Spain’s congress on Tuesday reportedly passed a resolution to limit the jurisdiction of investigative judges.
The move follows pressure from foreign governments such as the US, China and Israel, which has strongly criticized Judge Fernando Andreu’s ongoing investigation into the 2002 assassination of Hamas terrorist Salah Shehadeh in Gaza, in which 14 others were also killed.
The resolution confines judges to cases with a clear Spanish connection and excludes them from probing investigations already under way in the country that allegedly committed the crime, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The move effectively reins in Spain’s investigative judges from dealing with crimes against humanity allegedly committed around the world. The investigating judges of Spain’s National Court have been employing the so-called principle of universal jurisdiction – which holds that for grave crimes such as genocide, terrorism or torture, suspects can be prosecuted in the country even if the alleged offenses were committed elsewhere – to 13 cases involving events that took place in other countries, from Rwanda to Iraq.
Under the new resolution, however, cases taken up by the judges would now have to involve a Spanish citizen or the accused would have to be on Spanish soil, the WSJ reported. The Spanish government will now introduce legislation, which the major parties in Congress have agreed to back, according to the report. It wasn’t clear whether the changes would apply to existing cases or only to future ones.
At the beginning of the month, Judge Andreu of Spain’s National Court decided to continue the investigation of Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon and five other former top security officials for their part in the Shehadeh assassination, despite Spanish prosecutors’ attempts to dissuade him from doing so on the grounds that Israel was still investigating the attack. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said the Shehadeh case “makes a mockery out of international law.”
Herb Keinon contributed to this report.
An independent fact-finding committee (IFFC) established by the League of Arab States (LAS) to investigate and report on violations of human rights and international humanitarian law arising out of Israel’s offensive in Gaza from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, code named Operation Cast Lead, has submitted a report to the LAS in which it finds that there is sufficient evidence to substantiate prosecutions of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report also finds that the Israeli political leadership is responsible for such crimes.
The IFFC, comprising of Professor John Dugard (South Africa, Chairman), Professor Paul de Waart (the Netherlands) , Judge Finn Lynghjem (Norway), Advocate Gonzalo Boye (Chile / Germany), Professor Francisco Corte Real (Portugal) and Ms Raelene Sharp (Australia: Rapporteur), bases its findings on a visit to Gaza, during which it interviewed victims and witnesses of the conflict and visited sites of destruction, and on official publications of the Israeli government and NGO’s operating in the Territory. This evidence showed convincingly that the IDF had failed to distinguish between military and civilian targets in killing over 1,400 Palestinians (of which at least 850 were civilians, including 300 children and 110 women) and wounding over 5,000, and in destroying over 3,000 homes, damaging a further 11,000 and destroying or damaging hospitals, mosques, schools, factories, businesses, UN properties and government buildings.
On the basis of these facts and information collected in Gaza the IFFC found that the IDF had committed four separate war crimes:
Indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilians;
Killing, wounding and terrorizing civilians;
Wanton destruction of property not justifiable on grounds of military necessity; and
Attacks on hospitals and ambulances and obstruction of the evacuation of the wounded.
The IFFC also found that the IDF had committed crimes against humanity in that it had committed acts of murder, persecution and inhumane acts as part of a widespread and systematic attack on a civilian population.
The IFFC examined the firing of rockets by Palestinian militants from Gaza during the conflict, which had caused the death of four Israeli civilians and wounded 182, and traumatized the population of Southern Israel . It found that the evidence showed that these militants were responsible for the commission of the war crimes of indiscriminate attacks on civilians; and the killing, wounding and terrorization of civilians.
The weaponry used by the IDF in Operation Cast Lead was examined by the IFFC, which found that Israel had used white phosphorus in violation of international law by using it as an incendiary weapon in densely populated neighbourhoods.
The IFCC considered the internal investigation conducted by the IDF which found that that the IDF had acted in accordance with the requirements of international law in the course of Operation Cast Lead . It rejected the conclusions of this investigation on the grounds that it was not an independent investigation, that it failed to consider most of the allegations made against the IDF and that it had not had regard to Palestinian sources. While the IFFC was prepared to accept that some buildings destroyed had been used to store munitions and that the Palestinians had on occasion used civilians as human shields, this could not explain or justify the heavy loss of life and injury and the massive destruction of property.
The IFCC considered the question whether the IDF had committed acts of genocide in the course of its offensive. Here it found that while IDF actions met some of the requirements for the crime of genocide, Israel lacked the necessary special intention to destroy in whole or in part a national or ethnical group as required by the Genocide Convention because its operation had been motivated by an intention to collectively punish the people of Gaza in order to compel the population to reject Hamas or subdue the population into a state of submission. The IFCC rejected Israel ’s claim that it had acted in self-defence as Israel ’s actions failed to satisfy either the legal or the factual requirements for this defence.
The IFCC made a number of recommendations to the LAS. It recommended that the LAS should:
endorse the request of the Palestinian Authority that the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza be investigated and prosecuted by the International Criminal Court;
request the Security Council of the United Nations to refer the situation in Gaza to the International Criminal Court as it had done in the case of Darfur with a view to prosecution of those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity;
request the General Assembly of the United Nations to ask for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of Operation Cast Lead; and
recommend to states which recognize the principle of universal jurisdiction for international crimes that they prosecute Israeli political and military leaders for the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
A UN team investigating possible war crimes in Gaza, led by Richard Goldstone, has arrived in the Strip on a week-long fact finding mission.
The four-member team entered from Egypt after Israel failed to grant visas, despite repeated requests by the UN.
The UN wants to investigate whether Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel’s three-week operation in Gaza in December and January.
Israel accuses the UN branch carrying out the mission of bias against it.
The UN Human Rights Council has been accused of singling out Israel unfairly, and is viewed by some as having less credibility than other parts of the United Nations.
But correspondents say the selection of Mr Goldstone, a respected South African war crimes prosecutor who is also Jewish, as head of the inquiry has given it greater clout.
“They have been instructed to prove that Israel is guilty and we will not collaborate with such a masquerade,” foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AP news agency.
Public hearings
The team plans to meet “all concerned parties”, including non-governmental organisations, UN agencies and victims and witnesses of alleged violations of international humanitarian law, its office said in a statement.
Mr Goldstone has previously said his team had hoped to visit southern Israeli towns which have suffered Palestinian rocket fire , before entering Gaza from Israel, but Israel has shown no sign of allowing access.
Israel was initially angered that the team was tasked only with investigating alleged Israeli violations, but after Mr Goldstone was appointed, its mandate was widened to cover the activities of Palestinian militants too.
Inquiry conclusions
Several investigations into alleged violations of international law during Israel’s 22-day operation in Gaza, which ended on 18 January, have now reported back.
Israeli bombardment of Gaza, 14 January 2009
Israel has been accused of war crimes for air raids in heavily populated areas
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has requested more than $11m (£7m) compensation from Israel for damage to UN property in Gaza, after a limited UN inquiry accused Israel of targeting known civilian shelters and providing untrue statements to justify actions in which civilians were killed.
The report found Israel to blame in six out of nine incidents when death or injury were caused to people sheltering at UN property and UN buildings were damaged.
The Israeli military has concluded in an internal investigation that its troops fought lawfully, although errors did take place, such as the deaths of 21 people in a wrongly targeted house.
Meanwhile, a fact-finding team commissioned by the Arab League said there was sufficient evidence for the Israeli military to be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that “the Israeli political leadership was also responsible for such crimes”.
It also said Palestinian militants were guilty of war crimes in their use of indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
Palestinian rights groups say more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the January conflict. Israel puts the figure at 1,166.
Israeli and Palestinian estimates also differ on the numbers of civilian casualties.
Ten Israeli soldiers were killed, including four by friendly fire, and three Israel civilians died in rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.
Mahmoud Mohammed Imad in front of his curtain made of garbage in Jabaliya refugee camp east of Gaza City. Photograph: Antonio Olmos
31 May 2009
Mahmoud Mohammed Imad sits in front of his curtain made of rubbish. The opening to his shop in the Jabaliya refugee camp could be a work of art. A single black army boot hangs threaded through its eyes. It dangles among coils of plastic pipe, skeins of used string, a football boot, the wheel of a child’s scooter. Disconnected electrical fittings are strung like beads. Shoes and more shoes. Fragments of the discarded and the broken.
It is a suspended, frozen waterfall of junk that partially conceals the room that lies behind it, a place piled high with unruly heaps of clothes that threaten to fall through the door and out on to the street.
In front of Imad are wooden sticks, stretchers for the kites the children make to fly or sell for a few shekels.
Imad is missing an eye. A young man in the street in a striped shirt – who describes Imad as a local legend – says that he lost it in the first intifada, in which his son also died. Nonsense, Imad says, when I ask him later. He lost his eye as an infant. “A woman told my mother I was a beautiful baby. Then two weeks later something went wrong.”
The camp’s residents call Imad the “busy one” and say the street is named after him. The loud guffawing men, and the gang of boys who crowd around him, speak over Imad, mocking him. One in particular, a neighbouring shopkeeper in a blue shirt, elects to speak on his behalf, and pushes Imad roughly from time to time to punctuate his points until finally the “busy one” explodes in anger.
Imad says more quietly that he is afraid the boys will try to steal his stuff, so one of the men threatens them with a piece of hose to drive them away. But still they laugh at him.
There are things in Imad’s tapestry of wreckage, he says, that were rescued from houses damaged in Israel’s assault in Gaza at the year’s beginning. But mostly the “busy one” buys his stuff from the Fras market in the centre of Gaza City, he says, bits and pieces for those who cannot afford to buy new things from the shops in a place where inflation is rampant and unemployment high.
Imad lists his prices: 15 shekels for the army boot; one shekel for the scooter wheel; six shekels for a piece of plastic pipe.
I head to the Fras junk market the following morning but find it was moved two months ago on the orders of Hamas from the street it once occupied in the city centre to a patch of sandy ground in the Yarmouk district next to a rubbish dump. As the horse carts drop off the waste, rag pickers scour the piles for things to salvage.
None of the traders like their new location much. There was a better passing trade, they say, in Fras than here where no shops exist.
On tables and sheets laid on the ground are rusty pickaxe handles, gas burner rings for stoves.
Mohammed Ahmed’s stall sells broken Moulinex food mixers, falafel makers and pieces for meat grinders. One of his mixers has a hole exposing the motor within, coiled with copper wire, damaged during the war. Some of the items on his stall were sold to him by people who lost their homes, but most of his stock – like the majority of things being sold at market – came originally from Israel before the border closed after Hamas assumed full power in 2007.
The goods made it into Gaza by that peculiar osmotic flow that occurs between the wealthy, powerful state and the impoverished entity – not even a country – where broken parts can be cannibalised, reinvented, resurrected.
Now even Israel’s junk cannot enter a Strip under economic siege. So what cannot be procured through the tunnels from Egypt, or cannot be afforded, is fixed and recycled.
It is a wearying process of constant attention where parts must be hunted for with vigour. One day the Daewoo car belonging to a friend’s husband starts bleeding oil. He searches the shops and workshops for a day for something that will fix it – until another part, in the wheel this time, breaks the following day and the whole business must be repeated.
Nothing that can be recovered and reused is discarded.
I run into Abdullah Ijnad working among the ruins of a mosque that has been moved by bulldozer from where it was blown up in northern Gaza by Israeli soldiers in January to a place where the concrete can be dismantled for its metal strengthening rods without offending its former worshippers.
Two amputated columns lie together in the rubble out of which Ijnad has already beaten out the metal with a sledgehammer. Now he pulls out the twisted corkscrews, warped by his hammering, to place them in a pile. The work is not yet finished.
Across the road Ijnad’s employer, Awni Sultan, 47, has set up a powerful hand-operated vice to straighten each individual rod, squeezing and bending out the kinks until they seem like new. Heavy. Arrow straight.
I am reminded of a story I heard earlier that day about the furniture shops performing the same renewal, growing wealthy in a place where new furniture is nowhere to be found. Taking old furniture, re-upholstering it, repairing the legs and selling it as newly made. And so Gaza recycles by necessity. Making and mending. Becoming the “busy one” as it survives.
Peter Beaumont is a senior foreign correspondent for the Observer and author of The Secret Life Of War
The Never Before Campaign has created videos as part of a larger communications campaign which was launched during the Gaza war.
The campaign is based in Beirut and is expected to grow to encompass interested people and groups all over the world.
The campaign is a promotion of the ideas that:
Never before has an injustice been committed against a people for such an extent
The Palestinian people have maintained their resistance and resilience
The Palestinian people should not promote an apologetic attitude to garner international sympathy, it is the world who should apologize to the Palestinians
The Palestinian cause is not about humanitarian aid but about justice and rights
The multi-faceted resistance of the Palestinian people should be supported
