UN Rights Expert Slams Israel’s ‘Decades of Impunity’
Geneva, MINA – UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counterterrorism, Professor Ben Saul, has said that Israel “has enjoyed impunity for many decades which has emboldened it to become increasingly lawless.”
“And this last campaign in Gaza is unprecedented in the history of warfare in recent years,” he warned, at a joint UN press conference of independent human rights experts in Geneva on Wednesday, Palestine Chronicle reported.
Saul said it is “not just that there have been extreme violations which have been well documented.”
“We all, over the past 14 months, have seen deliberate attacks on civilians, indiscriminate attacks, disproportionate attacks, starvation, denial of humanitarian relief, suppression of NGOs and UNRWA as terrorists, a complete lack of credible accountability through the Israeli military and civilian justice system,” he stated, adding “That’s all pretty obvious and on the record.
Saul explained that his “job” was to “encourage governments to respect human rights while countering terrorism.
“And I think one of the striking features of the last 14 months is how Israel has used counterterrorism rhetoric to justify exceptional, extreme violence against Palestinians accompanied by a chronic dehumanization of the Palestinian people.”
He explained that what he found “more shocking” was that “I’ve been working on humanitarian law for 25 years, I‘ve cooperated technically with the Israeli Defence Forces on many occasions in the past, and I know they have excellent lawyers, very, very good international humanitarian lawyers.”
“So when they unleash a campaign of violence like this, they know what they’re doing,” he stressed.
Part of the situation, Saul added, “which I don’t think has been explored quite so much, is just how Israel has enabled this violence by taking very extreme exceptional interpretations of international humanitarian law to impose a kind of cloak of legality on what they’re doing.
“So they’ve expanded the definition of what is a military objective. They’ve expanded the category of people they call fighters who can be attacked.”
Saul said Israel imposes “very large numbers on the civilian casualty counts that they tolerate in targeting.”
“You need the states that matter to bring the pressure to bear on Israel,” he emphasized.
The special rapporteur noted that “Germany & the United States supply 99% of the weapons exported to Israel. They could stop this conflict overnight if they stopped the weapons that kill the Palestinians.”
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 44,875 Palestinians have, to date, been killed, and 106,454 wounded.
Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip. (T/RE1/P2)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
