- 7 آذار 2020
- أقلام مقدسية
By Judge Fawwaz Ibrahim Nizar Attiyeh
Following the toils of the Second World War, when the dust of war had settled the sheer horror of the scale of catastrophic environmental destruction and the number of deaths in various countries of the world exceeded all foreboding. Following these events, it soon became evident to the Allied Forces that the huge task of reconstruction following this huge tragedy, with its human and environmental costs, would require a huge international effort. With the aim of drafting a global declaration to protect the human right to life, the United Nations General Assembly met in Paris in December 1948, and announced the first universal human document, entitled the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. This important and historic document defined the common standard for the rights of all peoples and nations without bias or discrimination. Having found that human rights in various aspects of life need to be protected globally, the General Assembly of the United Nations translated the document into 500 languages.
The participants decided that the Universal Declaration needed to emphasize liberty, justice and peace among the nations of the world. Hence, the document included paragraphs that confirm what is mentioned above. Quoting some of what was stated in the Declaration,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people. Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law. Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations. Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom. Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Significantly, the declaration included articles on: the right to life, liberty, security, freedom of travel, the right to nationality, fair treatment between people and respect, freedom of opinion and expression, protection from torture or inhumane treatment, as well as economic, social and cultural rights. If one were to contemplate what is stated in Article 3 of the Declaration, it declares that : ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security for himself’. This Article is one of the most supreme provisions of international human law that clearly affirms the right to life for a person; it requires no further interpretation or clarification.
Against the backdrop of the significance of the UDHR document, allow us to take into consideration the various incidents of so-called stabbing incidents in Jerusalem and the response to them, where it has become state policy to permit the use of lethal force on the pretext that it serves as a deterrent.. This is linked to the mentality of the army leadership and the occupier security forces, which issues orders to the heavily armed Israeli soldier to employ automatic fire, leading to disproportionate responses, in ways which even contravene Israeli criminal law.
The resulting random executions resulting from stabbing incidents requires us to consider the question of the proportionality of the response. One can do this by highlighting incidents where the Israeli forces have actually killed Israelis mistakenly thinking that were Palestinians. For example, on the 2nd of May 2017, the Israeli occupation forces killed a settler near the Hizma checkpoint, northeast of occupied Jerusalem, thinking that he was a Palestinian. As usual, the Israeli police spokeswoman was quick to exploit the incident for propaganda purposes, insisting that the dead man was trying to stab a soldier and it was also alleged that a knife was found next to the corpse. However, this account of the incident was quickly amended when it later transpired that the dead man was an Israeli settler! It is no coincidence that a similar strategy was employed when in 2016 an Israeli was killed by the occupation forces inside a bus because the border defense forces believed that the dead man was an Arab and that they were responding to a stabbing incident. A similar statement was released indicating that a knife was found next to the victim; however, it was subsequently found out that he was an Israeli suffering from mental illness and the stabbing narrative was quickly rescinded.
Bearing this in mind, the stream of execution of Arabs in Jerusalem resulting from such incidents is disturbing. One needs to bear in mind that soldiers have the capacity to arrest and neutralize all those who engage in such violent acts as they are trained in martial arts and armed with the latest weaponry. Also of concern is the fact that no enquiries or investigations are held into such incidents and this suggests that firstly, the occupation forces do not take into account the right to life of the Palestinian people; secondly, the conformity to international covenants and treaties of human rights applies only to the Israelis and not the Arabs, which is in itself must be considered a form of discrimination; thirdly, the occupation forces fabricate forensic evidence by placing one or more knives beside the so-called assailant’s corpse in order to create the impression that an attack was imminent and that a sharp instrument is more potent than an automatic weapon; fourthly, the occupation forces intentionally do not conduct any investigation for every attempt to carry out a knife stabbing and do not remove fingerprints from sharp tools, all of which encourages soldiers to kill without fear of being prosecuted according to the Law of Military Discipline. This in turn contributes to the spread of systematic crime at the hands of forces whose assumed role it is to uphold the law and preserve order and security .
It must be recognized that the life of the Palestinian Arab is as precious as the life of any other human being; the policy followed by the leadership of the occupation forces to kill a young man or a young woman in the prime of their lives without conclusive evidence that they intended to carry out a crime that violates security and order, is a clear indication that that the leadership and some of its soldiers have a discard for the value and dignity of life. A more recent incident will allow us to put this into perspective: a young man by the name of Zaatara was killed in cold blood near Lions Gate in Jerusalem on the 22nd of February 2020, supposedly for not obeying the orders of the soldiers that he should stop. It turned out that the young man actually suffered from a serious hearing impediment. The incident like others also shows the occupation forces in Jerusalem are deliberately promoting a policy of escalation by changing the rules of engagement with regards to Arab Jerusalem and visitors to the Holy City. The application of this policy of execution when dealing with such incidents means that the fate of a human being can turn on the mood of the Israeli soldier who, given the policy, is sanctioned to act wantonly without controls or limits.
This policy will lead to more fear and oppression among the Palestinians, specifically school students, and the city of East Jerusalem will become a theatre in which executions take place in a manner that inexorably violates the sanctity of the city. Today, this grave breach of international human law and international conventions, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, will have serious repercussions in Jerusalem and could spark a bloody uprising as a result of the actions of the occupying security forces. In order to avoid the consequences and perils of such a situation, human rights associations and those engaged in peaceful civil rights activity in Jerusalem must seek recourse to the local and international courts to seek some form of legal address for these incidents and to encourage the security forces to reconsider its policy. They need to document the number of cases in which Palestinians were killed in cold blood in order to lay bare the precarious use of fabricated narratives to substantiate a soldiers’ resort to killing in such incidents. Moreover, the incidents where settlers were killed by Israeli soldiers should be highlighted to show the established fact that the policy does not differentiate between the Palestinian Arab and the Israeli; or the settler and the foreigner who visits the Holy City. This will result in such individuals being fully aware of the fact that their safety and rights are subject to the whimsical and unpredictable mood of the security forces. This should rightly embarrass the occupying authorities and hopefully spur on international human rights associations to criticize the policy of the government of Israel. It should lead to its being placed among those renegade countries which fail to uphold basic human rights and values and encourage the imposition of sanctions, leading it to review its policy. This will be infinitely more successful and more effective than going to the Security Council, which is subject to the veto used by the American administration. It will also bring to light the fact that the American administration is complicit in condoning such an egregious occupation policy which violates the basic human rights of individuals as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, based on the foregoing, the occupying power and its supporters must fully read back the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so that the conscience of its leaders may move toward acknowledging the need to uphold basic human rights and values!
