The ICC can stop abuses against Palestinians

Palestinians are subject to violence from all sides of the conflict and the ICC can help protect them, argues Sharif Nashashibi

A woman walks next to a mural of a crying figure wearing a head scarf in Gaza. Mohammed Saber / EPA

Amnesty International’s report on human rights abuses by Hamas in Gaza makes for harrowing reading. Its security forces were given “free rein” to carry out “horrific abuses” during Israel’s onslaught against Gaza last year, the report said.

Amnesty condemned the “brutal campaign of abductions, torture and unlawful killings” against Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel, as well as supporters of the rival Fatah faction and others.

“These spine-chilling actions, some of which amount to war crimes, were designed to exact revenge and spread fear across the Gaza Strip.” In one incident, six men were executed outside a mosque in front of hundreds of spectators, including children.

Many of these killings were billed as attacks against those “collaborating” with Israel during the war, but at least 16 of those executed had been in Hamas custody since before the conflict broke out.

No one has been held accountable and this is certainly not the first report to highlight Hamas’s domestic abuses. This is inexcusable, particularly from a movement that claims to champion Palestinian rights.

Israel coerces and incentivises vulnerable Palestinians to become collaborators. It relies on them to enforce its occupation and undermine resistance to it. However, anyone accused of criminality must be entitled to due process – summary executions in no way constitute due process. Some of the victims were not even criminals, but merely opponents of Hamas.

Reaction to the report has been hypocritical all-round. Israel sympathisers have jumped on it to discredit Hamas, but dismiss countless reports of human rights abuses when the perpetrator is Israel. Amnesty – an organisation often and ferociously vilified by the pro-Israel lobby – is now being cited by its long-time critics, because this time it is convenient for them to do so.

Hamas’s Palestinian rivals are also making political capital out of the report, forgetting that the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, is also guilty of abusing its own people.

Less than three weeks before the Amnesty report, Human Rights Watch condemned PA forces for detaining students “for no apparent reason other than their connection to Hamas or their opinions. Palestinians should be able to express political opinions without being arrested or beaten”.

HRW had previously documented PA police beatings and arbitrary arrests of demonstrators, excessive force, repressing critical news reporting and demonstrations, suppressing dissenting views and “serious rights abuses, including credible allegations of torture”, for which no security officials were convicted.

There is also criticism of Amnesty’s report by those who believe that it scores PR points for Israel. Some on social media who have publicised Amnesty reports condemning Israeli abuses are now accusing it of bias and meddling.

This is deeply misplaced. Whether Israel spins the report is no excuse to sweep intra-Palestinian abuses under the carpet. That is a grave disservice to Palestinians by those who would claim to have their best interests at heart. Selective outrage over abuses against the Palestinians is no longer about the principle of human rights, but about the cynicism and duplicity of politics.

The overall tragedy in all this is that Palestinians face abuses by both their leaderships (Hamas in Gaza, and the PA in the West Bank), as well as by Israel. The latter, being the occupying power, undoubtedly commits the lion’s share of those violations, but none have clean hands.

Intra-Palestinian violations are more troubling in the sense that Palestinians should expect their leaders to represent and support them – there is no such expectation on Israel, for obvious reasons.

The Amnesty report should serve to further highlight the urgent need for the involvement of the International Criminal Court in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The fierce objections to this from Israel and its allies give the false impression that the ICC would simply be a tool to target Israel. In fact, the court’s remit would cover violations by all parties. Israel’s opposition comes from the knowledge that it has by far the most to answer for.

ICC involvement is about justice and accountability in general, which is severely lacking and has thus led to a pervasive culture of impunity on all sides. That in turn has allowed Israel to entrench its occupation and colonisation of Palestine.

It has also led to Palestinian factions acting in their own interests rather than that of their people and nation, and focusing on consolidating their respective influence and governance rather than genuinely pursing the unity that is vital to Palestinian aspirations.

Israel still comes off worse than Hamas, however, and not just because of the scale of their respective violations. The latter had been urging Palestinian application to the ICC while the PA was shamefully dragging its feet. This despite Hamas knowing that its actions would also be investigated by the court. Israel, on the other hand, has never been open to an ICC probe, despite claiming to have “the most moral army in the world”.

Sharif Nashashibi is a journalist and analyst on Arab affairs