GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Overlooking war-battered
Gaza from the tenth floor of a tower block, Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji
Sourani has a new bundle of files — on victims of last month's war with Israel.
اضافة اعلان
For years, he has been building cases in the Israeli-blockaded enclave to be
submitted to the
International Criminal Court.
The 66-year-old lawyer has already filed dozens of cases with The
Hague-based court since 2015, after the
Palestinian Authority ratified the
court's Rome Statute.
The cases represent Palestinian victims of war crimes committed by Israel,
according to the lawyer.
For Sourani, the ICC chief prosecutor's announcement in March of a full
investigation into the situation in the Israeli-occupied territories was a day
of hope.
Israel dismisses the ICC as a "political body" and says that it is
carrying out its own probe into alleged war crimes perpetrators.
Sourani, who founded the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights in
1995, said an ICC investigation will allow victims to restore their
"dignity" and see "proper justice".
'Dreamers'
"We are dreamers, because I mean, if you look around us, the fact is
it's so sad, so bad. It's totally unbalanced," he said, weighing up his
legal struggle against the might of the Israeli apparatus.
Sourani and his team of 60 document everything they can to try to prove
Israel deliberately targets civilians in its battle against Hamas.
The Israeli occupation forces blame Hamas for deliberately placing military
targets in densely populated areas.
His list is long; from the Israeli blockade since 2007 to victims' accounts
of the 2014 Israeli aggression on Gaza, to the suppression of the 2018
"Great March of Return" protests when Palestinians demanded the right
to go back to homes their families fled or were expelled from in 1948.
Now, he has added the latest Hamas-Israel conflict.
Photographs of destroyed buildings, detailed lists of victims, reports on
missiles used by the Israeli occupation forces, mapping of bombed locations;
his painstaking work is stored in dozens of filing cabinets.
'Send us to the
Stone Age'
The lawyer, who studied in Egypt and Lebanon, said the last conflict was
lopsided.
Israel is "the mighty army in the Middle East, the one challenging
Iran, Hezbollah, and bombing Syria," he said, waving to the devastation
its bombardment wreaked on Gaza, a crowded territory of two million people.
The May 10 to 21 conflict killed 260, including some fighters, according to
Gaza authorities.
In Israel, 13 people were killed by rockets fired from Gaza, the police and
army said.
The Israeli occupation forces deny targeting civilians and insists it does
all it can to avoid "collateral damage".
Not enough, according to Sourani.
"Wars are between armies," he said. "Civilians must be
avoided."
Sourani listed family after family killed in Israeli strikes.
"Is Hamas the Shorouk Tower, the Hanadi Tower, the Jala Tower?" he
asked angrily, naming commercial and residential tower blocks reduced to piles
of smoking rubble because Israel claimed they housed Hamas bases.
"What have the water pipelines to do with Hamas? What has the
electricity, the sewerage system, to do with Hamas?" he said, referring to
infrastructure impacted in the conflict.
To those who argue Israel has the right to self-defense against Hamas
rockets, the lawyer points to a power imbalance: One side has fighter jets,
while the other side is a population under blockade.
"Gaza is the largest open-air prison," said Sourani. "They
want to send us to the Stone Age."
'Justice for all'
Sourani said that when he spent three years in Israeli jails, he used
"every minute" to study Hebrew and humanitarian law.
"I have lived my whole life under occupation. No one can say that the
Israeli occupation is just," he said.
In his book-lined office sits a bust of Robert F. Kennedy — a human rights
award in memory of the late US senator's belief that individual moral courage
can overcome injustice.
Sourani, who received the award in 1991 along with Israeli lawyer Avigdor
Feldman, is proud of the honour — but said he was disappointed that Joe Biden,
then US vice president, had also received it in 2016.
"We want people who defend what Robert Kennedy said — justice for
all," he said, criticizing Biden over his insistence on Israel's right to
self-defense.
"We don't want to see anything more than the rule of law, justice, and
dignity for the victims we represent," he said.
"We have no personal wish for revenge, but I think Palestinians are
entitled to justice and dignity."
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