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.
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.”
“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 state apparatus.
Sourani and his team of 60 document everything they can to try to prove the Jewish state deliberately targets civilians in its battle against Gaza’s rulers, the Islamist movement Hamas.
The Israeli army blames 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 Gaza war, 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 during the Jewish state’s creation 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 army, mapping of bombed locations; his painstaking work is stored in dozens of filing cabinets.
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 10-21 conflict killed 260, including some fighters, according to Gaza authorities.
In Israel, 13 people were killed, including a soldier, by rockets fired from Gaza, the police and army said.
The Israeli army, which calls Hamas a “terrorist” organization, denies 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.”
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 honor — 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.”
After Gaza war, lawyer builds Palestinian case files
https://arab.news/v2rs8
After Gaza war, lawyer builds Palestinian case files
- The 66-year-old lawyer has already filed dozens of cases with The Hague-based court since 2015
- The cases represent Palestinian victims of war crimes committed by Israel, according to the lawyer
Erdogan ally wants pro-Kurdish party, jailed militant to talk
- The pro-Kurdish DEM Party, parliament’s third largest, responded by applying for its co-chairs to meet with Ocalan, founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
ANKARA: A key ally of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan expanded on his proposal to end 40 years of conflict with Kurdish militants by proposing on Tuesday that parliament’s pro-Kurdish party holds direct talks with the militants’ jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, made the call a month after suggesting that Ocalan announce an end to the insurgency in exchange for the possibility of his release.
The pro-Kurdish DEM Party, parliament’s third largest, responded by applying for its co-chairs to meet with Ocalan, founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Erdogan described Bahceli’s initial proposal as a “historic window of opportunity” but has not spoken of any peace process.
Ocalan has been held in a prison on the island of Imrali, south of Istanbul, since his capture 25 years ago.
“We expect face-to-face contact between Imrali and the DEM group to be made without delay, and we resolutely reiterate our call,” Bahceli told his party’s lawmakers in a parliamentary meeting, using the name of the island to refer to Ocalan.
Bahceli regularly condemns pro-Kurdish politicians as tools of the PKK.
DEM’s predecessor party was involved in peace talks between Ankara and Ocalan a decade ago. Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, DEM’s parliamentary group chairperson, said it applied to the Justice Ministry on Tuesday for its leaders to meet Ocalan.
“We are ready to make every contribution for a democratic solution to the Kurdish issue and the democratization of Turkiye,” she said.
Turkiye and its Western allies call the PKK a terrorist group. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which in the past was focused in the mainly Kurdish southeast but is now centered on northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.
Growing regional instability and changing political dynamics are seen as factors behind the bid to end the conflict with the PKK. The chances of success are unclear as Ankara has given no clues on what it may entail.
The only concrete move so far has been Ankara’s permission for Ocalan’s nephew to visit him, the first family visit in 4-1/2 years.
Authorities are continuing to crack down on alleged PKK activities. Early on Tuesday, police detained 231 people of suspected PKK ties, the interior ministry said. DEM Party said those detained included its local officials and activists.
Earlier this month, the government replaced five pro-Kurdish mayors in southeastern cities for similar reasons, in a move that drew criticism from DEM and others.
Algeria holds writer Boualem Sansal on national security charges: lawyer
Sansal had been interrogated by “anti-terrorist” prosecutors and said he was being “deprived of his freedom on the grounds of his writing“
PARIS: Algerian authorities have remanded in custody on national security charges prominent French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal following his arrest earlier this month that sparked alarm throughout the literary world, his French lawyer said on Tuesday.
“Boualem Sansal... was today placed in detention” on the basis of an article of the Algerian penal code “which punishes all attacks on state security,” lawyer Francois Zimeray said in a statement to AFP.
He added that Sansal had been interrogated by “anti-terrorist” prosecutors and said he was being “deprived of his freedom on the grounds of his writing.”
Sansal, a major figure in francophone modern literature, is known for his strong stances against both authoritarianism and Islamism, as well as being a forthright campaigner on freedom of expression issues.
His detention by Algeria comes against a background of tensions between France and its former colony, which also appear to have spread to the literary world.
The 75-year-old writer, granted French nationality this year, was on November 16 arrested at Algiers airport after returning from France, according to several media reports.
The Gallimard publishing house, which has published his work for a quarter of a century, in a statement expressed “its very deep concern following the arrest of the writer by the Algerian security services,” calling for his “immediate release.”
A relative latecomer to writing, Sansal turned to novels in 1999 and has tackled subjects including the horrific 1990s civil war between authorities and Islamists.
His books are not banned in Algeria but he is a controversial figure, particularly since making a visit to Israel in 2014.
Sansal’s hatred of Islamism has not been confined to Algeria and he has also warned of a creeping Islamization in France, a stance that has made him a favored author of prominent figures on the right and far-right.
In 2015, Sansal won the Grand Prix du Roman of the French Academy, the guardians of the French language, for his book “2084: The End of the World,” a dystopian novel inspired by George Orwell’s “Nineteen-Eighty Four” and set in an Islamist totalitarian world in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.
The concerns about his reported arrest come as another prominent French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud is under attack over his novel “Houris,” which won France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt.
A woman has claimed the book was based on her story of surviving 1990s Islamist massacres and used without her consent.
She alleged on Algerian television that Daoud used the story she confidentially recounted to a therapist — who is now his wife — during treatment. His publisher has denied the claims.
The controversies are taking place in a tense diplomatic context between France and Algeria, after President Emmanuel Macron renewed French support for Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara during a landmark visit to the kingdom last month.
Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, is de facto controlled for the most part by Morocco.
But it is claimed by the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, who are demanding a self-determination referendum and are supported by Algiers.
Daoud organized a petition signed by fellow literary luminaries published in the Le Point weekly calling for Sansal’s “immediate” release.
“This tragic news reflects an alarming reality in Algeria, where freedom of expression is nothing more than a memory in the face of repression, imprisonment and the surveillance of the entire society,” said the letter also signed by the likes of British novelist Salman Rushdie and Turkish Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk.
Winter rain piles misery on Gaza’s displaced
GAZA CITY: At a crowded camp in Gaza for those displaced by the war between Israel and Hamas, Ayman Siam laid concrete blocks around his tent to keep his family dry as rain threatened more misery.
“I’m trying to protect my tent from the rainwater because we are expecting heavy rain. Three days ago when it rained, we were drenched,” Siam said, seeking to shield his children and grandchildren from more wet weather.
Siam is among thousands sheltering at Gaza City’s Yarmouk sports stadium in the north after being uprooted by the Israel-Hamas war.
He lives in one of many flimsy tents set up at the stadium, where the pitch has become a muddy field dotted with puddles left by rainfall that washed away belongings and shelters.
People in the stadium dug small trenches around their tents, covered them with plastic sheets, and did whatever they could to stop the water from entering their makeshift homes.
Others used spades to direct the water into drains, as grey skies threatened more rain.
The majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced, often multiple times.
With many displaced living in tent camps, the coming winter is raising serious concerns.
Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense agency, said that “tens of thousands of displaced people, especially in the central and south of Gaza Strip, are suffering from flooded tents due to the rains,” and called on the international community to provide tents and aid.
International aid organizations have sounded the alarm about the deteriorating situation as winter approaches.
“It’s going to be catastrophic,” warned Louise Wateridge, an emergency officer for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees currently in Gaza.
The rainy period in Gaza lasts between late October and April, with January being the wettest month, averaging 30 to 40 millimeters of rain. Winter temperatures can drop as low as 6 degrees Celsius. Recent rain has flooded hundreds of tents.
“The rain and seawater flooded all the tents. We are helpless. The water took everything from the tent, including the mattresses, blankets and a water jug. We were only able to get a mattress and blankets for the children,” said Auni Al-Sabea, a displaced person.
Lebanese Prime Minister demands ‘immediate’ implementation of ceasefire
- Mikati said the intense wave of Israeli air strikes on Beirut on Tuesday “reaffirms that the Israeli enemy has no regard for any law or consideration"
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati demanded in a statement on Tuesday that the international community “act swiftly” to halt Israeli aggression “and implement an immediate ceasefire.”
His comments came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address that his security cabinet would agree “this evening” on a truce deal in its war against Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Mikati said the intense wave of Israeli air strikes on Beirut on Tuesday “reaffirms that the Israeli enemy has no regard for any law or consideration.”
“The international community is called upon to act swiftly to stop this aggression and implement an immediate ceasefire,” he said in his statement, which was issued before a strike hit the central Hamra commercial district.
Israeli ‘aggression’ targets Syria’s Homs countryside, state news agency says
- Blasts had been heard in the vicinity of Homs city and that the cause was under investigation
HOMS: Initial reports indicate that an Israeli “aggression” targeted two villages in northern and western areas of Syria’s Homs province, the Syrian state news agency said on Tuesday.
Earlier, Syrian state television said blasts had been heard in the vicinity of Homs city and that the cause was under investigation.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel by Hamas-led militants.
