No Shame on Pennsylvania Ave...
The White House Threatens To End Aid if Palestine Joins the ICC

The White House and its allies are not pleased by prospects for an eventful next few years at the ICC.

Courtesy: presstv.ir

(BEIRUT) - Fatou Bom Bensouda, the Gambian-born deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), was never Washington’s first choice to succeed the inveterately self-promoting elitist ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. 

And it is doubtful that key Obama administration officials have changed their minds this week given Ms. Bensouda’s impassioned invitation Thursday to Palestine, urging its accession to the Rome Statute and the ICC, the former signed and ratified, as of this month, by 122 states with 31 additional countries, including Russia, having signed with ratification pending in their legislatures.

Visiting Al Jalil UNWRA high school across from Shatila camp here in Beirut recently, I was asked several questions by students and staff. The most frequent inquiry, which came as no surprise, was why the Lebanese government, including those who claim to support the Palestinian cause, still have not acted to grant Palestinian refugees the same elementary civil right to work and to own a home that every refugee everywhere, even in Zionist occupied Palestine, have long enjoyed.

The second most commonly asked question did surprise me a bit. It was why have the Palestinian leaders in Ramallah not joined the International Criminal Court (ICC) in order to challenge the criminal, apartheid regime in occupied Tel Aviv and hold it accountable under international humanitarian law for crimes against Palestinians that are increasingly being condemned internationally. This sentiment exists in all 54 Palestinian refugee schools in Lebanon.

One of so many children killed in Gaza by Israel

The new ICC Prosecutor Bensouda is encouraging Palestinian leaders to join the International Criminal Court, as she prepares for the cases that are likely to be filed with the ICC in the coming months. Addressing this week’s Arab World conference, she declared that her office believes Palestine qualifies to join the ICC after the UN General Assembly voted to admit Palestine as a non-member state last November.

The ICC prosecutor’s office is rumored in The Hague to be particularly impassioned and focused on those areas in which Ms. Bensouda, has particular international legal expertise. With the main area being international crimes against humanity which arguably since 1948 have been most egregiously committed by the last remnant of 19th century colonial enterprises, Israel.

Prosecutor Bensouda and her ICC staff is reported to be particularly intent on investigating continuing violations of basic humanitarian principles, standards and rules, and has spoken about the case of Palestinian, Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, a cancer-sufferer who died in Israeli custody on June 25 after the Israeli government rejected repeated international calls and protests for his release. This, even as its officials conceded that Mr. Abu Hamidiyeh was no threat to society, and if allowed medical treatment for his life threatening condition would likely have been successfully treated. One ICC investigator, who asked for anonymity, stated that she and her colleagues considered the actions of the Netanyahu government with respect to the Hamidiyeh and similar cases to be, “sick!”

Fatou Bom Bensouda photo: allafrica.com

The White House and its allies are not pleased by prospects for an eventful next few years at the ICC. What have particularly unnerved outgoing UN Ambassador, Susan Rice and Israeli PM Netanyahu, are the May 23rd comments of Ms. Bensouda during the 38th FIDH Congress in Istanbul which celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Rome Statute which created the ICC:

“Gone are the days when those who commit international crimes could be cleansed of their atrocities through a mere hand shake and a scribble of their initials on a piece of paper which purports to bind them to conditions that they have no intention of ever observing.”

She added:

“My challenge is to consolidate what has been achieved, to build on from it, and to answer victims’ calls for justice. That is the promise made in Rome and that is the promise we cannot fail to fulfill.”

One the several parting comments Ms. Rice made on cleaning out her UN office on her way to become President Obama’s National Security Adviser, was basically a reiteration of her livid expressions made following last fall’s UN General Assembly vote giving Palestine its new international statehood status. When asked if she considered the UN vote a repudiation of the Obama administration and her personally, Ms. Rice scolded:

“That resolution is not going to take them closer to statehood, or to the ICC! It may actually make the environment more difficult for them and public references to the "State of Palestine" do not make it a sovereign state. Any reference to the 'State of Palestine' in the United Nations, including the use of the term 'State of Palestine' on the placard in the Security Council or the use of the term 'State of Palestine' in the invitation do not reflect acquiescence that 'Palestine' is a state."

Courtesy: Fatou Bom Bensouda photo: allafrica.com

It may be recalled that in a letter addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the UN Security Council immediately following the General Assembly vote on 29 November last year, the permanent UN observer of Palestine reiterated his delegation’s position that:

"[A]ll Israeli settlement activities are illegal, constituting grave breaches of article 49 (6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention and thus constituting war crimes, as further determined in accordance with article 8 (2) (b) (viii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Israel, the occupying Power, must be held accountable for all of the war crimes it is committing against the Palestinian people."

This letter was cited by the most recent UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) report of February 2013, which also found Israel, as an occupying power, [is] in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention for "transferring parts of its civilian population into territory that it occupies."

Adding to all its currents problems, is this week’s announcement that President Obama’s “favorite general,” Ret. Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, will likely cause yet more serious problems for the administration when details of his suspected leaks of information about a covert U.S.-Israeli cyber-attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program, for which he is expected to soon be arrested and indicted. Coming on the heels of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, Washington is said to have no patience whatsoever, for Palestine making more problems and opening an ICC Pandora’s box.

Ramallah is being flooded with threats this month from Middle East envoy, Tony Blair, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, now on his 5th visit to the Middle East in as many months, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, and reportedly, several others. The message for Mahmoud Abbas is that the Palestinian Authority risks a cut-off of funds and US disengagement from any “peace process” as well as the scrapping of the rumored “mega economic & development package” which Kerry's aides are currently finalizing, if Palestine goes anywhere near the International Criminal Court.

It’s a tough call for President Mahmoud Abbas and his supporters because Hamas wants Palestine to immediately file cases against Israel at the ICC and, it appears, so do a large majority of Palestinians in Lebanon and internationally.

Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director of the Sabra Shatila Foundation. Contact him at: fplamb@sabrashatila.org. He is working with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign in Lebanon on drafting legislation which, after 62 years, would, if adopted by Lebanon’s Cabinet and Parliament grant the right to work and to own a home to Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees. One part of the PCRC legislative project is its online Petition which can be viewed and signed at: petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html. Lamb is reachable at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org. Franklin Lamb’s book on the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, now out of print, was published in 1983, following Janet’s death and was dedicated to Janet Lee Stevens. He was a witness before the Israeli Kahan Commission Inquiry, held at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in January 1983.