Last night, at 2am local time, after a long cabinet meeting, the Israeli government finally decided on a unilateral cease-fire. The question is, a cease-fire with who? As Israel does not recognise Hamas, it cannot negotiate any kind of deal with the group. Another question is how a cease-fire can be unilateral? If only one party agrees to halt fighting, how does this ensure that the conflict actually does stop? And in the case of Palestine, what about freedom, the right of return for the refugees, the right to land and to control of their own borders? What about the right to be free of occupation? And finally, what about the right to an independent state?
Well this morning's events proves these questions to be relevent. Indeed, as reported on Israel's English daily The Haaretz online, IDF and Hamas gunmen traded fire after Hamas launched more rockets into Israel, despite the cease-fire. Furthermore, according to Ehud Olmert, Israeli troops will remain in the Strip (occupying once again that land) as long as Hamas continues to fire rockets.
When I read international media, I find it surprising how this conflict is portrayed and even more surprising how Hamas and its actions are described. Why does everyone think that Hamas is firing rockets just because it feels like it and just because its members are blood thirsty terrorists? Even European media does not get to the bottom of the story. That is actually the problem with journalism, short stories portraying some facts (not all) and never reminding us of the root causes and the history. In the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, history is very important.
Since Israel's onslaught on Gaza, international law professionals and intellectuals, including Richard Falk, the Princeton professor who was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, have brought up the issue of potential legal action against Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This of course all depends on how the US will veto these attempts.
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Crimes against humanity, "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. However, murder, extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of falling into the category of crimes under discussion."
War Crimes are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions which includes among other acts, harming civilians, destroying property, directing attacks at UN and humanitarian facilities and staff, settling on occupied territory and using poisonous weapons. Does this not sound all too familiar lately?
No comments:
Post a Comment