High Court to start hearing on possible IDF war crimes in Gaza

[Violet_Crumble]

The High Court of Justice will begin deliberations Sunday on whether to open a criminal investigation into allegations that the Israel Defense Forces committed war crimes during two operations in the Gaza Strip in 2004.

The court will hold the hearing following a petition by Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel. The organization petitioned the court to order a criminal investigation concerning the death of Palestinian citizens during Operation Rainbow in May 2004 and Operation Days of Penitence the following October.

Dozens of Palestinians - 44 of them children - were killed in the two operations, and 258 houses were destroyed. According to the petition, the houses were home to 522 families.

Adalah's petition charges Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, the military advocate general, Brigadier General Avichai Mandelblitt and Brigadier General (res.) Shmuel Zakai, then commander of the Gaza Region Division, with war crimes.

In addition, it accuses the top echelon of the defense establishment of complicity in the killings. The officials named include Major-General Dan Harel, who was then chief of the Southern Command, as well as then chief-of-staff Moshe Ya'alon and then defense minister Shaul Mofaz.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/848516.html

[PDJane]

1. and about damn time, too.

Now if we could just get the cabal in front of a war crimes tribunal, and dig out all the crap from the congo to Iraq, maybe we could start to diminish the level of violence in this old world and put our attention to other things......like fixing the environment.

[Jim Sagle]

2. Put Hamas in the dock too while we're at it.

[Englander]

3. From 2004;

"Operation Rainbow"

Children among 20 dead as Israeli army begins huge crackdown on Rafah

Chris McGreal in Rafah
Wednesday May 19, 2004
The Guardian

Israeli forces attacked Rafah refugee camp yesterday at the start of an operation to crush Palestinian armed resistance, before a planned fresh wave of house demolitions.

The army killed at least 20 people, including children, one of the highest death tolls in a single day of the present intifada, as it occupied the Tel al-Sultan district on the margins of the camp in preparation for an expected assault on the heart of Rafah.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1219823,00.html


Ten die as Israeli tanks fire on peaceful protest

Chris McGreal in Rafah
Thursday May 20, 2004
The Guardian

Israeli forces fired tank shells into a peaceful Palestinian protest during the ongoing assault on Rafah refugee camp yesterday, killing at least 10 people - mostly children - and critically wounding many others.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1220749,00.html


Israeli troops pull back from Rafah camp

Chris McGreal in Rafah
Tuesday May 25, 2004
The Guardian

Israeli forces pulled out of most of the Rafah refugee camp last night amid criticism of the rising civilian death toll and widespread destruction caused by Operation Rainbow.

Israeli military chiefs denied they were abandoning the sweep through the camp in southern Gaza - ostensibly in search of weapons-smuggling tunnels - which was billed as the operation to break Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the area.

Senior officers described the pullback as "taking a deep breath" before continuing the assault. "The operation will carry on as long as we stay there," said Major General Dan Harel, the Israeli army commander in the area. "It will go in different intensities."

>snip

Israel has been shaken by international criticism of the attacks, particularly after a tank fired into a peaceful march, killing 10 people. It has also faced domestic concern about the raid, after the extent of the devastation was revealed by the army's partial withdrawal from the al-Brazil neighbourhood.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1224106,00.html

"Operation Days of Penitence"

23 killed in Israeli raid on refugee camp

Chris McGreal in Jabaliya, Gaza
Friday October 1, 2004
The Guardian

Israeli forces killed at least 23 Palestinians yesterday on one of the bloodiest days of the intifada, as the army made a rare push into the heart of a heavily defended Gaza refugee camp.

A single tank shell claimed seven lives, many of them said by witnesses to be unarmed teenagers. But doctors said it was difficult to tell because the bodies were blown apart.

More than 100 people were wounded, including children, as Palestinian insurgents put up prolonged resistance to the attack on Jabaliya, a Hamas and Islamic Jihad stronghold.

Israel's defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, said he intended to widen the army's assault beyond the camp, just north of Gaza City, after Wednesday's Hamas rocket attack that killed two children, aged two and four, in the Israeli town of Sderot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1316951,00.html

50,000 trapped by Israeli assault on Gaza

Chris McGreal in Jabaliya refugee camp
Tuesday October 5, 2004
The Guardian

Israeli forces have demolished the homes of hundreds of Palestinians, bulldozed swaths of agricultural land and destroyed infrastructure in their bloodiest assault on the Gaza Strip in years.

More than 70 people have died in Operation Days of Penitence, launched in northern Gaza six days ago after a Hamas rocket attack killed two Israeli children. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said that the dead included 31 civilians. Nineteen were under 18.

Most of the nine people killed yesterday were Palestinian fighters, but a teenage girl was among the dead, shot in her home. In southern Gaza Israeli forces killed a four-year-old boy in Khan Yunis refugee camp, where several Palestinian children have been shot dead in recent weeks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1319776,00.html

[Tom Joad]

4. This should be interesting. They could include the war crimes from last week as well.

[msmcghee]

5. Before Irsael's enemies get too excited . .

. . some things to consider.

First, a petition has been given to Israel's High Court of Justice that contains war crimes charges against the IDF regarding some specific instances in Gaza.

The High Court of Justice is deciding whether the charges are credible enough that they will open an investigation. I assume that the investigation, if it occurs, will determine if those charges are credible enough and serious enough to be heard in court.

So, it's a long way from what is happening now to an actual war crimes trial on those charges - that may occur in this court.

Adalah (the petitioner) says that the charges are worthy of an international tribunal and implies that he will take them there if the Israeli courts don't take them seriously and proceed with them. I wonder why he doesn't just bypass the Israeli court system if he's so sure about that.

Any Israelis here have an opinion on that?

Also, just a minor quibble. The actual Haaretz headline is:

High Court to weigh probe on alleged IDF war crimes in Gaza

VC's incorrect headline . .

High Court to start hearing on possible IDF war crimes in Gaza

. . creates the impression that the hearings are about the war crimes - not about the credibility of the charges in the petition being sufficient to justify an investigation into them.

[Igel]

6. I have a guess as to why the detour through the

state court system.

The ICC covers war crimes (etc.) where the national system does not or will deal with them. If the national courts *can* deal with them and hasn't had a stab, strictly speaking the ICC should bounce any petition back to them.

[Violet_Crumble]

9. I think yr guess is a pretty good one...

The ICC refuses to hear any cases where there hasn't been an attempt to hear them through a national system...

[pelsar]

7. its no more than politics...

as there are two main issues:

jihadnikim hiding out behind civilians....

definition of disproportionate force.....

________

the first negates any general "war crimes" sin against the planners of the assult.

the second has no real meaning in a combat zone.
(should i use a large missile to kill the guys shooting at me...or should i just use a smaller one to wound them and hope that they are wounded "enough" so that when i approach to bandage them, they wont kill me.....)

[Violet_Crumble]

8. A few corrections...

1. People who think this is a good start aren't 'enemies of Israel'. That sort of language is the sort of thing that also comes from American conservatives who constantly claim that people who opposed the invasion of Iraq are anti-American or hate the US...

2. Adalah isn't a *he*. Adalah is an Israeli NGO...

3. As for yr minor quibble about my supposedly incorrect headline - I used the headline that was on Ha'aretz. Ha'aretz have a habit of changing titles of articles or putting new articles on the same url, so yr quibble is with them, as the headline I posted wasn't incorrect.

[msmcghee]

10. Thanks for the corrections.

1. People who think this is a good start aren't 'enemies of Israel'. That sort of language is the sort of thing that also comes from American conservatives who constantly claim that people who opposed the invasion of Iraq are anti-American or hate the US...

I never said that "people who think this is a good start" were "enemies of Israel". I only said Israel's enemies (whoever they are) shouldn't get too excited.

2. Adalah isn't a *he*. Adalah is an Israeli NGO...

Thanks

3. As for yr minor quibble about my supposedly incorrect headline - I used the headline that was on Ha'aretz. Ha'aretz have a habit of changing titles of articles or putting new articles on the same url, so yr quibble is with them, as the headline I posted wasn't incorrect.

Well, it is incorrect now. It was probably changed by Haaretz because of the false impression it created. I only said your title was incorrect. I didn't know why it was different - although I considered that Haaretz might have changed it. That's why I didn't suggest that you were misleading anyone. (Actually my wording could create that impression.) I should have worded it differently.