Group charges Israel with war crimes in Gaza
The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel sent a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and other ministers that accused the government of war crimes in its latest incursion into Gaza. The letter reminded the ministers that a key principle in “humanitarian international law is the principle of distinguishing between fighters and civilians during war.”
The Israeli military launched an incursion into Gaza last week Monday that left over 100 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers dead. Israel is responding to a barrage of rocket attacks from Palestinian militants into southern Israel.
Meanwhile, following meetings in Cairo in preparation for a summit in Damascus later this Spring, the Arab League called the Israeli attacks on Gaza “crimes against humanity.” The ministers said in a statement they considered “these Israeli crimes as crimes of war,” adding, “The criminal aggression against Gaza shows that Israeli policy against the Palestinian people is based on genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
But will anything happen? The argument can be made that Israel withdrew its military forces from Gaza after less than a week and that this sort of condemnation harnesses Israeli aggression, but this tit for tat sort of thing is the status quo. Ariel Sharon, when he served in the military, was a noted aggressor against Arabs and current ministers have made statements suggesting, to coin the phrase, there will be blood. The Palestinians use force, so the Israelis use force, so the argument goes. But Israel also has a blockade on Gaza and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East says it will run out of food soon. The Israelis also tried shutting off the electricity in Gaza to force the residents there to turn against the militants, notably Hamas. English reports say the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is the worst that it’s been in over 40 years and they blame the Israeli blockade for that atrocity.
This seems to paint a lopsided picture of international law. There is a tenant in international relations theory that says the most powerful states make all the rules. They succeed because they are the best at what they do; if you want to be as great, you have to play by their rules too, or you get cast aside. A question along this front is to ask whether Man follows the rule of God because they are the rules of God, or because God’s rules are good. In international affairs, it seems that this Hobbesian notion of supremacy also carries into international law. As an aside, two towns in Vermont passed non-binding resolutions to indict U.S. President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney for violating the U.S. Constitution. But this, and the international condemnation against Israel, is largely symbolic. It seems, and this can be supported by the situation in Sudan where many sitting government ministers are accused of war crimes, that the powerful have the privilege of immunity as well. It was only after the U.S. overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime that Saddam faced justice. It was only after Yugoslavia collapsed that Slobodan Milosevic was brought before the Hague. What does this privilege of immunity for the powerful mean for Israel?