No in-between

Celebrated Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani is currently focusing on the prosecution of British citizens who have been accused of war crimes while fighting in the Israeli army during the Gaza war. Sourani is a member of a team of lawyers from the Palestine Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC) which last week submitted a a 240-page report to Britain’s Metropolitan Police war crimes unit.

Among the 10 accused are dual British-Israeli citizens. Sourani told Middle East Eye, “We are here on a very special mission, to say to the police that there are British [nationals] who are involved in ...war crimes in the Gaza Strip and the British police should [hold them] accountable.” The war crimes they have committed include murder, extermination, attacking civilians, persecution, and forcible transfer. Sourani said he expects the police to act as Britain is a country where the rule of law is enforced. Unfortunately, Britain has shown itself unwilling to impose legal and moral accountability on Israelis and non-Israeli nationals recruited by the Israeli army. While the PCHR is focusing on Britons who violate human rights laws, there are hundreds of French and US citizens who should be investigated while serving in Israel’s Gaza campaign.

Over the decades Sourani has filed multiple cases against Israelis with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and has accused its prosecutors of dragging them out. In November 2024, the ICC finally obliged by issuing warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin and then Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of instigating war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a result, 125 ICC ember states are required to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they enter their territory. Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban refused to honour this obligation when Netanyahu visited Budapest this month and withdrew Hungary from the ICC. However, Hungary did not abide by the requirement to effect exit by informing the UN secretary general. As Hungary’s withdrawal will not be effective for a year after formally withdrawn, Orban remains obliged to arrest anyone against whom warrants have been issued.

After an Israeli strike with a 900-kilogram bomb in October 2023 wrecked his home in the Tel Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City, Surani and his family left the Strip for Egypt and then Paris. Sourani is now based in Messina in Sicily at the home of Triestino Mariniello who is an Italian member of the PCHR which has been targeted by Israel’s war. Mariniello told Al-Jazeera, “We thought it was a good way to try and be more productive in a place where you can actually detach yourself from the constant horrors, even though that may seem impossible these days. We also considered this as an opportunity for our colleague from Gaza to catch a breath after what he’s been going through.”

In addition to raising a case for war crimes against Britons, the PCHR is working with South African lawyers who have lodged a case on Israeli genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Sourani said in the “Al-Jazeera” interview, “What we are witnessing is unprecedented. And what’s more concerning is that the people documenting the horrors are dying too, erasing the evidence of what is happening.” PCHR lawyer Nour Naser Abu al-Nour and colleague Dana Yaghi were killed in Israeli strikes early in 2024. Sourani said. “The world is just watching Israel go beyond human rights law. So we felt the urge to speed up our legal battle. That’s another thing that’s missing in Gaza – apart from food and safety – is time.”

Born in 1953 in Gaza. Sourani studied law at the University of Alexandria in Egypt before returning to the Strip where established a law office to focus on Israeli occupation abuses, including trials by military courts, detentions without warrants, torture and deaths in prison. As a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he suffered Israeli arrest, trial in a military court, detention, and mistreatment by his jailors. He served a three-year jail sentence (1979-1982) and was imprisoned another three times in 1985, 1986, and 1988, the last period being administrative arrest. At that time, he was named a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International. He was also briefly detained by the Palestinian Authority for questioning its commitment to the rule of law.

In 1990, he was appointed director of the Gaza Centre for Rights and Law. In 1995, he founded the PCHR to monitor and document Israeli actions, promote the rule of law in the occupied Palestinian territories, and support Palestinian efforts to achieve self-determination. The PCHR is funded by the UN and non-governmental agencies in Sweden, Ireland, Britain, the US, Denmark, and Norway.

Sourani and the PCHR have received multiple international human rights awards. The first thing which caught a visitor’s attention when entering the PCHR Gaza office was the Robert F. Kennedy award received by Sourani in 1991. It is ironic that a Palestinian should receive this award, as pro-Israel US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the slain president John F. Kennedy, was killed in 1988 while campaigning for the presidency by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. In 2013, Sourani shared the Swedish Right Livelihood Award, known as the alternative Nobel Prize, for “his unwavering dedication to the rule of law and human rights under exceptionally difficult circumstances.”

In 2024, Sourani told “The Guardian,” “The situation is bleak, black and bloody. There are people who want Gaza to be the graveyard of international law. In whose interest is that?” he asked. “Either you have the rule of law, or you have the rule of the jungle. There is no in-between. At present it is the powerful and mighty that are winning.”

Photo: AFP