6/6/2024–|Last updated: 6/6/202411:23 PM (Mecca time)
In his announcement issued on May 20, 2024, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, justified the request to issue arrest warrants targeting both Israeli leaders and officials of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) by the need for an impartial application of the law of armed conflict, but this double accusation It is about to give an image of a false similarity between the two parties in Palestine.
With this introduction, the “Orian 21” website summarized an article by law professor Rafael Maison in which he touched on the problem raised by the request to issue the aforementioned arrest warrants, as the Americans and some of their allies expressed their dissatisfaction with the equivalence between a movement they classify as terrorist and a state government that is presented as democratic, in exchange for another part. From the world expresses its disappointment at a false equivalence that criminalizes the struggle for national liberation practiced by the Palestinian resistance.
attacks
According to the writer, observers of the work of the International Criminal Court agree to condemn the failure to conduct an investigation into Israeli crimes before October 7, 2023, which is the dangerous gap on which the Prosecutor General assesses the situation in Palestine, as the report states that the attack carried out by Hamas was criminal, “as well as groups “other armed forces” and the disproportionate and also criminal nature of the Israeli response.
The writer recalled the academic Joseph Massad’s saying that “Israel, for the West, is never the origin of violence, but rather responds only to previous violence. Accordingly, the accusations of the Public Prosecutor against Hamas are all related to the events of October 7 and what followed them, and are mainly related to the taking of prisoners and the ill-treatment that occurred.” “They were exposed to it during captivity.”
The law professor pointed out the validity of equality between combatants in the international law of war, but he doubted the validity of attributing some murders outside the context of captivity to Hamas leaders, because the public prosecutor cannot prove it due to the presence of other parties. He also questioned accusing them of committing crimes against humanity, because the definition of the law It does not apply to the October 7 attack.
The October 7 attack – according to the author – initially targeted military targets, and it is not certain that the killings of civilians that followed were planned or that they reached the required level of crimes against humanity.
The writer stated that the cases of atrocities reported by Western media, in order to build acceptance of the Israeli attack, did not appear in the prosecutor’s accusations, such as “beheading children” and “systematic rape,” which suggests that he does not have conclusive evidence at this stage.
He indicated his desire for the investigation to help determine the perpetrator of the civilian casualties, especially since several Israeli press sources pointed to the chaotic use of force by the Israeli army, which may have led to the killing of civilians, and to the possible use of the Hannibal Protocol.
About the Israeli war
Regarding the Israeli attack on Gaza, the Attorney General asserts – without mentioning the self-defense thesis – that Israel “has the right to take measures to defend its population,” and that it therefore has legitimate military objectives in Gaza, stressing that this does not justify the means used, Because Israel “deliberately, systematically and continuously deprived the civilian population throughout the territory of the means of subsistence necessary for its survival.”
Hence, the Public Prosecutor justifies a major military attack on the illegally occupied territories, without commenting on the reasons for the attack on October 7, by Palestinian groups under strict siege, as if the principle of the right of peoples to self-determination and national liberation struggles does not exist. He justifies it, and this right is even erased in the Public Prosecutor’s reading, in favor of accepting the reaction of the occupying state.
Accusations of crimes against humanity against Israeli leaders focus primarily on the total blockade, orchestrating famine, and other acts of violence deliberately directed against civilian populations, but without mentioning “deliberately subjecting the group to conditions that might lead to its complete or partial destruction,” except as “ “War style.”
As if the goal was not to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza, but to “eliminate Hamas” and increase “pressure for the return” of the hostages, while ignoring the statements of a genocidal nature made by Israeli leaders and cited by the International Court of Justice.
Internal or international conflict?
Writer Rafael Maison said that the Public Prosecutor presents the crimes “in the context of an international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, and a non-international armed conflict between Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian groups simultaneously,” which shows the desire to present the conflict in Gaza as an internal conflict, ignoring that the law International armed conflict applies in the case of military occupation.
The First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 affirms that the law of international armed conflict applies to “armed conflicts in which peoples fight against colonial domination and foreign occupation and against racist regimes in the world,” to exercise “the right of peoples to self-determination.”
The Public Prosecutor’s description of the conflict as internal – according to Maison – expresses the Prosecutor’s refusal to link Palestinian fighters to the cause of resistance or national liberation, as if we were facing a rebellion against the legitimate exercise of state authority, in apparent disregard for the historical context of the Israeli occupation and siege.
Maison believes that the accusations presented at this stage came as a result of a settlement, in which Palestinian armed groups and Israel are implicated in committing the same crime, without mentioning genocide, which means that the investigations fail to support the system of responsibility linked to genocide that the International Court of Justice has begun to explore.
Court location
The writer believes that the International Court of Justice discusses the responsibility of the State of Israel for genocide, and it goes beyond the issue of the responsibility of its leaders, and if the case between South Africa and Israel is judged on the basis of its merits, the issue of compensation for the grave damages it caused will arise, while it is avoided in speeches. About “The Next Day”.
Two new elements that go beyond the constraints of the criminal investigation remain to be highlighted, the first of which is the court’s order for Israel “to immediately cease its military attack and any other action in Rafah that would subject the group of Palestinians in Gaza to living conditions that could lead to their physical destruction, in whole or in part.”
This confirms the rejection of Israeli rhetoric that justifies its operations and reinforces the hypothesis of genocide carried out by military means. However, the American veto will likely prevent the adoption of any sanctions against Israel, such as an arms embargo and economic sanctions.
As for the second topic, the International Court of Justice examined – at the initiative of Nicaragua – the inability to prevent genocide and complicity in it.
Nicaragua’s argument linking military aid and defunding of UNRWA to non-prevention of genocide or even to complicity in genocide remains not conclusively ruled out, suggesting that in other cases of continued support, Israel’s allies could be held legally responsible on the basis of the Genocide Convention.
