Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Legal battles are nothing new for Israel - Gerald M. Steinberg



by Gerald M. Steinberg

-- as the process advances, the European funding will become more apparent.

The campaign to prosecute Israel at the International Criminal Court in The Hague didn't suddenly sprout out of Palestinian frustration over the failure of peace talks or the failure of their Security Council statehood bid. No, this strategy was first adopted long ago, before the international court was even established. In 1997, during the talks surrounding the establishment of the court, representatives of the Arab League pushed for the definition of war crimes to be as wide as possible and to include issues dealing with occupation and population transfers. The obvious objective was to eventually use this institution to wage legal battle against Israel.

Since then, this legal battle has been unrelenting, led by an army of nongovernmental organizations and with the help of extensive funding, mainly from European governments, under the guise of human rights and international law. 

In September 2001, more than 1,500 political NGOs convened in Durban for the World Conference against Racism and adopted a resolution calling for a "policy of complete and total isolation of Israel," citing war crimes, genocide, human rights violations and more. The implementation of this policy would be mainly through the International Criminal Court and courts in Western countries with universal jurisdiction over war crimes charges. 

This network of NGOs has worked ceaselessly to bring this strategy to fruition. Its leaders include Palestinian human rights groups as well as Israeli NGOs, together with many extremist European groups. These organizations have "bombed" the ICC prosecutor, the media, diplomats and policymakers with press releases, reports and legal memos accusing Israel of war crimes and international law violations. The Palestinian Authority lay down the formal foundations for using the ICC against Israel, and the NGO network provided the supportive political infrastructure. The hundreds of thousands of euros that these organizations receive allow them to advance this campaign all over the world. 

The current ICC effort against Israel has everything to do with the ongoing war crimes investigation into Israel's actions in Gaza, headed by William Schabas, who is well known for his ties to anti-Israel organizations. Following the failure of the 2009 Goldstone commission (which investigated Operation Cast Lead in Gaza), the Schabas report, which will be presented at the U.N. in Geneva on March 23, will serve the NGOs in advancing their efforts against Israel at the ICC. Unlike Richard Goldstone, who showed integrity and retracted (better late than never), Schabas is not showing any signs of remorse. 

The Israeli establishment has largely ignored the role of NGOs in the ongoing legal war against Israel. Even now, after the Palestinian appeal to the ICC, official Israeli responses and the media debate on the issue seems to focus solely on the court. The many factors fueling the legal warfare are still largely unexposed. But as the process advances, the European funding will become more apparent. It is safe to assume that the clash between Israel and the European supporters of the legal warfare against it will be no less dramatic than the battle inside the court. 


Gerald M. Steinberg is president of NGO Monitor and a professor in the Political Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=11289

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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