|
Voices of Peace
Vol.VI
Mr. Francis A. Boyle is a Professor in International Law at
the University of Illinois. He served as Legal Advisor: to the Palestine Liberation
Organization on Creation of the State of Palestine (1987-1989), to the Palestinian
Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations (1991-1993) and sometime to the
Provisional Government of the State of Palestine.
From MediaMonitors Network
Prosecute Israeli Crimes At Jenin: Sharon
to The Hague!
by Francis A. Boyle
The Israeli government inflicted war crimes, grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva
Convention of 1949, and a Crime against Humanity against the inhabitants of Jenin.
The United Nations must prosecute these international crimes for the exact same reasons
that it created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and
the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Both of these ad hoc international
criminal tribunals were established by the United Nations Security Council with the
approval of the United States government, a Permanent Member thereof with a veto
power. But it has already been publicly reported that the Bush Jr. administration
intervened with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to head off an investigation of
Jenin as authorized by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1405 (19 April 2002).
Despite such unconscionable but continual U.S. obstructionism at the Security Council
when it comes to protecting the basic human rights of the Palestinian People, the
U.N. General Assembly has concurrent jurisdiction under the United Nations Charter
to investigate and prosecute Israeli government officials — both civilian and military
— for the international crimes that they have ordered, committed, condoned, and approved
at Jenin and elsewhere in Palestine. We must pressure the member states of the U.N.
General Assembly to found an International Criminal Tribunal for Palestine (ICTP)
in order to prosecute Israeli war criminals, both military and civilian, including
and especially Israeli political leaders such as Sharon. The U.N. General Assembly
can set up this ICTP by a majority vote pursuant to its powers to establish "subsidiary
organs" under U.N. Charter Article 22. This International Criminal Tribunal
for Palestine should be organized by the U.N. General Assembly along the same lines
as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which deals with
international armed conflicts.
In this regard, back in 1993 as the Lawyer for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
I sued the rump Yugoslavia for committing genocide, crimes against humanity, war
crimes, and grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention before the International
Court of Justice in the Hague. I also did the very best I could to personally implicate
Slobodan Milosevic and his henchmen for ordering and committing these international
crimes against the Bosnians. At the time I never realistically expected that less
than nine years later Milosevic himself and his henchmen would be on trial in The
Hague for committing these heinous international crimes against the Bosnians.
For similar reasons, Sharon and his henchmen must also stand on trial in The Hague
for perpetrating the exact same types of international crimes against the Palestinian
People at Jenin and elsewhere in Palestine. It is up to us to bring Sharon and his
henchmen to Justice in The Hague. Milosevic and Sharon will get along quite well
with each other in The Hague because they have so much in common to talk about: war
crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
|