The criminal lawyer Phon Van Den Biesen said: “I think what we have been seeing over the years — but especially over the last couple of weeks … I do not have much doubt that both parties are violating the laws of warfare, and are violating the rules of international law with respect to warfare. So, that would be true for the leaders of Hamas, as well as for the leaders in Israel. Israel obviously has the right to defend itself against armed assaults, but a right to self-defense is not unlimited; the right to self-defense is itself restricted by rules of international law. And one is not allowed to target civilian objects. And even if it is true that Hamas would be making it hard to make a difference between military and civilian targets — which if that is true is something that implies also a violation by Hamas of international law, because in warfare you’re not supposed to use a hospital as a basis for launching missiles — but even so there is a need for proportionality in international law; there is a need to at all times make a difference between civilian and military targets. But on the ground the facts show that Israel is involved in a wholesale targeting of civilian objects. And that is clearly a violation of humanitarian law. And targeting power plants, water reservoirs, water facilities, etcetera certainly is targeting civilian objects, and is certainly a violation of the laws of warfare.” Eric David said: “Don’t forget that Israel has been committing a permanent war crime; not one, but has been committing permanent war crimes by establishing settlements in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli settlements are — and I put quotation marks — a “war crime.” It is not only a war crime according to Article 8, Paragraph 2(b) … of the statute of the ICC, or according to Article 85 of the First Additional Protocol of 1977 — protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (these two instruments have never been ratified by Israel); but also according to Article 147 of the 4th Geneva Convention … which criminalizes illegal transfer of population from the occupying power on the territory of the occupied power. A settlement which is made by the occupying power is a crime in international law. It’s an illegal transfer of population. That was made by Germany during the Second World War … That’s been considered as a war crime, and that’s precisely what happens today with Palestine. And thus, because of that situation, it’s quite clear that the Palestinians … find a legal justification to defend themselves, because the United Nations are not coherent with their own resolutions. Because on the one hand they ask — not ask — they order Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, and it doesn’t do!” - See more at: mondoweiss.net/2014/09/israel-international-jurists.html#sthash.NCHPOdqC.dpuf
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 11:33:05 +0000
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