Ibrahim Nafie calls for Israeli war crimes to be fully documented Can we see an end to Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories? It is a question we should all be asking ourselves given the heavy toll Israel is exacting on innocent civilians in the West Bank and Gaza. No Palestinian family, street, and now even beach, is safe. Israel says it is attacking those who fire rockets into Israeli towns. It is not. It is attacking innocent citizens, men, women and children. The Palestinians Israel kills in ever growing numbers have nothing whatsoever to do with the firing of homemade rockets. One family was killed while sitting on a Gaza beach. Another was bombed while sitting down for dinner. A third was hit while driving in a car. Innocent Palestinian civilians fall victim everyday. One of the most recent victims was a four-year-old child. Images of the carnage have been reproduced in the media and on the Internet. The acts are gruesome enough for ordinary people to call for the perpetrators to be put on trial. Even the daughter of current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was so moved by the pictures of the atrocities that she recently led a march to the home of the Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, along with other activists, all of whom described Halutz as a murderer. The Israeli chief of staff is a war criminal. His actions remind me of those committed by Nazi commanders. He ordered the killing of dozens of innocent Palestinians when he was the commander of the Israeli air force. He sent Israeli planes to shell residential areas, claiming that his intention was to assassinate resistance leaders. It was Halutz who ordered the bombing of a residential building formerly inhabited by Salah Shehadah, killing a large number of civilians, mostly children. The death of children, killed by tank shelling and rockets fired by F-16s, must not go unpunished. These crimes are not a natural outcome of the conflict, a sad phenomenon that will end as soon as a peaceful settlement is reached. These scenes of bloodshed, of severed limbs and wailing mothers, will continue. Enough agreements have been signed, enough offers of truce made, and yet the carnage continues. These deaths are the result of the mindset of Israeli politicians, of people who want only to terrorise the Palestinians and force them to leave their land, just as they did in 1948. The bloodshed is not the result of errors or miscalculations. The Israeli occupation forces are determined to continue their carnage, to carry on with the kind of war crimes for which others have had to face international trials. And we must pursue this issue until, likewise, these Israeli war criminals are brought to trial. The crimes need to be documented thoroughly, and files must be compiled, for I am confident that the day will come when the murderers will be finally brought to justice. I have asked Arabs Against Discrimination (ADD) to document such crimes and ADD has kindly obliged. Now I am calling on Arab organisations active in human rights to act as one and use their regional and international connections and press for criminal charges to be brought. The ADD is prepared to provide the documentation needed for the collective Arab action leading to the trial of Israeli war criminals. This would be a first step toward providing international protection to the Palestinians, and towards liberating Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Israel's occupation of Palestinian land has become an anomaly in today's world and must end.
