{{BEIRUT}} \u2014{ Israel is pulling out all the stops to prevent an examination by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague in the Netherlands into alleged war crimes committed during its offensive on Gaza last summer that left over 2,300 dead and over 500,000 people homeless.}<\/p>\n
In an interview with Israel Radio last month, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, \u201cWe will demand of our friends in Canada, in Australia and in Germany simply to stop funding it [the court].\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Jan. 16, when Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the ICC, opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine, Israel has forced the resignation of the head of the United Nations inquiry into Operation Protective Edge and called on members of the tribunal to cut funding to the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo long as any institution for the prosecution of war crimes exists, the Israeli state knows that under any system of justice it\u2019s their leaders and officials that are going to be facing prosecution for their ongoing and systematic war crimes against the Palestinian people,\u201d said Charlotte Kates, the coordinator for the National Lawyers Guild International Committee.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, of course they want to see the ICC defunded,\u201d she told MintPress.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch investigated three attacks on schools in Gaza that occurred during Operation Protective Edge. The report concluded that two of the three \u201cdid not appear to target a military objective or were otherwise unlawfully indiscriminate,\u201d while the third was \u201cunlawfully disproportionate if not otherwise unlawfully indiscriminate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUnlawful attacks carried out willfully \u2013 that is, deliberately or recklessly \u2013 are war crimes,\u201d the HRW report asserted.<\/p>\n
Likewise, an Amnesty International investigation into Israel\u2019s destruction of buildings in Gaza determined that these attacks \u201care examples of what appears to have been deliberate destruction and targeting of civilian buildings and property on a large scale, carried out without military necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kates told MintPress that even though the system by which the court prosecutes entities is flawed, the very fact that such a body exists that calls for the international prosecution of war crimes is always going to be something that the Israeli state looks at with \u201cfear, anger, and hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kates explained that both the United States and Israel want to remain outside the jurisdiction of the international legal body.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, what that\u2019s meant is that rather than being a court that actually been used to bring to justice the biggest war criminals and violators of human rights\u2026 it\u2019s been used almost exclusively against African leaders,\u201d Kates said. \u201cSo what we see is that even the International Criminal Court is used to perpetuate colonial injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n
{{Source: mintpressnews}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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