The founders of a new Palestinian legal centre based in the UK say they will use the law where politics has failed to bring justice and accountability for Palestinians.
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), which launched in London on Wednesday, brings together lawyers, UK politicians and academics who will coordinate legal work in jurisdictions around the world to protect Palestinian rights.
Just weeks after Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, the centre opens at a time when there are increasing calls for investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes and growing public awareness of the realities of the occupation.
But the idea for its work came more than a decade ago, during an earlier Israeli assault on Gaza – the three-week Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and January 2009, during which 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
Tayab Ali, a partner at the UK law firm Bindmans and the ICJP co-director, said Palestinians and their supporters watched the conflict from Britain, wondering what, if anything, they could do.
Livni, who had been scheduled to speak in London, evaded arrest, but an idea was born: if states on their own wouldn’t hold alleged war criminals to account, maybe using law adeptly to force their hand was the solution.
‘All the activity in parliament frankly has achieved very, very little apart from making noise’
– Conservative MP Crispin Blunt
“The police wouldn’t do it. The British government wouldn’t do it. And the American government wouldn’t do it. It is their job to prosecute suspected war criminals,” said Ali. “So when they failed, it was left to the Palestinian victims to find lawyers in Britain and ask for justice themselves.
“It shouldn’t be the victim’s job to hold the perpetrator of their crimes accountable, but if the people that should be doing this fail, then the victims have no choice.”
Along with Ali, the centre, a private, non-profit that has been able to launch with funding from Palestinians living in the diaspora, will be directed by Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, who told MEE that he planned to be much more than a patron.
“Over 30 years now, I’ve been engaged sympathetically on the side of the Palestinians in the sense of addressing the underlying cause as I see it of permanent instability in the Middle East. Nearly 25 of those years spent in parliament,” he said.
“All the activity in parliament frankly has achieved very, very little apart from making noise and I think I’d much rather do something practical which can be done under the law.”
The centre’s first case was filing a legal complaint last month with Facebook on behalf of a Palestinian data rights group, two news agencies and a translator who say the social media giant censored their posts and, in some cases, shut down their accounts.
Ali said the centre will soon lodge complaints with the International Criminal Court on behalf of property owners in the occupied Palestinian territories who have had their property stolen by Israeli settlers or the state of Israel itself.
It will also be investigating UK organisations that have misused their charitable status in order to support crimes against humanity in Israel, as well as the alleged laundering of money in the UK which has come from illegal activity.