and for the other patients who were awaiting care. PHR-Israel strongly believed that the leaders of both peoples bear a responsibility to stop functionalising people for their political ends and to find an alternative way that will end occupation and bloodshed. PHR-Israel called upon all parties, including international donors, to prioritize a policy that would prevent bloodshed, over provision of charity that would only prolong the occupation.
On March 1, 2008, the PA leader himself rightly called Israel’s hideous crimes in Gaza “a virtual holocaust” and “Nazi-like atrocities.” He also ordered the suspension of “peace talks” with Israel until the “aggression was over.” In the West Bank also, Palestinians were frustrated due to Israeli oppression. This slave-master relationship between the PA and Israel recently forced the Palestinian minister of culture Ibrahim al Abrashi to submit his resignation to Chairman Abbas. The former minister complained about “an all-out national crisis encompassing every aspect of our life as a people…. The country is falling down, the national cause is falling down, the national rift is destroying the unity and future of our people. In short, what we have been building for 50 years is being destroyed before our very eyes.”
Senior Hamas political leader and head of its political bureau Khaled Mishaal unequivocally accused the Israeli occupation government of committing a new holocaust in Gaza. He said, “We want freedom… we want self determination… and we want our land and usurped legal rights… we prefer to get them back peacefully, but if the world failed to help us in retrieving our legal rights then we have every right to resist the occupation with all possible means”.
A serious crime was committed by the Zionist system against representatives of the Palestinian people by the abduction of the Palestinian ministers and MPs. The latest of which was the arrest of MP Ahmed al-Haj from the city of Nablus on December 16, 2007. Al-Haj is over 70-year old. Earlier, Dr. Maryiam Saleh, Minister for Women in the Palestinian government, was abducted too. The Minister of Palestinian Prisoner has also been in prison for many years… for the fifth time. There are more than 11870 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, 117 of them mothers. Some give birth while chained, and their children are forced to live in the cells where they do not live their childhood or play or go out. They are held in 30 different prisons, and detention centres. As many as 1189 prisoners are schools, collages, and universities students of both genders, 330 of the detained are children. Not only the students were detained, but their teachers too; there are 107 Palestinian teachers in Israeli prisons. And, 1150 Palestinian prisoners suffer from acute illnesses. The graph has increased since then.
The National and International Department of Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) reported that the Israeli army killed 274 Palestinians, including 50 children and 18 women before since the beginning of 2008. The army used different sorts of weapons against civilians. The report indicated that two infants (20 days old and 7 months old) were among the Palestinians who were killed by the army. Eighteen women were also killed and one resident was shot and killed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The report added that 979 Palestinians were shot and injured in the Gaza Strip during January-March 2008, among them were 35 residents who suffered permanent disabilities. Thirty-two patients died in the Gaza Strip due to the siege after the Israeli authorities refused to allow them to leave Gaza for medical treatment abroad; most of them were children. Five more residents died at roadblocks in the West Bank after the army obstructed their transfer to hospitals and medical facilities.
TESTIFYING ISRAELI WAR-CRIMES
What Israel has done in Gaza is the most appropriate case for declaring it as a terrorist state and thus the war criminals should be tried. Jewish holocaust was for a limited period whereas Palestinian holocaust has perpetuated since 1948. Terrorism, which has no universally acceptable definition, can at least be understood as a violence or act of violence or threat of violence, premeditated and politically motivated to damage or threat to damage of life and property belonging to human beings. Offences against property should continue to fall within the definition of terrorist acts. Crimes against Palestinians can neither be said to be the subject to the national jurisdiction of Israel nor left undefined. As Palestinians have no state of their own after the Israeli occupation in 1948, they have been under the Israeli siege and the reign of military occupation and aggressions. On many occasions they have been exposed to the Israeli acts of human rights violations and all standards of international law.
The other argument for addressing the case of crimes against humanity is that so far their accumulated problems of the violations of human rights have escaped the jurisdiction of domestic tribunals. Moreover, their efforts to seek justice have also been discouraged and dismissed by Israel and outside.
Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or laws.” Remarkably, Palestinians have neither guaranteed fundamental rights nor an independent State. As a result, they deserve more attention and care of the international community. Israel has no valid ground to deny charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes brought to either in the International Criminal Court or any special tribunal or the special court created by the Arab League or the liberal European club as the Palestinians deserve their voice of agony to be heard by appropriate institutions of justice. Article 14 of the UN Convention against Torture aims to redress and compensate the victims of torture. Remedy must be commensurate with the injury received. The compensation must be adequate and balance as near as may be the injury suffered. International law also stands for their rehabilitations.
The UN Security Council Resolution 1566 of October 8, 2004 says that criminal acts including those against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death, serious bodily injury, or taking of hostage, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organisation to or to abstain from doing any act. Nuremberg and Tokyo trials by the Allied powers, mainly the US, were said to be against crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Crimes against humanity include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts committed against any civilian populations, before or during the war; or prosecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
Every subsequent “war” Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the acquisition of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first against Israel. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Shlaim, Noam Chomsky, Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappé and Norman Finkelstein have undermined this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called Zionism.
“It seems,” wrote the Israeli historian Pappé on January 2, “that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as discrete events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system…. Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanise the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide].”
Israel attacked Arabs, including Palestinians in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1978, 1982, 1996, 1987, 2000, 2008. Israel’s Genocide against Lebanon in 1982 resulted in 20,000 civilian deaths (plus 2,000 massacred civilians in Sabra and Shatila camps). Over a dozen U.N. Security Council Resolutions were ignored by Israel during that summer. In 1996, Israel deliberately and knowingly shelled a U.N. compound where civilians took shelter in Qana killing over 100 civilians. Then U.N. Secretary General Butros Butros Ghali was denied a second term by the U.S. due to his release of the U.N.’s investigation of this horrific massacre showing Israel deliberately bombed the U.N. compound.
In 2006, Israel again launched a massive genocide against Lebanon devastating the nation’s infrastructure and killing over 1,300 civilians many in Red Cross and U.N. convoys escaping the indiscriminate bombing. Over the last 72 hours of the genocide Israel dropped over two million Cluster Bombs to ensure the death, injury, and maiming of civilians, especially the children. Israel still refuses to cooperate with the U.N. as to where the locations of these deadly bombs are. Israel is holding illegal Annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolutions.
Doctors found new and unexplained patterns of injury among the wounded in Gaza, Amnesty International, on January 22, 2009, called on the Israeli authorities to urgently disclose all weapons and munitions their forces used during military operations to prevent the loss of more lives. Donatella Rovera, who is leading Amnesty International’s investigations team in Gaza, said, “It is vital and urgent that the Israeli authorities disclose all relevant information including what weapons and munitions they used.” To her, “More lives must not be lost because doctors do not know what caused their patients’ injuries and what medical complications may occur. They have to be fully informed so that they can provide life-saving care.”
Dr. Subhi Skeik, head of the Surgical Department at al-Shifa Hospital, told AI delegates: “We have many cases of amputations and vascular reconstructions where patients would be expected to recover in the normal way. But to our surprise many of them died an hour or two after operation. It is dramatic.” Rovera said, “There can be no excuse for continuing to withhold information vital to effective treatment of people wounded in Israeli attacks. Lack of cooperation by Israel is leading to needless deaths and unnecessary suffering.”
She suggested that “The Israeli authorities should fulfil their obligation to ensure prompt and adequate care for the wounded by making a full disclosure of the weapons and munitions they used in Gaza and provide any other relevant information that may help medical teams.”
Under international law, phosphorus is allowed as a smokescreen to protect soldiers but treated as a chemical weapon when used against civilians. David Halpin, a retired British surgeon and trauma specialist who visited Gaza on several occasions to investigate unusual injuries suffered by Gazans, said that “We have seen Gaza used as a laboratory for testing what I call weapons from hell,” and added that “I fear the thinking in Israel is that it is in its interests to create as much mutilation as possible to terrorise the civilian population in the hope they will turn against Hamas.”
Gaza’s doctors, including one of the few foreigners there, Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian specialist in emergency medicine working at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, report that many of the injuries they see are consistent with the use of Dime. Wounds from the weapon are said to be distinctive. Those exposed to the blast have severed or melted limbs, or internal ruptures, especially to soft tissue such as the abdomen, that often lead to death. There is said to be no shrapnel apart from a fine “dusting” of minute metal particles on damaged organs visible when autopsies are carried out. Survivors of a Dime blast are at increased risk of developing cancer, according to research carried out in the United States. Wounds from the weapon are said to be distinctive.24
Gilbert says, “The power of the explosion dissipates very quickly and the strength does not travel long, maybe 10 metres, but those humans who are hit by this explosion, this pressure wave, are cut in pieces. This is not the first time concerns about Israel’s use of Dime have surfaced in Gaza. Doctors there reported strange injuries they could not treat, and from which patients died unexpectedly days later, during a prolonged wave of Israeli air strikes in 2006.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has recorded numerous occasions when the Israeli army has fired flechette shells, both in Lebanon and Gaza. The shell releases thousands of tiny metal darts that cause horrible injuries to anyone out in the open. The use of a new flechette-type weapon the Israeli army has developed called kalanit (anemone). An anti-personnel munitions, the shell sends out hundreds of small discs. Israel appears to have used a range of controversial weapons during its attack on Lebanon in 2006. After initial denials, an Israeli government minister admitted that the army had fired phosphorus shells, and the Israeli media widely reported millions of cluster bombs being dropped over south Lebanon. There are also suspicions that Israel may have used uranium-based warheads. A subsequent inquiry by a British newspaper found elevated levels of radiation at two Israeli missile craters.
What is going on in Gaza is what Bill Moyers called it earlier this month – “state terrorism.” What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet.
Israel’s current assault on Gaza cannot be justified as a self-defence act. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Senior Israeli political and military leaders may bear personal liability for their offences, and they could be prosecuted by an international tribunal, or by nations practising universal jurisdiction over grave international crimes. An armed attack that is not justified as a self-defence act is a war of aggression. Under the Nuremberg Principles affirmed by U.N. Resolution 95, aggression is a crime against peace. On January 4, 2009, the President of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a “monstrosity”.
Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Iraq and Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. She wrote, “Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic,” she wrote on 31 December 2008. “But I’m not talking about the World War II, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [the president of Iran] or Ashkenazi Jews. What I’m referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years …. Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn’t get more anti-Semitic than this.” She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. “I am in the midst of a genocide,” wrote Corrie, “which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.”
Attorney Michael Sefarad, who specialised in international law, said that we must remember that the entire mechanism of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague was put in place after World War II and the Holocaust, at the Jewish people’s demand. He believes that Israel grossly violated international law during the Gaza campaign, maybe even to the extent of committing war crimes: “The hope is that we will be the ones to seek out those responsible and bring them to justice. If that is not done, then an international organization should do it, otherwise the atrocities will continue.” “The notion that some acts cannot be committed even in a time of war and that war criminals cannot find refuge anywhere is of the utmost importance, and this mechanism can be used against Israel as well.”
The questions are plentiful and troubling: the mass killing of civilians, among them 300 children and 100 women; the shooting at medical crews; the use of illegal munitions against a civilian population, including white phosphorus shells; the prevention of the evacuation of wounded; bombing and shelling of schools, hospitals, supply convoys and a UN facility. These questions cannot remain unanswered. The suspicion that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza is liable to cause it great damage. This is precisely the moment at which Israel needs to pre-empt the others and investigate itself. It is impossible to ignore what has already been reported, and one must not leave the task of investigating solely to foreign bodies, some of whom are hostile. Israel also needs to ask itself what was done in its name in Gaza. Were deeds that are never to be done, even in a time of war, perpetrated? Has the Israeli Defence Force crossed the line according to international law? Was there no other way apart from such widespread killing and destruction?
Top Israeli legal experts on January 22, 2009 said the recent concerns suggesting Israeli diplomats and military officials may find themselves facing legal action over the Israeli offensive in Gaza were justified. Many human rights groups have already announced they would demand top Israeli officials be tried for war crimes in European courts. Attorney Attorney Avigdor Feldman said that “the fighting in Gaza was too reminiscent of Bosnia. People there were tried for shooting at civilians, schools and UN facilities after that, so the concerns are justified.” Every Israeli involved in the Gaza campaign, he added, is subject to prosecution anywhere in the world. There is no immunity in cases of war crimes and I personally know of elements in London that are gathering every possible evidence in order to build such cases.
As for any damage to Israel’s international standing in case top officials are tried, Sefarad remained unfazed: “If our officers committed crimes they should be where criminals should be. Should a president be given immunity against rape charges just because of his title? Should a finance minister not go to jail for stealing? It may be less than desirable to investigate a defence minister, but if he is a war criminal, he belongs to jail. He said that as “a citizen of Israel, I would like to see the State prosecute its war criminals.” To him, if Israel refuses to prosecute, or even investigate such cases, then someone else has to do it.
Israel is the fit case for trial in the cases of crimes against peace, humanity and war crimes. The Guardian on January 13, 2009 wrote Israel is facing growing demands from senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza over allegations such as the “reckless and indiscriminate” shelling of residential areas and use of Palestinian families as human shields by soldiers. The Israeli military are accused of:
- Using powerful shells in civilian areas which the army knew would cause large numbers of innocent casualties;
- Using banned weapons such as phosphorus bombs;
- Holding Palestinian families as human shields;
- Attacking medical facilities, including the killing of 12 ambulance men in marked vehicles; and
- Killing large numbers of police who had no military role.
The London Agreement among the US, USSR, Great Britain and France on 8 August 1945 created the International Military Tribunal in a Charter where it also defined the crimes:
Crimes against peace: Namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.
War crimes: Namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation for slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian populations of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
Crimes against humanity: Namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
International Law Commission has drafted a Code of Offences against the Peace and Security of Mankind. Part II of the Code of Offences identifies 12 specific crimes under Articles 15-26, such as threat of aggression, intervention, colonial domination and other forms of alien domination, genocide, apartheid, systematic or mass violations of human rights, exceptionally serious war crimes, the recruitment, use, financing and training of mercenaries, international terrorism, illicit traffic in narcotic drugs, and wilful and serious damages to the environment. Investigations authorised by the UN General assembly, Security Council and its human rights organs can be extremely fruitful to give the full account of the crimes committed by Israel since 1948 and more after 1991. The NGOs, Arab League, OIC, EU, African Union and many other humanitarian organisations should come forward to save the Palestinians from the ‘perpetual holocaust’.
The Statute of the ICC provides for jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression. The crimes against humanity listed therein are murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of populations, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilisation, persecution, enforced disappearances, apartheid, and other inhuman acts. Cases against both state and non-state actors and either of the two can be submitted to the ICC.
International human rights crimes significantly include torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment; summary and arbitrary executions; disappearances; arbitrary detentions; all forms of racism, racial discrimination and apartheid; foreign occupation and colonial domination; xenophobia; poverty; hunger and other denials of economic, social and cultural rights; religious intolerance; terrorism; discrimination against women, and the lack of the rule of law. These crimes are similar to the crimes committed by legal person which have been mentioned by the ICC under Article 8: Namely, extensive destruction and appropriation of property, attacking or bombarding towns, villages, dwellings or buildings, and intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, and historic monuments.
It is quite legitimate in the positive law and an urgent necessity in international law to make Israeli leaders and members of Israel’s defence forces stand for trial in a war crime tribunal either in the ICC or in some other special tribunal for their murderous policies, actions and war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. Palestinians need justice and the right to live in their own land with peaceful environment. Their colonization and periodic attacks and continuing violations of their fundamental rights need to be addressed by the international community in which Afro-Asian countries should build pressures and all possible help to the Palestinians for their self determination and to seek justice for their killings, destructions, expulsions, humiliations, etc. If it is not addressed, then the war on terrorism and efforts for peace process would be more than falsehood.
[DR. ARSHI KHAN, Reader, Department of Political Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (UP) India, is one of the petitioners with The International Organization For The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD), to President and Members of the UN General Assembly to create “Creation of a Special Tribunal to try Israeli War Criminals”. He can be contacted at khan_arshi@hotmail.com.]