Israeli PM Netanyahu: international rule of law should be changed

As a reaction to the Goldstone report on the Gaza war last December, the Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, has instructed his cabinet that Israel must advance diplomatic attempts to change the international laws of war. Currently, as Netanyahu states, laws of war do not recognise the different nature of the war on terror. He argues that Israel was not fighting a normal enemy in Gaza but a terrorist group, thus different laws should apply. Netanyahu’s goal, as Tel Aviv-based newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth writes, “is to delegitimize the continuing attempt to delegitimize the State of Israel.” The UN mission led by South African judge Richard Goldstone has concluded that Israel as well as Hamas have, “committed war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity.” The mission’s conclusion and methods have caused much controversy in the Israeli and US administrations as well as some EU-members.

The Goldstone commission notes in its report that crimes of war were committed by the Israeli Defence Force, Fattah and Hamas. The Goldstone report sees the Israeli “military assault on Gaza” as “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability”. Furthermore, the report sees the Hamas missile attacks on South Israeli towns as war crimes.

The report recommends Hamas and Israel to investigate the mission’s findings internally. The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva has endorsed the report and has forwarded it to the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon and the Security Council. There is a real legal chance that Israeli or Palestinian politicians and military commanders will have to stand trial at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, if the Security Council passes a resolution based on the report.

The report has been heavily criticised by Israel and the US, sometimes rightly. “Israel is appalled and disappointed by the report,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry reacted, “which compares Israel to Hamas and rewards acts of terror.” The Israeli ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aharon Leshno Yaar, says that the Human Rights Council has a long history of focussing on events in Israel, whilst overlooking other states who ignore human rights. Also, the Israeli Foreign Ministry accuses the Human Rights Council of applying double standards. Consequently, Israel has refused to cooperate with the Goldstone committee from the outset.

The role of the US will again prove to be crucial. Netanyahu’s attempt to detach the War on Terror from the international laws of war will probably find support in Washington D.C. In an Al Jazeera interview, Goldstone has called the US response to the report “ambivalent.” The reaction of the Obama administration has thus far been two-sided. While supporting the mission’s recommendation that Israel and Hamas should execute an internal investigation, several high US officials have called the report “flawed.” The US delegate to the Human Rights Council, Douglas M. Griffiths, states that, “in examining Israel’s response sufficient weight was not given to the difficulties faced in fighting this kind of enemy in this environment.” One cannot help but think of a comparable ‘kind of enemy’ the US are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both the US and Israel have warned that renewed peace talks would be endangered by the mission’s findings. It is however more probable that peace talks will be supported if the mission’s recommendations are followed. The Palestinian PM Abbas (Fatah) and Hamas leaders have promised an internal investigation of its actions during the Gaza war. In Israel, the cabinet is hugely divided; whilst a committee to investigate the Israeli Defence Forces has been proposed by several ministers, the Minister of Defence, Ehud Barak, has continued to refuse such an investigation.

To both parties it will most likely be beneficial to turn inward and reflect not only on the Gaza war, but also the Palestinian-Israeli conflict more generally. It has been a long time, as Goldstone emphasises, since states or politicians in the Middle East have taken responsibility for their actions. Obeying the laws of war now will perhaps be a starting point for renewed peace talks. The Obama administration can now choose to remain supportive of Israel and maintain the status quo, or provide this ongoing conflict with a much-needed breakthrough.

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