Hope for accountability after years of impunity for Israel, says veteran war crimes prosecutor

ISTANBUL (AA) – After years of impunity for policies that rights groups have described as apartheid and building illegal settlements in violation of international laws, a veteran war crime prosecutor has expressed hope that there could now be some accountability for Israel’s actions against Palestinians.

“If other countries raise the importance of this, I think there finally could be some room for accountability in the Israel-Palestine conflict,” Reed Brody, a Hungarian-American human rights lawyer, shared in a video interview.

Brody has been involved in the prosecutions of Chile’s former President Augusto Pinochet and Chad’s former leader Hissene Habre, and his repertoire of legal work has earned him the nickname of “The Dictator Hunter.”

He is now pinning hopes for Israel’s accountability on the growing pressure from several countries, as well as the position taken by Karim Khan, the current prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Brody cited Khan’s charged speech after a recent visit to the Rafah border crossing in Egypt, where he “was very direct to both Hamas and to Israeli authorities.”

He pointed out that Khan told “Israeli authorities that any attack that was liable to kill civilians had to comply with the principles of international law, the principles of proportionality of distinction, of proportionality and precaution.”

Khan’s message, according to Brody, was that “you just can’t go in and attack hospitals and schools,” and that the burden is on Israel to show that these were “proper targets.”

“No prosecutor has ever spoken to Israel so bluntly. The question now is whether Khan will take action to follow up his strong words. Will he move on the charges of apartheid and illegal settlements that have been on his desk for years?” said Brody.

It has taken these “terrible tragedies and crimes” for us to get to this point, but “hopefully there will now be a road to some accountability,” he added.

– Pressure and protection for Israel –

The human rights lawyer pointed out that the ICC has been facing a lot of pressure from the US, which is not even “a party to the ICC,” to “not go too far on Israel.”

“In 2009, following Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, which led to 1,400 Gazans being killed, the Palestinian Authority submitted a declaration accepting the court’s jurisdiction,” said Brody.

He said the first ICC first prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, could have opened an investigation and left it to the judges to decide whether or not the Palestinian Authority could proceed before the ICC.

“But under strong pressure from the US, who’s not even a party to the ICC, he spent three years considering the question before basically saying that it was for the UN to decide. Then the UN decided that Palestine was a state and that it could go before the ICC,” Brody explained.

“So, there’s been a lot of pressure from one side. And I feel like up until now, prosecutors have considered it very dangerous for … the ICC to move on Israel,” he added.

Stressing the need to “break these decades of impunity” for Israel, Brody said almost every attempt to “use the institutions of international justice, including the ICC, to hold Israeli officials legally accountable for alleged crimes over the past several decades has been sidelined or delegitimized as lawfare.”

He said complaints filed in Europe against Israeli leaders on the basis of universal jurisdiction have not only been thrown out, but in some instances, the laws themselves, as in Spain, Belgium and the UK, were curtailed “so that such cases could not be brought to the ICC in the future.”

– ICC’s ‘double standard’

The war crimes prosecutor said the ICC has been very active when it comes to “outcasts or to enemies like (Russian President) Vladimir Putin,” emphasizing that there has been a “double standard.”

“That, unfortunately, does leave the impression that there is a double standard. And we have seen throughout in institutions of international justice that they are much more effective when dealing with enemies like Russia or outcasts like African countries, than with not just Israel but with powerful Western interests in general,” said Brody.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, ICC prosecutor Khan made multiple visits to the country and opened the largest investigation in the court’s history, raising “unprecedented amounts of extra-budgetary money and staff from Western countries,” he added.

“I don’t think in history there had been as energetic and as coordinated and as massive a justice response, not just from the ICC but from jurisdictions around the world to the Russian aggression in Ukraine,” he said.