Dear President Obama, Our wounds in Gaza are still open, our justice still denied. Israel's 23 day offensive (28 December 2008- 19 January 2009) has left our children afraid to return to school, and feeling unsafe in their beds. The war, and the continued closure of the Gaza Strip, has undermined the capacity of mothers and fathers to act as protectors and providers. As a community, we will struggle for decades to live with the consequences. Along with our children we feel that justice has been too long abandoned. For many reasons we Palestinians have felt that the world has ignored us. The international attention following the war on Gaza gave us hope. The investigation led by Justice Goldstone was a cause for optimism. We felt that this respected judge and prosecutor - who has served at the highest level and consistently demonstrated his independence in upholding the rule of law - was one of the few people who had the credentials and experience to take on this legally complex and politically charged mission. We came to believe that the world actually cared. The statement of your ambassador to the UN, Ms. Susan Rice, sent a different message: that the world, or at least the United States, does not care. Ms. Rice suggested that the focus should be on the future and not the past and that the task at hand must be to cement progress towards the resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. |
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| This separation of justice and peace is misguided; the two are intertwined. If there is one thing that history teaches us, it is that when the powerful are allowed to escape accountability, they will continue to violate the law, and innocent people will pay the price. In Cairo you said that "America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own." You also spoke of the desire for the rule of law and the equal administration of justice, stating that these "are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere". These were welcome words, but they demand action. Accountability and criminal responsibility are fundamental components of justice. All those responsible must face trial; victims' rights must be upheld; suffering cannot be ignored. President Obama, as you once said quoting Dr. Martin Luther King: ` 'the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own unless each and every one of us puts our hands on the arc.' '. Support the recommendations of the UN Fact Finding Mission. | |
The report of the mission led by Richard Goldstone includes these conclusions:
- The Israeli forces committed human rights violations and violations of humanitarian law that correspond to war crimes and, in some cases, to crimes against humanity. In particular, the investigations into the numerous attacks on the civilian population and civilian targets have revealed that these were intentional and that some were launched with the objective of spreading terror among the civilian population and without any justifiable military objective. Moreover, the Israeli forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields;
- Israeli forces committed grave violations of the IV Geneva Convention, in particular carrying out killings, torture and inhuman treatment, deliberately provoking great suffering and serious physical injury and damage to health, causing enormous destruction of property, not justified by military necessity, in an illegal and reckless manner. For these actions, individual responsibility must be established;
- Israel violated the obligation to respect the right of the population of Gaza to an adequate standard of life, that includes access to food, water and adequate shelter. The report refers in particular to actions that deprived the inhabitants of Gaza of sustenance, of work, of housing, of water, as well as the freedom of movement and the right to enter and leave their own country, and finally to have limited access to effective help. The combination of these actions could amount to the crime of persecution, which is a crime against humanity;
- Palestinian armed groups violated the principle of distinction by launching rockets and mortars that could not be directed with sufficient precision against military objectives. These attacks, against civilian settlements that in no way could be considered military objectives constitute deliberate attacks on civilians and as such are war crimes and in some cases could amount to crimes against humanity.
- Palestinian armed groups have not always acted in such as way as to distinguish themselves from the civilian population and so have exposed the latter to needless risks, launching rockets from places situated near to civilian housing or protected buildings.
- There is no evidence to support the accusations that Palestinian armed groups transferred the civilian population to zones that were under Israeli attack or that they forced them to remain there, nor is there evidence that hospitals were used by the de facto Hamas administration or by Palestinian armed groups to conceal military activity or that ambulances were used to transport combatants or that Palestinian armed groups took part in military activities inside hospitals or UN structures that were used as shelters.
>To read the full report, click here
>To read the executive summary, click here.
