12 - 18 July 2001
Issue No.542
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 12 - 18 July 2001 Issue No.542 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
International humanitarian law seems to be "growing teeth." But are these real cracks that we see in Israel's long-entrenched immunity? Amira Howeidy sheds light on the unprecedented prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon before a Belgian court, and explores the limits of international justice where Israeli crimes of war are concerned
Against the gray
An Arab lobby in the heart of Europe? Yes, and it's working
For 20 years, people like Souad Surur and the other victims of the massacres had to suffer in silence. Not once were judicial proceedings launched to bring justice and peace to the living and the dead. The world's reaction never exceeded a moral shade of gray, and the perpetrators as well as the principal architect led their lives and even saw their careers flourish. Now the first step has been taken down a long road that should lead to justice. It will not be easy and we never expected it to be. The sacrifices will be great, but nothing will make us stop short of justice.'
Abou Jahjah
Dyab Abou Jahjah, chairman of the Sabra and Shatila Committee (SSC), wrote these lines. The SSC is the reason why a Belgian judge in Brussels is conducting an inquiry into the massacre of up to 3,000 Palestinian in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon 19 years ago by the Israeli-backed Lebanese Christian militia known as the Phalange.
None of the massacre's survivors ever dreamed it was possible to hope for justice, almost two decades later, in the most unexpected venue: Belgium. But because even Arabs who were not alive at the time of the carnage know about it, and because it has come to symbolise Israeli brutality, it is a major object of concern for a growing Arab lobby in Europe, the Arab European League (AEL).
"We've been thinking about this for a very long time," says Abou Jahjah, who is also AEL president, "since 1993, when Belgium passed a law on international jurisdiction."
Abou Jahjah, 30, is a researcher on international security issues at the University of Louvain La Neuve in Belgium.
Although AEL, which is a licensed NGO in Belgium, was established in 1993 to promote and defend the interests of Arab immigrant communities in Europe, it took up a more specific cause last June, forming the Sabra and Shatila Committee and moving to get Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon indicted for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. "We decided," explains Abou Jahjah, "that it was better to create a larger platform to involve non-Arabs as well, which is why we created the SSC. Over the years the work was done through the AEL, but the committee was created just before the case in order to involve more people."
According to Abou Jahjah, the SSC was the catalyst behind the Sabra and Shatila case. When the 1993 Belgian law was modified in 1999, making it possible to bring a criminal action under the theory of universal jurisdiction without there being a connection to the enforcing state by reason of territoriality or the nationality of perpetrator or victim, and regardless of the defendant's physical presence in the territory of the enforcing state, "we had already prepared a file on over 20 survivors of the massacre. As soon as it was legally possible to do so, we started the logistics. We had to prepare on the legal level as well as the political, financial and logistical levels," Abou Jahjah told Al-Ahram Weekly in a telephone interview from Brussels. SSC is also paying the fees of the lawyer representing the plaintiffs as well.
Lobbying for Arab interests from within Europe is a challenge. Says Abou Jahjah: "We are trying to do our best here. Belgium has a central position in Europe. Brussels is the capital of the European Union, most of the European institutions have their seat in Brussels so we try to exert some pressure, lobby, organise activities here in Brussels for Arab causes. It's not very easy, because our opponents have a much stronger lobby; they have a lot of support, whereas we have to rely on ourselves."
The Arab European League's "strength," argues Abou Jahjah, resides in what he calls the ability to mobilise the Arab community in Belgium as well as other European countries. The Arab community in Belgium -- the largest of the immigration groups -- is "the only pressure instrument" the AEL has for the time being, because "you can't really compare us with what the others have, on the financial level or otherwise. But we've also made some progress with politicians of Arab descent as more and more of them are becoming active in political parties."
Excerpts:
Why did you decide to file the complaint the day after the BBC Panorama programme The Accused, on Sharon's role in the massacre, was aired? Did you coordinate this with the BBC?
There was no coordination. The Jewish community accused us of conspiring with the BBC to coordinate the timing. We were aware of the timing of the BBC programme and we knew it was going to be aired on the 17th. Maybe we took that into consideration in filing the complaint on the 18th. But there was no form of coordination as such.
Were you encouraged by the indictments and trials of former heads of state such as Pinochet and Milosevic?
Milosevic happened afterwards. But as far as Pinochet is concerned we are following the situation. We also followed the Rwanda trials. What happened is that in 1999, a significant change in Belgian law made it possible to pursue foreign leaders even if you're not a resident of or living in Belgium. We've been following legal developments in Belgium since 1993, but it was only in 1999 that we saw a real possibility of doing something there. We didn't want it to be purely political. We also wanted to pursue the matter legally.
But your move seems to have caused Belgium political embarrassment: there is serious talk of changing the law. The inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacre might take years. Would all this kill your case?
Belgian public opinion really is very sympathetic to our cause. We have been preparing it for some time now to receive such a case. Now I think there is some exaggeration regarding changing the law and lack of support from Belgian politicians.
But there is a division between Belgian politicians on the issue. There are people who want to change the law and even change it radically. There are others who would like to keep the law as it is, to use it to the full extent. So it won't be that easy to change the law without causing a political crisis in Belgium. We're mobilising our friends and we're not going to give in without a fight. I expect that there might be a change [in the law] but it will not be radical. There might be a change to give immunity to heads of states during the execution of the mandate. This is possible.
Even that, though, we will not concede without a fight. And even if this happens, Sharon will not remain a head of state forever. Eventually, he will be liable to be prosecuted on this same case. On the other hand, if the case takes years -- well, we expect it to last years anyway. We're not expecting it to be settled in a couple of months. This case is going to last for years and we're preparing ourselves for a long fight.
Why is indicting Sharon the focus of your case?
The case is not only against Sharon. It's against him and every person involved in the execution of the massacres of Sabra and Shatila. But when you want to show that someone is responsible, you go for the whole chain of command. You use the highest name in that chain. If someone talks about the holocaust, they will not go look for the person who was pushing people into the gas chamber; they'll talk about Hitler. Sharon is the man at the top: maybe he wasn't there that day, but he's the one who structured and gave the orders, planned and initiated the events.
Of course, we are going after everybody who participated and everybody who was involved. As you can see, some people are already panicking and have held press conferences and said they will testify. We want justice to take its course, which means that everybody found responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacre should be condemned and punished. In the process we hope that the political nature, the whole strategy behind the massacre will also be exposed and that people, whether in the West or in the Arab world, will understand that this is part of a process that has been going on in the Middle East since 1948.
Has the AEL considered suing those who have committed crimes against the Palestinians since 1948?
We don't want to overwhelm the Belgian judicial apparatus with too many complaints. We think it will be strategically wiser to concentrate on the most significant and extensively documented act of genocide. So we made the strategic choice of Sabra and Shatila. And I think if we can obtain justice there... The UN General Assembly termed the massacre an act of genocide... That's why we think we can rally more support on this issue than on others.
Are the plaintiffs and the lawyers satisfied with the progress of the inquiry? Do you believe it's been taken seriously?
For now, we have every reason to think that it is. We only hope that the judge will resist the political pressure that [we expect] will be put on him, and we will try to help him by neutralising that pressure, exerting pressure in the opposite direction. How successful we will be remains to be seen, but we hope that people in the Arab world or elsewhere will realise the importance of what we're doing here and try to give us a hand. Because our opponents are very, very powerful people. It's sad, but we're still standing alone. All we're getting is moral support.
We need help in documentation, logistical issues, financial support; we need more lawyers to come and take part in the legal work, because the broader the legal theme the better it is. The only support that we are getting now is from the Arab community in Europe. They are the only people who seem to be interested in working with us on this case. But the Arab world, Arab organisations, NGOs: we still feel the void.
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