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Shahad Alkamas

A Palestinian Lawyer’s Battle for Justice: In Conversation with Raji Sourani

Raji Sourani is a Palestinian human rights lawyer and Founder and Director of the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights. He was an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience in 1985 and 1988, a member of International Commission of Jurists EXCO and IDAL EXCO, and Vice President of the International Federation of Human Rights. Sourani has devoted his career to advocating for Palestinians in both domestic and international courts. His unwavering dedication and passion to the rule of law and the Palestinian cause earned him the Right Livelihood Award in 2013 and is a true testament to Palestinian resilience.


CJLPA: Good afternoon, Mr Raji Sourani. On behalf of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art, we would like to thank you for your time today to discuss your experience as a highly prominent human rights defender, and the challenges faced throughout your career. As Vice President of the International Federation of Human Rights, and Founder and Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which aims to promote the protection of Palestinian human rights, your award winning work has had a significant impact on the decades-long Israel-Palestine situation. We would like to begin by asking how your life experiences shaped your career and what sparked your passion for your work?

 

Raji Sourani: In 1967, I was 14 years old. To experience invasion and occupation at that age, and the extent of destruction and imprisonment, surely left a big impact on me. Of course, Gaza was a special situation because the resistance began from day one. Every day since the occupation, we would see martyrs, injured people, houses demolished, and curfews imposed. They destroyed all aspects of life, economically or otherwise. We were subject to curfews most of the time, unable to move in or out of our homes. So it was a difficult environment for years, and I lived through that. In the first year of the occupation, in 1968, my brother was sentenced to prison for three years. Another one of my brothers fled the Gaza strip. Almost on a weekly or monthly basis, our home, like all other homes, used to be raided and searched. I was occasionally stopped, searched, and beaten by the Israeli army myself. But that was our day-to-day life. It was unspeakable, people do not talk about it.

 

My family and I lived near Shifa Hospital, which was the central hospital in Gaza. Martyrs would be brought there daily—it was difficult to watch. There is never a just or fair occupation, but this was a new part of our life, and we felt the deep injustice—it’s something that lives on your skin. It’s not abstract, you feel it, you know it, you live it, and you cannot ignore it, wherever you are. My father was arrested and imprisoned during the distribution of 1936, during the British Mandate. Then he was exiled—that was stage two. Then my uncle, my brother, and other family members were sentenced to prison. So that was my early childhood under the occupation.

 

I eventually decided to study law and to go back to Gaza to be part of the resistance against the occupation. I studied in Beirut and Alexandria, I graduated in 1977, and I came to the occupied territories. I was arrested for the first time two years later, in 1979. I used to believe that torture was only physical, but after my arrest, I discovered how naïve my view was, as I did not always have cuts and bruises as marks of abuse. What was practiced on me was moderate physical and psychological pressure. That means you are made to wish to die, every day, hundreds of times, without a need for physical harm. For example, this can be through sleep deprivation for days while being kept standing, handcuffed, and being subjected to hours-long cold showers. In some other cases, you would be forced into what is called a tomb, with wet clothes. The guards would turn on the fans and you begin to shiver rigorously, and they leave you there for a few days. It comes to a stage where you cannot distinguish from what is real and what is imagined, and the guards will simply inform you that if you want to rest, you would have to confess to the allegations made. After standing for four days I decided to sit on the floor because I could not stand anymore. They began to kick me so I stood up the first and second time, but the third time I was not able to. I told them I was sick and cannot stand anymore. The officer insisted I confess to get some rest. I refused and told him ‘You are blackmailing me. You are compromising my health. This is racist, this is fascist’. Normally, I would never speak with that kind of language to an authoritative figure, but I was totally unbalanced. He began to slap me in the face and body, spat on my face, many times. These were the more trivial examples of the torture they practiced—I can go on for hours about other techniques. This interrogation lasted seven days.

 

I had also observed the relationship between the Secret Services, the police, the prosecutor, and military judges. It is a vicious circle, as any opportunity to appeal the torture is pointless because they do whatever they please. When you’re asked to repeat your confession to the police, the police ask ‘Would you like to say what you told the Secret Service? And if you don’t, then I’ll send you back to them’. You’re forced to confess and sign the statement, and then, in Court, the military judge or prosecutor would ask ‘When giving your statement, did the policeman torture you or not?’ Technically, the policeman himself did not physically torture me, but all the dirty work had already been carried out, where I had been threatened with the consequences of not confessing. You think of the 87 days under interrogation, then you think ‘It’s alright, I cannot tolerate that anymore’. It is a vicious circle that all those in charge are aware of and are in agreement with; that is why the Israeli legal system acts like a legal cover for organised crime.

 

After my personal and eye-opening experience as a prisoner in Israeli prisons and learning about how inmates are truly treated, I decided to focus my work on defending political prisoners and victims of all sorts of crimes such as war crimes, human rights violations, house demolitions, expulsion, torture, death, and death caused by torture. I want to make it clear that I do not believe that only through a legal system would we achieve dignity or justice for Palestinian prisoners or victims. But as the Americans say, you have to use the system effectively. So, you may firstly minimise the damage—as lawyers, we have to respect the rules of the Court, but the Court too, whether they like it or not, have to respect the submissions made by a professional lawyer. Secondly, being a lawyer meant that we were first-hand eyewitnesses for this era, and these are crimes that should be documented. We were reading and documenting all these crimes ourselves. Thirdly, we wanted to challenge the notion that Israel had a fair and just legal system. During my time in prison, I decided to comprehensively study the Israeli military orders with no exception—all of it—in addition to the Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945, the Geneva Conventions and its commentary, and so on. We had evidence that no Israeli perpetrators can be held accountable within the Israeli legal system, despite utilising the entire legal system from the military courts in Gaza to the Israeli High Court of Justice.

 

I was the one of the first of the younger generation at the time to fight the occupation through challenging the Israeli legal system itself, and I think many young lawyers followed after that. There was an influx of young lawyers taking part in such resistance at the time. Another important point is that we never agreed to any plea deals. The Israeli court system, similar to the American system, allows for plea bargains, but we decided to defend every single case because every single individual deserve justices for his or herself. We wanted to exhaust the Israeli legal system and did not want to make their life easier by agreeing to a plea deal.

 

So all those experiences shaped my career trajectory—the experience of the occupation, imprisonment, torture, and learning about the extent of the injustice and degrading treatment within Israel.

 

CJLPA: Thank you for sharing your story and your experience with the occupation from its early days, in addition to your unique perspective on both sides of the law. We are aware that the ICJ has already condemned Israel for essentially committing crimes of apartheid against the Palestinian people. You mention the corruption of the Israeli system, and we wanted to ask, at the domestic level, what laws, procedural rules, or policies have the Israeli state put in place that would prevent Palestinians from achieving justice? Do you have an example of a difficult case that you have worked on previously?

 

RS: First, I would advise you to read a joint report we [PCHR] published with B’Tselem.[1] It’s called Unable and Unwilling, and it particularly focuses on the Great March of Return which we utilised as a solid example of Israel’s lack of accountability. The Great March of Return consisted of very, very peaceful demonstrations taking place in five designated areas on the borders of Gaza, to protest the blockade. Now, the blockade itself is a human rights violation, and we previously tried to challenge it at the Israeli High Court of Justice. The Israeli High Court of Justice decided that ‘Nobody should be worried about a famine in Gaza. The blockade would not create a famine as we are counting how many calories the Gazan people are to consume, and we would never allow that to create a famine’. We did not complain of a famine—it is blatant racism to admit, publicly, that they are counting how many calories people may consume every day. Of course, we were outraged and we were angry, but what other means do we have at hand?

 

We challenged this issue in Court, but as usual, we failed to achieve any justice in this regard. Now, we provided examples of how many Palestinian people were dying because they had been denied adequate care in Israel, we showed them how students’ futures were destroyed because they were unable to study and enrol themselves at universities. We showed them how Israel, through the blockade, controlled what we eat in Gaza, how we dress in Gaza…you know, when it comes to what we eat, they make decisions on specific details, such as whether we eat long or short forms of pasta, the type of sweets we consume and where they come from, specific colours of things. They just control everything and our lives, and you’re talking about more than 2 million people. We are not allowed to import, to export, there is no freedom for movement for goods nor for individuals. We are not allowed to interact with the outside world, not even with the West Bank or Jerusalem.

 

With the Great March of Return, the Palestinian people decided to collectively demonstrate against all that. Now, from the minute the protests were declared and before they could even go ahead, Israel declared that they were going to allocate snipers all over the Gaza strip borders, and any individual coming close to the borders will be considered a target. Honestly, we did not think that they would seriously shoot and kill innocent people, especially if it were children who would not threaten the life of a soldier or army officer. Large groups of people showed up at the peaceful demonstrations—there were tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people in these five designated areas. People all around, even around me, were dropping like flies, being shot and killed. They were shot in the head, in the chest, even if they were 200 or 300 meters away from the fence. It’s your lottery number—you would not have to do anything to be targeted. People would not be shot in their knees or in their thighs, no, we are talking about direct sniper bullets to the head, and heart area, and so on. Every single shot was very deliberate and intentional.

 

So, as recourse to these actions, there is a right to submit a complaint to the American military Attorney General within 60 days. So we build a first-class legal file which includes all the relevant evidence, our lawyers take affidavits from the victims or the eyewitnesses and build a map and story of what happened. We translate the file documents and we send them to the Attorney General. If the complaint is not submitted within the 60 day period, it would be voided and there would be no investigation. If you do abide by the limitation period, they agree to look into the complaint. At the end of each complaint, we write one last sentence, ‘If you require further information, evidence, or eyewitnesses, please let us know and we will ensure our best endeavours to provide such evidence’. The Attorney General’s office do not actually investigate the case, they send it to the army—there is an army unit which deals with the military investigation. They assume that if they do not provide an outcome within a month, a year, or two, then we would forget about it. We nonetheless keep sending memorandums, notes, we keep calling them, and most of the time they respond with the following: either there is no case to answer, or the actions were carried during a military operation and anything carried during a military operation is deemed absolutely legally legitimate, or they would say ‘Well, unfortunately, the army found this file does not exist, they lost it. Perhaps we can compensate you for your lawyers’ fees, but nothing else’.

 

I’m talking about hundreds of cases, thousands of cases, that I have represented throughout the course of years, and it just does not work. So, this report is precisely aimed at those who question why we had to resort to universal jurisdiction and the ICC. This is the reason—we exhausted all legal remedies within the Israeli legal system, and all we found is a legal system that provides full legal cover for organised, systemic war crimes. An entire family of 22, they honestly had nothing to do with occupation, and the bomb dropped on them, out of the blue, just like that, none of them exist in seconds. You legally challenge these actions, you provide all evidence needed, you ask the authorities to provide the basis and reasons for why they did that. The answer is collateral damage, just as simple as that.

 

I can tell you about the last offensive attack in May [2023]. I was with my dentist at seven-thirty in the evening. He was a friend and my doctor. We parted ways at 15 to two in the early morning. He was sleeping. His wife was a doctor too. His son should have been graduating this year as a dentist. The father, the mother, and the son, the three doctors were gone just like that, they were killed with GPU 39 rockets. Allegedly, four of the rockets needed to penetrate the ceiling in order to target somebody below their apartment. Yet again, a legal complaint was issued in this regard and they say, ‘Well, every target was given approval by the Israeli legal advisors in advance of the operation’. So, the Israeli military legal adviser involved in approving the basket of targets before the war began, and during the war—how can he be the one to investigate my complaint on the war crimes, when he is the same person who authorised these acts to assassinate and kill innocent civilians in the first place?

 

We represent neither Fatah, nor the Jihad, nor Hamas. What applies to them are different rules of engagement. We defend entirely civilian people, but Israel knows neither international law, nor international humanitarian law, nor human rights. They recognise one thing: their own laws, and their own laws are the laws of occupation. And the rules of the occupation are the rules they made and tailored as a means to all their ends, without accountability. Even Israel’s open-fire regulations appear to have no limits. What are the rules of engagement of the open-fire regulations, when children, working women, young women, and civilians are being killed? We have the right to know what the army is doing and what they can do, but Israel would not be able to tell you where the limits are, nor would they care. So, in summary, not only does Israel have military orders, internal regulations, internal mechanisms, in addition to laws designed to protect the entire legal and political apparatus, but there is somehow no recognition of any international law. If you are an Israeli Jew, you have superiority, you can have justice and dignity within the Israeli legal system. If you are a Palestinian, Muslim, Christian, atheist, even Druze, no, you do not have such privilege and legal protection, unfortunately.

 

CJLPA: Based on your difficult experience with achieving justice in the domestic Israeli legal system, you founded the PCHR organisation in 1995 and worked with other international bodies to achieve justice for Palestinians. You touched on the principle of universal jurisdiction earlier, which the PCHR previously applied. Can you walk us through how you have utilized this principle and what challenges you faced, for example, in the cases of Tzipi Livni and Doron Almog?

 

RS: As previously mentioned, we have not had a victory and justice for Palestinians achieved within the Israeli legal system. Now, one of the pre-conditions to utilise universal jurisdiction, or the ICC Rome Statute, is whether national remedies have already been exhausted. The legal remedies here, in the case of Israel, mean the laws of occupation. If this condition is not satisfied, you have no right to use universal jurisdiction, or the ICC. Unless—and the law makes this very clear—the legal system cannot be accessed. Now, the Israeli legal system was preventing us. I mean, we want to use it, but we are unable to. We cannot use it anymore.

 

The concept of universal jurisdiction really shone through in the Pinochet case—it was a landmark case for ourselves and our colleagues from Latin America, countries such as Argentina and Chile. It was big news in our legal careers. It was a real source of inspiration, that this legal mechanism can work. If it worked in the Pinochet case, then we had to invest our best efforts to successfully apply it. At the time, I did not realise that it was so complicated, but the principle was there. We have friends with whom we have very good professional and personal relations, in Switzerland, France, UK, Spain, US, even Auckland, South Africa, Sweden, and so on.

 

So we decided to use the principle of universal jurisdiction and use it effectively. We issued the first three cases in Switzerland and worked with some Swiss lawyers. I think the cases were legally perfect, very solid, very strong, and we had a fantastic legal team working on it. But in three months, the Swiss Parliament, Federal Parliament, decided to change the laws. They changed the law, in a country like Switzerland, because of three cases we represented. That indicated that our cases were stronger and more effective than we realised. People were taking in what we were doing. It actually motivated us further. We thought maybe Switzerland is a very special place, and that’s why they blocked the case politically, but not legally. So we were unable to apply universal jurisdiction in Switzerland at the time, this was in early 2000.

 

We then thought of applying universal jurisdiction in London, where we represented two cases. One was against Shaul Mofaz, the Defense Minister at the time, and another against Doron Almog, the military commander of the Gaza strip. In Almog’s case, we requested the Court not to leak the outcome to anyone except the body responsible for enforcing the order. We provided the enforcing body the Court Order details which included the flight number and the time of arrival to Heathrow. It all seemed to go according to plan, but some reported seeing him going back to the aeroplane even after all other passengers had left. The Israeli media reported that Almog received a message not to leave the aeroplane otherwise he would be arrested. He was not arrested for this reason, and the doors of the aeroplane closed and Almog flew back to Israel.

 

After the Mofaz and Almog cases, the laws began to change. Not only is the accused’s physical presence required for a warrant, but also a special police committee has to be allocated and the onus was on us to find such committee. In addition, they asked for a special committee in the prosecutor’s office who would decide on the case. So it’s two additional levels. And we nonetheless provided good evidence to apply universal jurisdiction even with these conditions, to issue a warrant of arrest in Tzipi’s case. At the first attempt of applying universal jurisdiction, although we managed to get a warrant for her arrest, by a miracle, I mean, she left the country although she was meant to be arrested. And she left London through the back door, for diplomats, not for ordinary people. I think she left in a special manner, with MI5 or MI6.

 

After that, it was declared that even if all the conditions apply to the accused in the UK, diplomats can employ something called a special mission letter which essentially means they cannot be arrested so long as they are on such ‘special’ diplomatic mission. Accordingly, Tzipi or any other Israeli diplomat coming into the UK, the special mission letter is more than enough to protect them, to say ‘I’m here on a special mission from the Israeli government, and here is a piece of paper’, just like that. So that was the way the UK has provided full, legal, and political immunity to war criminals. Imagine, I mean, if Russia did that for its wanted victims. What will happen? This is totally unfair, and I would even say illegal—it’s essentially the European state providing legal cover for war criminals. I did not understand why they were so worried about the court. I mean, this is not a Palestinian court, it is the British legal system. If the accused is truly innocent, they are easily able to appeal against the decision and they would be free to go. But no, even an arrest was not possible to enforce.

 

In Spain, what had happened was much more critical. We issued a case there, we had great hopes and we invested our best efforts to ensure the arrest at the National Court of Spain. We also had the Pinochet case as precedent. I met with the judge recently in Buenos Aires. He told us that what had happened was that there was incredible pressure on judges by the executive branch. You can see how the system works in Europe, the continent with its supposed values, standards, with its rule of law. This is Europe, I’m telling you Europe provides full, legal, and political immunity for war criminals even when their crimes are proven in their courts. Not in Palestinian courts, not in Ouagadougou courts, no, this happens within the British system, within the Spanish system, within the Swiss legal system.

 

We managed to get a decision against six of the Israeli leaders, military and security, including Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who was the Minister of Defense, in addition the officer in charge of strategical planning in the Israeli army, the Military Commander of Gaza, and so on. After the decision was made, Mr [Miguel Ángel] Moratinos said, ‘I apologise on behalf of my colleague’, the Foreign Minister at the time. ‘I apologise to the Israeli government, and we promise you that this will never happen again, and we will make all the necessary changes in Parliament to guarantee that this will never happen again’. This was in around February or so, and in December a decision was issued by the Legislative Council of the Parliament which provided full legal immunity to the Israeli leaders. So they dropped our case, although the law does not usually apply retroactively. The case outcome had already been decided, it should not be voided. This decision was meant to be implemented.

 

Anyway, these are a few good examples to show how the legal cases evolved, and how Europe actively blocked us from holding accountable any Israeli suspected war criminal. If it was an Iraqi, an Algerian, Sudanese, Syrian, he or she would be arrested the same day. An Israeli, however, that would not happen. Some individuals apparently have very cheap blood, very cheap dignity, whilst others are holy. So that was one of the lessons learned from these experiences.

 

We kept trying, we attempted issuing a case in South Africa. Tzipi cancelled every trip to South Africa for that reason. We were able to do it in Auckland, as well, in New Zealand. There was a warrant waiting for Bogie [Moshe Ya'alon] when he landed there, but for political reasons this also was not implemented. We came to the conclusion that we really wanted to continue and keep trying, but it was too much work, too much investment, too much money, too much time being consumed. There are many people who are involved in this, and each nitty gritty detail had to be thought of. It’s not just Raji Sourani, it’s not five or six or seven or 10 or 15 people, it’s many more, who are all involved in a very orchestrated manner.

 

That is why we then began to think of the ICC more seriously as an avenue for justice. I knew the ICC since its infancy. At the time, I was the Vice President of the International Federation of Human Rights, and board member of the ICJ in Geneva, two bodies involved in the drafting of the Rome Statute to the Human Rights Council. We followed all the discussions and deliberations between Geneva, New York etc, and we witnessed how the Israelis and the Americans intervened, especially with regards to the retroactivity issue and other elements. Anyway, once the Rome Statute was eventually enacted it was a big celebration—we considered it as an ideal tool for achieving justice, and it was a form of accountability for individuals, not against a state, so in theory the Court should not be as hypersensitive when it comes to exercising its powers.

 

We attempted to engage with the ICC in 2006, or 2007 and it did not work. We attempted once more in 2008, it did not work either—we decided to speak with the prosecutor then, Ocampo. We had a few meetings with him, and then Oxford decided to have a meeting for the people involved in this, namely the prosecutor of the ICC, Al Haq, PCHR, and Human Rights Watch. The meeting was set in Chatham House. It is a very nice and unique place, but the discussion was so ugly. I insisted that he provides one reason, one legal reason, for what is happening. He said, ‘I have to be very frank. At some stage, if the Americans don’t agree on taking on a case, I would not work on it’.  I said, ‘You are meant to be the global guardian of justice. You are the legal conscience of victims across the globe. You are our backbone, and you are telling me, if the Americans do not give you the green light then you’re not going to move anywhere. I mean, shame on you, I mean, how can you accept such words coming out?’ That just goes to show how tough and bitter the discussion was. It was unforgettable for me. I mean, in such a sensitive institute, to have such quality of people who are responsible for ensuring justice. It is a total shock.

 

We did not give up, we have no right to give up. We have to keep the fight. The best scenario for our opponents is that we decide there is nothing further to do and to move on with our lives. But I don’t trust the system. No, keep challenging them, keep reminding them how ugly they are, how racist they are, how they are liars, how the colonial mentality lives deep in their mind. And that is why we kept asking the Palestinian Authority [PA] to request to apply the four conditions of jurisdiction, and we managed to do that in 2012, but unfortunately, it seemed there was a genuine threat by the US and Europe not to sign and ratify the Rome Statute. In 2014, we thought ‘Fantastic. This is a golden opportunity’. I made a very orchestrated campaign against PA, during the war. I said, if the Palestinian leadership does not defend the blood, the souls and dignity of Palestinian people, they are not legitimate. And I said that on Palestinian TV during the war, while people were being killed in Gaza, like flies, literally, I mean, we were bombarded by rockets, hundreds of them, and the entire city was shaking from the explosions. Anyway, the pressure worked and we were contacted by the PA, they asked for our guidance and advice on how to proceed. We told them we are happy to assist and ready to invest our best efforts to help facilitate that. They eventually signed and ratified the Rome Statute. Not only did we convince and pressure the PA but we also pushed Hamas and Jihad Islamic to sign and ratify the Rome Statute as well. That is how we began our journey in the ICC.

 

To make the ICC story short, Fatou Bensouda was a real piece of African marble; solid, strong, clear, professional, decent, honest. We were aware of how much pressure she was under, but she was able to push through nonetheless. It took her five years to carry out the preliminary examination, although I did not think it needed that much time as this was the most documented conflict in history. The next stage was the Pre-Trial Chamber to assess whether this matter falls within the jurisdiction of the ICC or not. Then a presidential decree was issued by President Trump that any individual bringing a case against an American or Israeli soldier to the ICC, whether it is a lawyer, or prosecutor, judge, will have their visas cancelled, accounts frozen, property confiscated, etc. And some of these people are part of our legal team—we have American lawyers in our legal team, the prosecutor assessing the merits of the case may be subject to that. But we continued nonetheless until the Court decided in February 2021 that Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem fall within the jurisdiction of the ICC. Bensouda was then threatened twice in her office, with her life, by two diplomats. Europe knew about that, the Dutch government knew about that, and nobody did anything to interfere. She then decided to form the Investigation Committee, and we had one last meeting with her in May 2017 before she left, where she introduced us to the members of the Committee. Mr KK, Karim Khan, then took position in June.

 

Since 2017, until today, in simple words, he did not move matters one millimetre forward. Obviously, for political reasons, he is selective in dealing with cases; he’s essentially politicising the ICC. From day one, we told them we are on the ground, we legally represent the victims, we have the power of attorney, we have the legal files, we have the eyewitnesses. Whatever you need, we are at your disposal, anything you want. We knew that Israel would never, ever will allow the Committee to come to the Occupied Territories because there was not a single instance where Israel allowed any committee to come and investigate what is happening. We asked them to use us, please. Yet every time we go to The Hague and we meet with them, we talk to them, we offer once again our assistance, but they don’t say or ask anything. Which was very strange, what are they waiting for?

 

Now, Mr KK does not even want to see us as representatives of victims, yet he claims wherever he goes, that he is the friend of Palestinians and the world civil society. He is not a friend, neither to the Palestinians nor the world of civil society. I know what our Colombian counterparts say, I know what our Kenyan, Afghani, Iraqi, Palestinians, and many others say about him. No, he is not a friend of civil society. He is a friend of the States, of power to the States, to America, to the UK, to Germany. He is just in their pockets, unfortunately. And I’m not saying this because I want him to be my enemy, I’m saying it because we as human rights activists, our mission is to speak truth to power—this is one thing—second, there is one concrete example. The entire basis of the Ukrainian file is the invasion and occupation by Russia to Ukraine. It is invasion and occupation. That is why the US and Europe decided, one, they are against the invasion and occupation. Two, Ukrainians are entitled to self-determination, and that means they are entitled to resistance by all means, including armed struggle. They publicly announced that they will support the Ukrainian resistance by all means, including arms. They asked the free Europeans to go take arms and fight with Ukrainians. Three, they imposed on Russia six layers of punitive measures, which, I mean, would destroy any country.

 

We are not against these decisions, we agree completely with them completely—yes, Russia invaded and occupied Ukraine, and the Ukrainian people have the right to resist, but how is it possible that all this was achieved in one year? The right of self-determination, the right of resistance, asking the free people across Europe and the world to join, to support Ukraine by all means, and punishing the Russian Federation. How is it possible that within just a year, an office in Kiev was opened with 43 staff members, while in Palestine, since January 2015 until this point, nothing moved. I mean, there is not even a need to investigate, the files are there. You press a button, you have everything you need. Even with some areas of law, you do not need files, it is all in the public domain. For example, with the illegal settlements, everything is in the public domain.

 

This is what we are dealing with, and that is really our dilemma with the ICC. We do not think it is Mr KK’s doing though—it’s the ugly Europe, unfortunately, which like I said before, no law for slaves, and we are the slaves of the 21st century and they are the masters. This is racism, this is colonialism, and it is totally unacceptable. It is totally unjust and unfair. What is happening with this world? We say in Arabic ‘Mohammed yarith, Mohammed layarith’ or ‘Mohamed inherits, Mohammed does not inherits’. Either Mohammed inherits or does not inherit. Either you have rule of law and democracy for human rights for all., or we just do not talk about it. Is it because we are not white? We do not have their hair, we do not have blue eyes, we are not Christians, we are not close to Europe. There has to be some logic, some respect for the intelligence as human beings, but they do not care, and this is what is really going on with Israel. They are encouraged by what is happening to continue their lack of accountability. Look at the Coalition Framework Agreement—you do not need more than the Agreement to say that this is essentially codification of all the war crimes they are planning to commit, they are openly discussing it and sending this message to the whole world, and they are actively carrying out the plans as we speak.

 

CJLPA: It is unfortunate that an institution such as the ICC, which is meant to be an impartial body, can still be prone to political influence and motivations. Following from that, do you see any progress for the case of Palestine at the ICC? How do you think it can progress?

 

RS: We are romantic revolutionaries, right? This is our mission. We have no right to give up. We cannot give up. This responsibility is ours. This is not something personal. We represent victims, and we promise them that we will bring justice and dignity for them. Whatever that takes from us, we will invest our best. They want us to give up, to say we are tired or exhausted, that we do not believe in pursuing this anymore. No, we will keep confronting them. We will keep sitting on their chest. We will keep telling them and the world about their corrupt reality. This is our fight. This is our battle, and we will continue with no compromise, and we should always enjoy strategic optimism, we should not lose that, at all.

 

CJLPA: Definitely—through your unwavering hope and persistence on achieving justice through the legal systems in place, a solution can be achieved. In addition to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people, as you have already mentioned, it is disappointing to see that other states take part in the prevention of justice for the Palestinian people. Finally, is there anything that the international community can do today to put further pressure to hold the Israeli authorities accountable for their actions?

 

RS: Yes, there are many viable options. We want to see some countries stand for their legal obligations, I wonder if there is a possibility for universal jurisdiction to be applicable somewhere else. Not just in Europe, it can be anywhere. Yes, I think there is an opportunity there.

 

Another option is an ICJ advisory opinion. I think it is a big shame that Europe’s overwhelming majority voted for either abstention or against seeking an advisory opinion by the ICJ. I cannot even comprehend why that would be an issue, I resort to the most important court on Earth, and I’m seeking an advisory opinion, what’s the problem?

 

So, I think we have a just, right, and fair cause. We have to keep fighting for it—our mission is to speak truth to power. We have a very good case in our hands. We have international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights law supporting our cause, in theory. We have to continue with that, we should not lose the hope. We have to keep the strategic optimism. Hard times always push either to give up or to stand for each other, and we have no right to give up. We stand for a challenge and continue to not because this is personal, but because it is the victims’ pain, blood, souls, and suffering. We have to continue with this.

 

CJLPA: Thank you, Mr Sourani. It has been an absolute pleasure to speak with you today, benefiting from all the intricacies of your vast expertise, which has deservedly earned you several awards such as the National Order of Merit. Your ICC work, overall bravery, and dedication to the rule of law for your people is truly extraordinary. We look forward to seeing what PCHR has in store for the coming future and we wish you all the best in your endeavours.

 

This interview was conducted by Shahad Alkamas, who graduated in 2021 from Middlesex University and obtained her LPC the following year at the University of Law. In addition to her Legal Researcher role at CJLPA, Shahad is currently working as an in-house litigation paralegal, with previous experience in various legal fields such as personal injury, immigration, and civil litigation.

 

[1] ‘Unwilling and Unable: Israel’s Whitewashed Investigations of the Great March of Return Protests’ (B’Tselem, December 2021) <https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202112_unwilling_and_unable_eng.pdf> accessed 10 March 2024.

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