Karim Khan

 

In the past Israeli has had some unpleasant run-ins with international judicial bodies.

However, Karim Khan’s recent visit was decidedly different! 

Karim Khan is the ICC’s lead prosecutor. Not to be confused with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which settles disputes between states in accordance with international law, the ICC (International Criminal Court) is a court of last resort set up to prosecute war crimes when local courts cannot or will not take action.

In a statement released by the Forum for Hostages and Missing Families, the families thanked Karim Khan “for the extraordinary decision to come and stand by the families in the aftermath of the horrors perpetrated by Hamas in Israel on October 7 and the continued detention of hostages. We expect him to work to bring Hamas terrorists to justice for crimes against humanity and genocide.”

Despite not being a member of the ICC and denying the institution’s jurisdiction over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel decided to respect the hostage families’ request to have Khan make an unofficial visit.

Nevertheless, the trip does not constitute a change in Israel’s policy toward the ICC, possibly due to fears that an investigation of the October 7 atrocities will draw more inquiries into Israeli actions against Palestinians. While Israel is not a member of the ICC, if warrants are issued certain citizens could be subject to arrest while traveling abroad.

“The attacks against innocent Israeli civilians on October 7 represent some of the most serious international crimes that shock the conscience of humanity, crimes which the ICC was established to address,” Karim Khan said in his written statement, adding that he and his prosecutors are working “to hold those responsible to account.”

Khan also visited Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas. He said of the war in Gaza that fighting in “densely populated areas where fighters are alleged to be unlawfully embedded in the civilian population is inherently complex, but international humanitarian law must still apply and the Israeli military knows the law that must be applied.”

He said that Israel “has trained lawyers who advise commanders and a robust system intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law. Credible allegations of crimes during the current conflict should be the subject of timely, independent examination and investigation.”

Khan said he would seek to work with “all actors” in the conflict to “ensure that when action is taken by my office it is done on the basis of objective, verifiable evidence which can stand scrutiny in the courtroom and ensure that when we do proceed, we have a realistic prospect of conviction.”

Palestinian human rights groups refused to meet with Khan claiming the prosecutor has favoured Israeli claims of human rights abuses since October 7.

“As Palestinian human rights organisations, we decided not to meet him,” Ammar Dwaik, director general of the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), told Reuters.

“I think the way this visit has been handled shows that Mr. Khan is not handling his work in an independent and professional manner,” he added.

In 2019, the ICC announced that it would be launching a probe into alleged war crimes committed by both sides during the 2014 Israel-Hamas conflict, Israeli settlement policy and the Israeli response to protests at the Gaza border.

Well, the wheels of justice certainly turn slowly. It took the ICC seven years to officially open its probe and there is no knowing when it will be completed.

The late Henry Kissinger said the ICC’s checks and balances are so weak that the prosecutor "has virtually unlimited discretion in practice.” Kissinger’s opinion was born out by the not-so-friendly attitude towards Israel adopted by the ICC’s previous lead prosecutor, Ms. Fatou Bensouda. 

 The Financial Times provided an interesting op-ed on how Israel is attacking Hamas’s vast tunnel network- “The small Israeli army drone let loose inside an arched concrete corridor kept flying for several minutes, along a 300-metre tunnel large enough for a tall man to walk upright through its entire length. To the left and right were rooms with air-conditioning units, functioning toilets and kitchens with running water as well as electrical and communication cables and a now-demolished blast-proof door that Hamas fighters* could shoot through. The tunnel that the IDF said they filmed last month below Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital was, by any measure, a substantial military capability. But it is also only a small part of Hamas’s vast subterranean domain that officials and analysts have said will define the strategic outcome of Israel’s campaign against Hamas. The drive to root out fighters and weaponry in Hamas’s tunnels and demolish the network itself is one reason why the IDF is pressing on with its punishing offensive after a week-long truce, despite growing international pressure over the bloodiest Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades. “Destroying Hamas’s tunnels is the most difficult aspect of the IDF’s mission and among its most important,” said Daphné Richemond-Barak, a professor at Israel’s Reichman University and author of a book on underground combat. “We have to be patient. It will take time.”

The subterranean labyrinth, estimated to be larger than the London Underground railway network, enables Hamas’s most senior leaders and fighters to take shelter. Most are thought to have survived almost eight weeks of relentless Israeli attack below ground. The tunnels — immune from drone surveillance and many of Israel’s other capabilities including air strikes — are also where Hamas is thought to keep its arsenal of rockets, as well as more than 130 hostages. Tunnels are an ancient war-fighting technique. Jewish rebels used them in the Bar Kochba revolt against Roman rule 2,000 years ago, as did the Viet Cong fighters against US forces in the Vietnam war. But after burrowing through Gaza’s soft sandstone geology since taking control of the enclave 16 years ago, Hamas has taken the concept to a new level. The IDF has made the tunnels’ destruction a priority, but has not fully spelt out how it plans to achieve it. So far it has located more than 800 shafts, destroyed 500 of them and collapsed what it has described as “many kilometres” of tunnels. “On a tactical level, wherever our soldiers manoeuvre we have a high success rate destroying tunnels,” said a commentator familiar with Israeli military planning. “But the network is estimated to be more than 500km long, and many of the shafts emerge in civilian buildings such as hospitals, mosques and schools,” he said.

“The lesson Hamas likely learned from the 2021 air strikes was to dig deeper and to encase the tunnel system with reinforced concrete,” said Yehuda Kfir, an Israeli civil engineer and captain in the IDF reserves who is also an expert in underground warfare. “Hamas has likely built different layers of tunnels,” Kfir reasoned. “An upper ‘defensive’ level with booby-traps, very narrow tunnels and a lower ‘offensive’ level that is deeper and wider and contains logistics centres, living quarters and weapons stores.” Israel has received $320mn of US military aid since 2016 to develop anti-tunnel techniques, although none has so far provided a silver bullet. The IDF also has a dedicated corps of anti-tunnel engineers and underground commandos equipped to probe tunnels and try to collapse them. But to preserve soldiers’ lives, the IDF has relied more on tunnel dogs, robots and drones.

The first step is to locate the tunnels. Ground-penetrating radar and acoustic sensors can work, although Gaza’s dense urban environment and the rubble left by Israel’s aerial bombardment limit their usefulness. A simpler tactic, known as “purple hair”, involves throwing a smoke grenade into a tunnel entrance, which is then sealed with expanding foam to see if smoke emerges elsewhere. The next step is to destroy the tunnels. Localised explosions cause only limited fall-ins, which can be cleared away or bypassed by surviving fighters. To fully demolish a tunnel, engineers and military experts said, required explosives set down along long portions of the underground passageways. Kfir said one method was to use liquid explosives that fill the tunnel space and then detonate them. Another possibility, he said, was thermobaric weapons, which suck in oxygen to generate a high-temperature explosion that flows around obstacles. But these are controversial because of the broader impact of the explosions, especially in populated areas. Pumping in seawater from the Mediterranean at high pressure is a third option, and one that Israel has reportedly already started to use. Richemond-Barak said this technique had the advantage of already being used in the oil and gas industry. But, she added, the problem with flooding is “that you don’t know how much you have achieved”. The amount of water required depends on the size of the tunnels and ground absorption, she said: “In the past, using water has not produced a ‘hard kill’. Another possibility, which would pose less risk to the hostages than flooding or explosions, is for the IDF to dig into Hamas’s tunnel network and burst into its control nodes. “Israel should get to the heart of the Hamas system not from above, but from below,” Kfir said. “You would need something like automated excavating machines that would dig towards the target.” Such science fiction-like approaches highlight the difficulties and time needed to destroy Hamas’s underground realm. They also explain why some officials regret that Israel did not complete the task years earlier.

The Gaza Strip is experiencing an ongoing humanitarian crisis as a result of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. At the start of the war, Israel implemented a complete blockade on the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in significant shortages of fuel, food, medication, water, and essential medical supplies. This siege resulted in a 90% drop in electricity availability, impacting hospital power supplies, sewage plants, and shutting down the desalination plants that provide drinking water. Heavy bombardment by Israeli airstrikes caused catastrophic damage to Gaza’s infrastructure, further aggravating the crisis.

Organisations such as Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, and a joint statement by UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, the UN Development Programme, United Nations Population Fund, and World Food Programme have warned of a dire humanitarian collapse. On November 8, UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk described the Rafah Crossing as "gates to a living nightmare."

All the above-mentioned noble-minded organisations conveniently ignore the fact that Hamas is the root cause of Gaza’s terrible plight.

“There are reams of commentary on what Israel’s strategy and endgame may be as it seeks to nullify the long-standing threat posed by Hamas and purge the Islamist militant faction from its Gaza redoubts. But looming behind it “and implicit in IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari’s ‘emphasis’ on damage over accuracy is a long-standing Israeli military doctrine that appears to be in play now,” asserts Ishaan Tharoor foreign affairs columnist at the Washington Post.

The so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” took shape in the wake of the bruising 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya refers to the southern Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah maintained its strongholds and which were pummelled by Israeli jets after hostilities began when Hezbollah fighters abducted two Israeli soldiers. The IDF response surprised Hezbollah leaders. They hadn’t expected to see their headquarters turned into rubble nor had they anticipated such a relentless bombardment.

The doctrine that emerged out of the conflict was most famously articulated by IDF commander Gadi Eisenkot. “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,”. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorised.”

 Noting that Dahiya was the Shia quarter in Beirut that was razed by the Israeli Air Force during the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli journalist Yaron London wrote in 2008 that the doctrine, "will become entrenched in our security discourse."

 

Hanukkah Sameach,

 

Beni.

7^th of December, 2023