-Caveat Lector-
Assalamu'alaikum,
Israel's rule of lawlessness
By Ali Abunimah
The Jordan Times
August 9, 2001
ON MARCH 6, 1988, Mairead Farrell, Sean Savage and Daniel McCann, all
members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), were gunned down by a British
Army undercover squad on a street in Gibraltar, the British colony at the
southern tip of Spain. The two men and a woman were felled with a hail of
29 bullets, 16 pumped into Savage alone.
The British government, then led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,
maintained that the three had been en route to plant a massive car bomb
targeting a changing of the guard ceremony. Thatcher herself had narrowly
escaped death in an IRA bombing of her hotel in Brighton in 1984, an
attack that struck at the heart of her government, killing five people and
injuring many more.
Yet even with the background of IRA violence, the Gibraltar killings set
off a debate that raged for years in the UK, as to whether the Thatcher
government operated an illegal "shoot to kill" policy -- a policy of
extrajudicial killings -- against IRA activists. The families of the
Gibraltar Three took their case to the European Court of Human Rights,
which ruled in September 1995 that although there was no evidence that the
UK had operated such a policy, the killings in Gibraltar were unnecessary,
even though the British soldiers honestly believed they had to act to
prevent a bombing. The court found that the lethal shooting violated
Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the
right to life and outlaws extrajudicial executions. The court ruled that
the IRA members could and should have been arrested rather than gunned
down in cold blood.
Spanish Magistrate Baltasar Garzon, who gained international fame for his
pursuit of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, is also
engaged in investigations much less well-known and much closer to home.
Throughout the 1980s, the Spanish government, led by former Prime Minister
Felipe Gonzalez conducted a "dirty war" against the Basque separatist
group ETA, which had itself carried out many indiscriminate killings and
bombings targeting Spanish civilians, police and politicians. Gonzalez,
who led Spain for most of the period following the post-Franco restoration
of democracy, has seen his reputation badly damaged by allegations and
speculation about how much he knew or was involved in the Spanish
government's own campaign of kidnappings, bombings and extrajudicial
executions.
In April 2000, General Enrique Rodriguez Galindo, Spain's most
highly-decorated police officer, was sentenced to 71 years in prison by a
Madrid court for ordering the kidnapping, torture and killing of two ETA
members in 1983. The civil governor of the province of Guipuzcoa, who
merely visited the kidnapped men while General Galindo was personally
interrogating them, received an identical sentence. If Judge Garzon has
his way, these convictions will not be the last.
What these examples demonstrate is that in a real democracy, the methods
employed by gangsters and criminals, such as murder, are impermissible for
the state, even against its worst enemies. Few are the leaders in a
democracy who even if they were involved in such horrors would boast about
them. And the mere suspicion that a democratically-elected leader might
have behaved in such a way is enough to set off a public outcry.
Then there is Israel. At a recent meeting of the central committee of the
Likud Party, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, addressing hundreds of
delegates, boasted about the extrajudicial killings his government has
ordered. He read off a list of names of Palestinians assassinated by
Israeli army death squads, or helicopter gunships, and after each name
shouted "he's gone!" ("Bibi's back in town," Peretz Kidron, Middle East
International, July 27, 2001) Sharon's boasting was supposed to mollify
the delegates who were accusing him of being too soft and demanding even
more brutality.
Such a bloodcurdling spectacle is difficult to imagine even in the worst
dictatorship, let alone in a country calling itself a democracy, as Israel
does. What also distinguishes Israel from countries like the UK and Spain
is the near total absence of any dissent or outrage among politicians and
journalists, almost all of whom justify Israel's assassination policy on
the grounds of "self defence."
Of course it escapes their notice, when making such arguments, that a
country with an invasion army tens of thousands strong, belligerently
occupying millions of people and their land in violation of international
law and forcibly settling that land, is in an inherently aggressive
posture and cannot claim to be defending itself.
Yet the Israeli death campaign continues unabated. Global outrage and
strong condemnation from the United States followed the July 31 missile
attack on Nablus which killed eight Palestinians, including Ashraf and
Bilal Khader, aged five and eight. Despite these protests, and despite a
widely publicised call from the Palestinian Authority for an end to
attacks within Israel, an assassination -- which Israel claims was aimed
at someone else -- very nearly killed West Bank Fateh leader Marwan
Barghouthi on August 4.
The following day, Israeli missiles were more "successful," killing
20-year-old Amer Hudire as he was driving in his car near Tulkarem.
Although it would scarcely provide a justification, Israel does not even
bother to claim that all of its extrajudicial killings are intended to
prevent future Palestinian "attacks." Rather, Israel has boasted that many
of them are to punish the victims for attacks Israel claims they planned
or carried out in the past. Thus, Israel is admitting openly that it is
acting as judge, jury and executioner in a manner that is wholly illegal
under international law.
The cases in Spain and the UK on the one hand, and Israel on the other,
are not entirely analogous. The expectation of countries like the former,
is that when they are engaged in a domestic conflict, nothing can justify
abandoning the rule of law. The expectation from Israel, however, is not
that its occupation should be more just, but that it should end. As long
as it persists, however, Israel and its leaders must be held accountable
for their abuses under international law.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, which the UN Security Council has repeatedly
reaffirmed applies to the Israeli-occupied territories, states that all
signatories (of which Israel is one) "specifically agree that each of them
is prohibited from taking any measure of such a character as to cause the
physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands.
This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal
punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not
necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person, but also to
any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military
agents." (Article 32).
The convention also explicitly bans "collective penalties" and "all
measures of intimidation or of terrorism" by the occupying power, and
affirms that "reprisals against protected persons and their property are
prohibited" (Article 33).
Violations of these and other provisions of international law are war
crimes. Much public attention has been focused on proceedings being
brought against Sharon in Belgium for his role in the 1982 Sabra and
Shatilla massacres. And human rights groups in Denmark are attempting to
pursue Israel's ambassador-designate Carmi Gillon for allegations he was
involved in torture when he worked for Israel's secret police. These
developments have worried Israel's foreign ministry enough that it has
warned senior Israeli officials to be careful when travelling abroad.
But it is not only for crimes past that Sharon, his fellow ministers and
Israel's senior army officers should beware when they venture out of their
fortified redoubt. With each new extrajudicial execution, they are adding
to the potential list of charges against them. It is highly doubtful that
Israel has a Judge Garzon, or a judiciary that could bring such charges
against its own leaders. So it is up to the international community to
ensure that Israel's crimes do not go unpunished.
The question remains, though, what it would take for those countries that
crow loudest about human rights to be up to the challenge of holding
Israel and its leaders accountable.
The author is an analyst based in the United States
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