With a quick gesture, Nabil Abuznaid moves the desk easel that bears the inscription “State of Palestine” to your right. The then Palestinian ambassador to the Netherlands, looks at the letters engraved in white, extends his arm and, with a light touch on his smartphone, immortalizes the moment: on June 24, 2015, Palestine is among the Member States for the first time of the International Criminal Court (ICC), in The Hague. This is a key step in a long and bitter diplomatic-judicial battle. An offensive carried out from Gaza, Ramallah, New York and Lyon, whose objective is to place the Palestinian issue on the agenda of international justice and put an end to the impunity that surrounds the Israeli occupation system since 1967. Now the Israelis They can become my neighbors in prison. But this time they won’t have the keys.” rejoices Nabil Abuznaid, this day in June 2015.
Launched in the mid-2000s by a handful of Gaza lawyers, later joined by the Palestinian Authority, held back by an avalanche of obstacles, hit by wars and threats, this operation was ultimately successful. On Thursday, November 21, the ICC imposed an international arrest warrant on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It all started in June 2006. The Israeli military operation “Summer Rains” fell on the Gaza Strip. Sparked in response to the capture of Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit by Hamas fighters, it is the first in a series of six wars that will devastate the coastal enclave. At the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which he runs in Gaza City, Raji Sourani, 53, became convinced that the evidence of Israeli abuses, carefully collected by his employees over the years, should allow cases to be referred to the ICC. , created in 1998 by the Rome Statute and established in 2002.
With this faith anchored in his body he arrives in The Hague to meet with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first prosecutor of the Court. “From the beginning he tried to discourage me, he told me that if the Americans did not accept it, he would never open an investigation.” says Gaza’s lawyer, contacted by phone in June. The chances of getting a green light from Washington are zero. The United States, which has not signed the Rome Statute, distrusts this type of international organization. They prohibit judges in The Hague from being interested in the actions of their troops in Afghanistan as well as those of their allies, such as Israel.
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