YET another report accusing Israel of war crimes was issued on Tuesday. This time, Human Rights Watch, fresh from conducting its own investigation into the Zionist regime's 11-day Gaza offensive of May 10, was unequivocal in its conclusion. There were no military targets in the three sites investigated. Civilians were deliberately targeted.
Understandably, HRW wants the International Criminal Court to investigate the allegations. On April 27, the international human rights organisation issued a report accusing Israel of crimes of apartheid and persecution.
HRW and those who were for justice for the Palestinians were not pleased with the reaction to the report. The Zionist regime and its friends from the West labelled the report as being anti-Semitic.
Expect the same this time. What's more worrying is that the West, especially the United States, will go further. Several European countries and the US have already made their stand clear.
They want the ICC to stay off Israel. In early March, on learning of the ICC's war crimes investigation of the Zionist regime, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had this to say: The US firmly opposes war crimes investigation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
No different from one of his predecessors, John Kerry: "The US is very, very, very strongly against taking Israel to the ICC." As if criminals had a choice. Blinken's reasons are pathetic.
Firstly, he said Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute that gave birth to the ICC. True, but Israel is not in issue here, but the occupied Palestinian territories are.
Secondly, Palestine isn't a state and as such, it can't ask the ICC to investigate. Blinken forgets, conveniently it must be said, that Palestine has been a non-member observer state of the United Nations since November 2012. If this isn't a de facto recognition, what else is?
More importantly, the then ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, who made the announcement that the court was opening war crime investigations against Israel, had already sought a ruling on the court's jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories from the judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber.
On Feb 5 this year, the Chamber ruled, by a majority, that "the Court may exercise its criminal jurisdiction, and that the territorial scope of this jurisdiction extends to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem". In the ICC website, Bensouda wrote thus: "In the majority ruling, the Chamber stressed that it was not determining whether Palestine fulfilled the requirements of statehood under public international law, or adjudicating a border dispute, or prejudging the question of any future borders; it was solely determining the scope of the Court's territorial jurisdiction for the purposes of the Rome Statute, as requested."
Here it was unanimous: "Palestine is a state party to the Rome Statute." Period. Washington and Brussels may do well to abide by the ruling.
Historically, the US and Israel have for years bullied Palestine into not taking Israel to court by withholding aid. This is one reason why the Palestinian Authority has been slow to push its case.
Not that the bullying has stopped, but the international community, including international institutions, are beginning to tell the world what a genocidal regime Tel Aviv is.
If the US and its Western allies want to be on the right side of history, they will make sure Israel pays for its war crimes.