On Saturday, 08 November, the Palestinian Centre
for Human Rights (PCHR), in conjunction with its Egyptian partners,
the Arab Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal
Profession (ACIJLP), and the
Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR)
co-hosted a human rights conference in Cairo. The one day conference
focused on extra-judicial executions and prosecution of
Israelis suspected of committing war crimes.
The conference is part of PCHR’s project
“Awareness raising and lobbying against the Death Penalty in the
occupied Palestinian Territory” funded by the European Commission
and Oxfam Novib.
More than sixty international delegates attended
the conference, including human rights lawyers and advocates from
the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), Egypt, Morocco, Spain,
South Africa and the UK. Representatives from the International
Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Swedish NGO Diakonia, the Centre for
Transitional Justice (CTJ) and the International Federation for
Human Rights (FIDH) also attended. The delegates discussed the legal
and judicial issues surrounding extra-judicial executions
perpetrated by the Israeli military (Israeli occupation forces
occupying the OPT) and issues relating to accountability and
transitional justice.
According to PCHR data, Between September 2000-
the beginning of the Second Intifada – and 30 June, 2008, Israel
committed 348 extra-judicial execution operations in the OPT. During
these operations, Israel killed a total of 754 Palestinians,
including 233 civilian bystanders, 71 of whom were children. The
Centre has investigated these crimes, and concluded that in the
overwhelming majority of cases, Israel used excessive lethal force
in order to execute Palestinians who could instead have been either
apprehended or arrested.
Under international law, this use of excessive
use force may constitute a war crime. PCHR has rigorously pursued
suspected Israeli war criminals through Israeli courts. Having
concluded the Israeli judiciary was providing legal cover for
suspected war criminals responsible for extra-judicial executions,
the Centre launched a series of universal jurisdiction cases, in
order to obtain justice for Palestinian victims, and survivors. Most
recently, PCHR, with its Spanish colleagues, launched a
universal jurisdiction case in Spain against
seven former senior members of the Israeli military suspected of
having committed a war crime in the Gaza Strip in July 2002.
The Cairo conference provided a rare opportunity
for human rights lawyers and advocates to discuss the current state
of universal jurisdiction from several different international
perspectives, and the potential for expanding universal jurisdiction
across the 27 EU States. Speakers at the conference included PCHR
Director Raji Sourani, who has worked extensively in universal
jurisdiction cases, UK lawyer Daniel Machover, who specialises in
international human rights law, including universal jurisdiction,
Spanish lawyer Gonzalo Boye, who is working with PCHR on its current
case against the 7 former Israeli military officials, Nasser Amin,
Director of the Arab Center for Human Rights, and South African
lawyer Brian Currin, who has worked in transitional justice for more
than fourteen years, and has been heavily involved in three separate
peace processes.
PCHR Director Raji Sourani stressed the
importance of making universal jurisdiction powerfully effective
through meticulous documentation, mutual collaboration and sharing
legal expertise. Spanish lawyer Gonzalo Boye described universal
jurisdiction as a legal instrument for those who seek universal
justice on behalf of all victims of Israeli military actions
amounting to war crimes. The conference was followed by a screening
of a of PCHR’s 45-minute documentary on Israeli extra-judicial
executions operations in the Gaza Strip.
