A Good Time To Hold Israel Accountable
Rami G. Khouri| The Daily Star
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 concluded that Israeli attacks killed 44 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 United Nations-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 by others around the world who remain perplexed and frustrated with the inability to curtail the cycle of violence that has engulfed 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 in a different way. It can become a jumping off point to create a larger, more emphatic mechanism of accountability, one anchored in the rule of law, that could foster a slow shift away from unchecked militarism and towards a serious quest for a negotiated resolution of the conflict. This may be 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 impunity, they will continue to do so for a very long time. The result will be more of the same prevalent violence, barbarism and state collapse we see across many parts of the Arab world.
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http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2015/Apr-29/296109-a-good-time-to-hold-israel-accountable.ashx
