April 29, 2015
What
happens when chronic violence and brutal aggression go unchecked for decades on
end? We see an example of this in the release this week of the findings of a
United Nations internal investigation of events during last summer’s war in
Gaza. The report included the conclusion that Israeli attacks then killed forty-four
Palestinian civilians who had sheltered in seven United Nations schools. It
also concluded that no weapons had been found inside those facilities, but
rather in three other vacant UN-run schools that Hamas used to store arms, and
from where it “probably” fired rockets at Israel.
So
what good are these investigations and findings, if they recur with the same
frequency as the killings, and have no impact on the warfare? This report will
trigger a familiar set of accusations and responses by Israelis and
Palestinians, and others around the world who remain perplexed and frustrated
with the inability to curtail the cycle of violence that has defined Israelis
and Palestinians for nearly a century now.
Perhaps
it is time that protagonists in the region and other interested parties should
consider using this report as a jumping off point to create a larger, more
emphatic, mechanism of accountability that could foster a slow shift away from
unchecked militarism and towards a serious quest for a negotiated resolution of
the conflict anchored in the rule of law. This is romantic wishful thinking, I
understand, but achieving some sort of credible accountability for the illegal
and unethical use of force by all parties in the region strikes me as an urgent
and important underlying goal we should strive to achieve. If Israeli, Arab,
American, and other political actors across the region can kill, invade, launch
wars, blockade, colonize, steal, imprison, torture, rape and use chemical
weapons with total impunity, they will continue to do so for a very long time —
and the result will be more of the same prevalent violence, barbarism, and
state collapse we see across many parts of the Arab world.
Aiming
high and aspiring to create meaningful accountability mechanisms could offer us
a chance to define the problems we suffer from and explore small steps towards
creating solutions that are fair to all concerned. Israel-Palestine is a good
place to start, for many reasons. It is the oldest and most destabilizing and
radicalizing conflict in the region; it has fed into many of the other tensions
that plague the Middle East, including Arab dictatorships and the corruption
and state mismanagement they foster, erratic Turkish and Iranian relations with
Israel, region-wide sectarian stresses and violence, terrorism, and turbulent
relations between Arabs and Western powers, especially the United States.
Achieving
accountability in Israel-Palestine is more possible now than ever before, for
two main reasons: Palestine is a non-state member of the United Nations system,
which means it can use available mechanisms such as the International Criminal
Court; and, public opinion around the world, including in the United States, has
become much more balanced in equitably and simultaneously seeking the
legitimate rights of Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The
Gaza war last year resulted in the deaths of over 2,200 Palestinians and seventy-two
Israelis, and mass destruction of tens of thousands of homes and other civilian
facilities in Gaza. The UN had repeatedly informed the Israelis of the
coordinates of the schools that sheltered civilians, so the attacks clearly
were not the result of ignorance. The UN secretary general, in a letter to the
Security Council, criticized Israel for attacking “inviolable” UN facilities,
and also criticized Hamas for its “unacceptable” misuse of similar UN
facilities.
The
investigation found that the seven schools received a barrage of Israeli
“high-explosive projectiles,” mortar rounds, and a precision-guided missile,
while also noting that Hamas militants for their part had endangered UN
facilities by storing weapons in empty schools and probably launching missiles
from them. There is a valid argument that it is unfair to judge Israelis and
Palestinians by the same standards, given the preponderance of Israeli might
and its disproportionate military attacks against Palestinians, and also the
fact that Israel has occupied, colonized, dehydrated, and blockaded Gaza for
decades, which generated the Palestinian response in the form of armed
resistance.
Yet
the power and the validity of any rule of law, and its handmaiden
accountability, derive from their applicability equally to both parties. The
Palestinians have said they are prepared to have their own acts investigated in
a process that also holds Israel accountable to the same standards of behavior,
because they are confident that the gains of applying the rules of law and war
could finally provide some constraints to Israel’s unchecked aggressions
against Palestinians since the 1940s.
This
UN report that addresses the actions of Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza
war is an opportunity to dare to move towards holding chronic killers
accountable. It should not be missed.
Rami G. Khouri is
published twice weekly in the Daily Star.
He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American
University of Beirut. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.
Copyright ©2015 Rami G.
Khouri—distributed by Agence Global