By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
LONDON (AA) – Israel’s Operation Swords of Iron and the actions it has taken in the Gaza Strip are “undoubtedly a war crime on so many levels,” according to a prominent British academic.
“It’s not even one war crime. It is a series of war crimes,” Anas Altikriti, CEO and founder of UK-based research and advisory group The Cordoba Foundation, told Anadolu.
The lack of distinction between civilian and non-civilian targets in Israeli attacks is just one level of the war crimes being committed, he explained.
“The Israeli occupier has cut off necessities of life on a strip of land where 2.5 million people, half of whom are children under the age of 15, reside,” he said.
“The fact that people were warned that if they didn’t vacate the northern section of the Gaza Strip they would be targeted, that is a crime of displacement.”
Then there is the bombing of the southern parts of Gaza, which were “supposed to be the safe part, where the occupier told the Palestinians to go,” he added.
“The bombing of installations, of civilian installations and hospitals, of schools, the killing of press individuals: How many camera people, how many correspondents, how many have been targeted and killed? The UN (agency) headquarters. That is a war crime.”
- Culprits and supporters must be brought to justice
Altikriti said Article 4 of the Geneva Convention and so many other treaties can be cited for the current situation, “but the fact of the matter is that what we have seen … an absolute, fully integrated war crime” over the past month and more.
This must be brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC), he stressed, with the culprits and “everyone who supported the culprits, everyone who egged on and encouraged the culprits, standing trial.”
“We have a big problem and I think that what has been happening for the past month, the genocide that we have been witnessing, is a symptom of that problem,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we have an international community that seems to be not really serious about implementing international law – the law which is supposed to be guarding, supposed to be preserving, supposed to be implementing.
The international community “is allowing an act of genocide to be committed,” he asserted.
“That we are at the absurd position where the leaders of a country, such as the USA or the UK, are squabbling over whether to call for a cease-fire, is an indicator as to how deep this problem is,” said Altikriti.
He cited the example of the UK’s ruling Conservative Party recently firing “one of its own members because he did call for a cease-fire.”
“Now let me make this clear. A call for a cease-fire is not to side with one party or the other. A call for a cease-fire is basically to call for an end to the violence an end to the killing,” he said.
“Imagine that this person was sacked from his position, punished because he dared call for an end to the violence and an end to the killing of children.”
- ‘Absolutely no confidence in international community’
About the steps that the world must take to address the crisis, Altikriti said he has “absolutely no confidence whatsoever in the international community.”
“In fact, I wouldn’t even be surprised if the killers, the murderers, (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, his government and the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and their leadership was somehow rewarded with more finance packages, with more aid, with more media support, with more intelligence, with more capacity to continue to commit crimes against the Palestinian people,” he said.
“I have little, if any, confidence in the international community.”
Altikriti, however, emphasized that he does have confidence in “the movement of the nations of the world.”
“And I mean, the peoples of the world, across the globe, who have risen in the millions, tens of millions, and are demanding peace, are demanding support and … aid to the Palestinian people, are demanding that the killers and the murderers are taken to the ICC and held to account, are pleading with the international community to call for a cease-fire,” he said.
“I have absolute confidence in the people of the world and the nations of the world. But my confidence in the governments, the states, wherever they may be, is diminished to almost zero.”