How long will it take to charge Israeli war criminals? Dina Ezzat spoke to those who seek a deadline Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu this week instructed his government to draw up a proposal to amend the international laws of war after a damning UN report. Netanyahu, international news agencies reported Wednesday, is determined to prevent Israeli leaders from being prosecuted by international justice for committing war crimes -- which could amount to crimes against humanity -- against Palestinians under occupation. Netanyahu said the amendment that Israel is planning to launch in an intensive campaign should be secured in view of what he qualified as the need for the world to maintain its war on terror. The new Israeli scheme comes against the backdrop of harsh international criticism against Israel for the atrocities it committed against Palestinians under occupation, including its war on Gaza early this year which were recorded in an international judiciary report. It also comes parallel to intensified inter-governmental and non-governmental Arab and international attempts to prosecute Israeli war criminals either before the International Criminal Court (ICC) or in national courts in countries whose judiciary system addresses war crimes as part of their adoption of the principle of universal jurisdiction. The Richard Goldstone Report was passed last week by the UN Human Rights Council and was consequently forwarded to the UN secretary-general and the chair of the UN General Assembly. The General Assembly is tentatively scheduled, according to sources in New York, to address the report before Christmas. "Israel is leaving no stone unturned to prevent a session of the General Assembly on the Goldstone Report from being held," an Egyptian diplomatic source in New York said. However, he added, "At the end of the day the General Assembly will probably have to examine this report, if not before Christmas, then after the holidays". Meanwhile, it is in the capacity of UN Secretary- General Ban Ki-Moon to directly refer the report to the UN Security Council, in view of the fact that the Human Rights Council endorsed the report with all its recommendations that includes a call on the UN Security Council to examine the report and to act to address the violations included in it. The Human Rights Council will expect a report from Ban on relevant progress by March. Human rights diplomats argue that the maximum that should be expected is for the UN General Assembly to issue a resolution that calls for the observation of the rules of international law and international humanitarian law. A Palestinian diplomat told Al-Ahram Weekly that "anybody who thinks for one minute that the US would allow this report to go to the Security Council is dreaming, to say the least." The US has openly worked to block the Human Rights Council's endorsement of the Goldstone Report, lobbying with Israel, say Egyptian and other Arab sources in New York. Some expect that it could eventually succeed in shelving it. Notwithstanding, Hesham Youssef, chief of the Cabinet of the Arab League secretary-general, said this week that the Arab organisation is "pursuing its efforts to prosecute those who committed war crimes in Gaza". Youssef spoke to the Weekly days after his return from The Hague where he conducted intensive talks with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. A party to the consultations in The Hague was Palestinian Minister of Justice Ali Al-Khashan, as was international law professor John Dugard, who headed an independent fact- finding committee on Gaza and issued "No safe place", a judiciary report on the violations of international law in the Israeli war on Gaza. The Hague consultations had two objectives: to establish the right of the Palestinian Authority -- which does amount to a state -- to prosecute before the ICC, and to establish the legal foundation for the ICC to prosecute. The Paris-based human rights activist Haytham Manna told the Weekly in a telephone interview that Moreno-Ocampo had been presented with ample material for him to proceed. "And we are not going to let go and we will not let the Goldstone and Dugard reports meet the same fate as the Tutu report", Manna said in reference to a report prepared by a fact-finding mission headed by Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu on the Israeli attack on Beit Hanoun in Gaza in 2006. Both Manna and Djebril Fahl, a Palestinian lawyer and advisor to the PA, predicted in separate interviews with the Weekly that it would take Moreno- Ocampo a few months before he can reach a conclusion. Both excluded the possibility that the ICC prosecutor would come under pressure. "Things are proceeding", Manna said. Manna also excluded the possibility that the PA, which had earlier this month aimed to postpone the Human Rights Council's examination of the Goldstone Report, would get cold feet. "We have passed the point where people could turn their back." Speaking to the Weekly on the phone from Ramallah, Al-Khashan said, "the Palestinian Authority is firmly committed" to pursue this path. The Palestinian minister, however, excluded the possibility that the process would bring Israeli leaders to admit having committed war crimes against Palestinians. "This is a long shot," he said. "What we are surely doing, however, is to incriminate Israel morally." Manna acknowledged the same difficulties but argued "at least it would be possible to get national courts to prosecute Israeli war criminals. We will do it." Palestinian and Israeli rights group alike say that in its December-January onslaught on Gaza, Israel killed close to 1,500 Palestinians, one-third of them children. For its part, Arab human rights activists say Israel is engaged in "a ruthless campaign to shut up all legal and human rights organisations" that criticise its atrocities against the Palestinian people. They report some Israeli success in the recent criticism launched against Human Rights Watch by no other than its former chairman Robert Brenstien who said that Human Rights Watch is helping "those who want to turn Israel into a pariah state".
