Putinismo pode superar o tempo do stalinismo, para infelicidade dos russos - Adam Taylor (The Washington Post)

Qualquer que seja o resultado do seu longo reinado, ele vai deixar a Rússia esgotada e isolada; uma potência nuclear e um desastre econômico, social e político. PRA

Putinism allows no rivals. What about an heir?

Adam Taylor

The Washington Post, March 14, 2024

Vladimir Putin has led Russia for almost a quarter-century. If he wins reelection for his fifth term as president Sunday, as is virtually certain, he will be eligible for another six years — during which his time in the Kremlin would become longer than Joseph Stalin’s Soviet leadership — and after that, another six-year term.

Putin, who is 72, will be well in his 80s if he serves out both terms. And there’s no reason to suspect he would step down at that point. The working assumption among most Russian watchers is that Putin will be ruler for life. This longevity may be both an asset and a weakness.

Putin, a former KGB spy, was just 46 when he was flung to the top level of politics in 1999, plucked from relative obscurity by an ailing Boris Yeltsin to serve as Russian prime minister and soon became acting president.

One reason he has survived so well is because his style of leadership allows no rivals. Alexei Navalny, Russia’s strongest and most charismatic opposition figure in years, died in an Arctic penal colony last month, having already survived a poisoning in 2020. Other potential rivals have been killed, like Boris Nemtsov, shot dead on a Moscow street in 2015.

It isn’t just liberals who face threats like this, either: Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin, an outspoken mercenary leader and former ally of Putin, died in flames two months after a short-lived military uprising last year.

Even his nominal rivals in this weekend’s election are, at best, state-sanctioned nobodies. The only two antiwar candidates, Yekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin, were kept from the ballot on technicalities.

Putin’s long past, and likely future, in power significantly helps him in foreign affairs. When dealing with a country like the United States, where partisan shifts tend to happen every four or eight years, he can grit his teeth and wait for a friendlier leader. He doesn’t have the domestic pressures of his most prominent foreign foe, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, who has to stay popular to maintain his position.

The history of foreign intervention in Haiti is ugly - Adam Taylor with Sammy Westfall (The Washington Post)

 

Today's WorldView

By Adam Taylor with Sammy Westfall  Email The Washington Post, Mas 7, 2024

The history of foreign intervention in Haiti is ugly

The chaos in Haiti is getting worse. Almost three years after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in his home July 7, 2021, the country is locked in political turmoil, with no elected leaders and no nationwide elections held for almost a decade. Armed gangs control much of Port-au-Prince, where they’ve attacked the airport and opened up prisons while pressing for the ouster of the interim leader, Prime Minister Ariel Henry. The State Department on Wednesday urged U.S. citizens to leave Haiti as soon as possible.

For well over a year, Henry’s government has been calling for an international security force to step in. But while the United Nations passed a resolution that approved the force and set up its structure five months ago, so far no force has materialized. The latest round of disorder in Haiti came after Henry traveled to Kenya and signed a deal that he hoped would bring 1,000 Kenyan police officers to the country — a bid to bolster a faltering plan that was exploited by the armed gangs that seek his ouster.

There has been a notable lack of enthusiasm among global partners, with the United Nations saying it would only provide oversight to a mission to Haiti, and not lead it, and the United States refusing to commit personnel. Many ordinary Haitians are also wary of foreign intervention, all too aware of its painful history in the country.

“Deeply patriotic, Haitians revile the prospect of yet another foreign occupation following a string of failures by the international community in their country,” former diplomat James B. Foley, U.S. ambassador to Haiti from 2003 to 2005, wrote for Politico Magazine in 2022 after Henry’s government first called for intervention.

Henry has long been unpopular within Haiti. This week, he finally lost the backing of the United States, which is now calling on the prime minister to step aside and hold elections. But it is unclear how any election can take place without security being restored, with or without foreign powers.

International intervention in Haiti goes far back. Haiti was once Saint-Domingue, the “Pearl of the Antilles” in the French empire, its highly lucrative plantation economy built on the backs of imported West African slaves. After a slave revolt in 1791 led to the Haitian Revolution, Haiti would go on to face not only an invasion from returning French forces, but also attempts by imperial rival Britain on its path to independence.

In the 20th century, it was the United States’ turn. A 1915 invasion turned into an occupation that lasted until 1934. The intervention came after a period of political turmoil in the country and the appeals of U.S. banks that held debts to President Woodrow Wilson, but it was marred by numerous abuses — including the creation of the corvée system that saw the U.S. occupation use peasants in unpaid forced labor.

When the U.S.-educated François Duvalier came to power in 1957, he did so in large part by portraying himself as an opponent to American imperialism. Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, would rule until he died in 1971, when he was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude Duvalier, or Baby Doc. The men’s combined reign of almost three decades was known for corruption, repression and violence.

In 1994, the United States sent 20,000 troops to Haiti in Operation “Restore Democracy” which aimed to restore Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power after a military coup. The U.S. troops joined a U.N. peacekeeping force that had entered the country in 1993. These foreign troops would remain until 2000.

When Aristide was forced from power again in February 2004, the United States helped him escape and sent troops along with Canada, France and Chile. The U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known by its French acronym MINUSTAH, served in the country from 2004 to 2017 before being replaced by a smaller follow-up mission that concluded in 2019.

Whatever the intentions, there was little evidence that these interventions had helped Haitians. “In all, the U.S. military and its proxies have been in Haiti for at least 41 of the last 108 years, always in the name of securing peace, political stability, and human rights—and never actually succeeding in doing so,” Jonathan M. Katz wrote for Foreign Policy Magazine last year.

In plenty of cases, interventions made life worse, with accusations of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and reports of a massacre by Brazilian soldiers working for the United Nations in 2005.

A huge outbreak of cholera, once rare in Haiti, after a 2010 earthquake was linked to U.N. peacekeepers deployed from Nepal, where the disease is common. The outbreak killed at least 10,000 in Haiti, but the United Nations has provided little compensation. “They brought cholera to Haiti and they need to compensate us,” victim Lucmane Tabuto told my colleagues in 2022. “It’s an injustice. It’s an unspeakable abuse.”

Can this time be different? Both the United States and the United Nations have stepped back from leadership roles, both a reflection of how poorly previous interventions in Haiti have gone and also the wide range of other global issues in other parts of the world at the moment. But few countries are willing or capable of taking their place.

U.S. pressure on Canada to lead a peacekeeping force did not work, with Canadian officials openly pessimistic about the project. “We have to admit there’s been a history of what I would call large-scale military interventions that have not worked,” Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, told the Globe and Mail a year ago.

When the U.N. Security Council approved a peacekeeping force in October, Kenya was instead named as the leader of the newly formed Multinational Security Support (MSS) and pledged to send 1,000 police officers, with $200 million in backing from the United States and the hope that other nations would supplement the manpower.

On one level, the presence of African police officers may avoid some of the colonial overtones of past interventions, but some major problems remain: Few Kenyan officers are likely to speak French or Creole, for example, and Kenyan police have been accused of widespread abuses at home.

There has been a considerable backlash in Kenya to the plan, with opposition politicians suggesting that police officers are direly needed at home. In January, a court ruled that the proposed deployment was unconstitutional, in part because Kenya and Haiti did not have bilateral agreements in place. Henry’s trip to Nairobi over the past week was partially designed around signing ceremonies for these agreements, though it is unclear how this will address the court’s broader criticisms.

The chaos seen in Haiti since Henry left the country has only amplified the need for security there, with a new estimate this weekthat two-thirds of the country are directly exposed to political violence. It has also created a more volatile situation that will be even more difficult to contain. The most prominent gang leader, Jimmy “Barbeque” Chérizier, this week criticized foreign nations for supporting the unpopular prime minister and warned of greater conflict unless he resigned.

“Either Haiti becomes a paradise or a hell for all of us,” Chérizier told reporters Tuesday.

What to know about the genocide case against Israel at the ICJ - The Washington Post

The Washington Post, January 11, 2024 

 

The Washington Post, January 11, 2024 

What to know about the genocide case against Israel at the ICJ

Israel appeared before the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday to face accusations it is committing genocide in Gaza in a case that could impact the trajectory of the war.

South Africa, which brought the case, alleges that Israel is violating international law by committing and failing to prevent genocidal acts “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.”

Israel has rejected the allegations — as has its most important ally, the United States.

The ICJ case adds to international pressure on Israel to scale back or end its war against Hamas, which health officials in Gaza say has killed more than 23,000 people — many of them women and children. The war also has rendered much of the enclave uninhabitable and pushed the population to the brink of famine.

Israel launched the campaign after Hamas militants rampaged through Israeli communities on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostage.

After hearings Thursday and Friday, judges are expected to rule within weeks on interventions that South Africa has requested to change Israel’s conduct of the war. A verdict on the question of genocide could take years.

Here’s what to know.

What is the ICJ, and what authority does it have?

The International Court of Justice, established after World War II to settle disputes between countries, is the main judicial body of the United Nations.

The U.N. General Assembly and Security Council elect the court’s 15 judges to nine-year terms. Its president is Joan Donoghue, a former legal adviser to the State Department.

A 1948 convention, ratified after the Holocaust, made genocide a crime under international law and gave the ICJ the authority to determine whether states have committed it.

The court’s rulings are legally binding, but enforcement can be tricky, and the rulings can be ignored. Russia, for example, rejected a 2022 order to cease its war against Ukraine.

The ICJ is distinct from the International Criminal Court, a newer body that tries individuals accused of violating international laws including war crimes and genocide. Neither Israel nor the United States recognizes the ICC’s jurisdiction.

What is South Africa’s genocide case against Israel?

In an 84-page filing, South Africa accuses Israel of intending “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”

“Israel has reduced and is continuing to reduce Gaza to rubble, killing, harming and destroying its people, and creating conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group,” the country argues.

South Africa points to Israel’s large-scale killing and maiming of civilians; its use of “dumb” bombs; the mass displacement and the destruction of neighborhoods; “deprivation of access to adequate food and water,” medical care, shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation to civilians; its obliteration of Palestinian civic institutions; and its failure to provide any place of safety for Gazans.

South Africa also accuses Israel of preventing Palestinian births by displacing pregnant people, denying them access to food, water and care, and killing them.

To be successful, South Africa will have to show that Israel’s goal is not just to wipe out Hamas, but to destroy Palestinians “as such” in Gaza. The country quotes Israeli leaders calling for mass expulsions from Gaza or denying that anyone there is innocent.

Proving genocidal intent will be a challenge, said Adil Haque, a professor of international law at Rutgers. Still, he said, Israel will be called to explain: “How can it be that all of these military and political leaders are making these extreme statements?”

Amichai Cohen, a law professor at Israel’s Ono Academic College and senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said South Africa’s case reflects “classic cherry-picking.”

“There have been things said and tweeted and written by Israeli politicians that are extremely problematic,” he said. “But these are not the decision-makers.” Still, he said, a recent uptick in calls from right-wing Israeli ministers for the “emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza “doesn’t help.”

How does Israel respond?

Israel vehemently denies the allegations and says South Africa is “criminally complicit” with Hamas.

“We have been clear in word and in deed that we are targeting the October 7th monsters and are innovating ways to uphold international law,” government spokesman Eylon Levy said last week.

“Our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza,” an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said Tuesday.

Israeli officials say they’re not targeting civilians or trying to force Palestinians out of Gaza. Israel blames Hamas, charging that it uses civilians as human shields. The government has embarked on a public-relations campaign to rebut allegations that it is obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Israeli officials accuse Hamas and allied groups of waging a genocidal campaign against Jews. The government on Wednesdaycreated a website intended for foreign viewers and posted graphic vides on it from the Oct. 7 attacks and their aftermath.

But the ICJ has authority to examine allegations only against states, not militant groups.

Israel vehemently denies the allegations and says South Africa is “criminally complicit” with Hamas.

“We have been clear in word and in deed that we are targeting the October 7th monsters and are innovating ways to uphold international law,” government spokesman Eylon Levy said last week.

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“Our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza,” an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said Tuesday.

Israeli officials say they’re not targeting civilians or trying to force Palestinians out of Gaza. Israel blames Hamas, charging that it uses civilians as human shields. The government has embarked on a public-relations campaign to rebut allegations that it is obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Israeli officials accuse Hamas and allied groups of waging a genocidal campaign against Jews. The government on Wednesdaycreated a website intended for foreign viewers and posted graphic vides on it from the Oct. 7 attacks and their aftermath.

But the ICJ has authority to examine allegations only against states, not militant groups.

Who will argue and try the case?

South African human rights specialist John Dugard leads his country’s legal team. He has extensive experience investigating Israel’s alleged rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories and has served as an ad hoc judge on the ICJ.

Israel’s defense team is led by British lawyer Malcolm Shaw, a specialist in territorial disputes who has defended the United Arab Emirates, Cameroon and Serbia before the ICJ.

The choice of a figure respected in the field, Cohen said, “signifies that Israel is taking the case seriously.”

Each side is allowed to appoint one judge to the bench, for a total of 17. These ad hoc judges are supposed to weigh facts independently, but states tend to appoint judges they believe will be sympathetic to their arguments.

Israel has picked the former president of its high court, Aharon Barak, an advocate for judicial independence and, notably, a critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to overhaul Israeli courts. Barak’s appointment Sunday drew praise from Israeli centrists and condemnation from Netanyahu’s right-wing allies.

Cohen described Barak is a “great defender of the state of Israel.” Barak told Canada’s Globe and Mail several weeks into the war that Israel’s mission and conduct in Gaza did not violate international law.

South Africa chose Dikgang Moseneke, a former deputy chief justice of its constitutional court. Moseneke helped to draft South Africa’s interim constitution in 1993, as the country transitioned from apartheid to democracy.

The appointees’ personal backgrounds — Barak is a Holocaust survivor; Moseneke spent time in prison for his activism against apartheid — “might make for a very interesting clash,” said Haque, the Rutgers professor.

Why are the hearings this week significant?

The hearings are to consider “provisional measures” to stop conditions in Gaza from worsening while the case progresses. One measure South Africa is requesting: that Israel “cease killing” the people in Gaza. South Africa will argue its case Thursday. Israel will respond Friday.

The order for Moscow to cease fighting in Ukraine showed the limits to the court’s power. Juliette McIntyre, a lecturer in law at the University of South Australia who specializes in international courts and tribunals, said she would be surprised if the court issued a similar order against Israel.

“I think we are likely to see a much more nuanced order relating to ensuring that aid, water, etc. is allowed into Gaza and that Israel has to uphold its commitments,” she wrote in an email.

The only way to enforce an ICJ order is through a vote of the U.N. Security Council. Any of the council’s five permanent members, including the United States, could veto any such measure. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week called the genocide case “meritless.”

But given recent U.S. efforts pushing Israel to try harder to minimize civilian deaths, McIntyre wrote, an order could provide cover to apply greater pressure “without being perceived as backing down against Hamas.”

By defending itself in court, Haque said, Israel is accepting its legitimacy — and that “will make it more difficult to defy the court’s orders later on.”

John Hudson and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.

 

Death of a diplomat: Henry Kissinger, 1923-2023 (The Washington Post)

Death of a diplomat

The Washington Post, Nov 30, 2023

Henry A. Kissinger, a scholar, statesman and celebrity diplomat who wielded unparalleled power over U.S. foreign policy throughout the administrations of Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford, and who for decades afterward, as a consultant and writer, proffered opinions that shaped global politics and business, died Nov. 29 at his home in Connecticut. He was 100.

His death was announced in a statement by his consulting firm, which did not give a cause.

As a Jewish immigrant fleeing Nazi Germany, Dr. Kissinger spoke little English when he arrived in the United States as a teenager in 1938. But he harnessed a keen intellect, a mastery of history and his skill as a writer to rise quickly from Harvard undergraduate to Harvard faculty member before establishing himself in Washington.

As the only person ever to be White House national security adviser and secretary of state at the same time, he exercised a control over U.S. foreign policy that has rarely been equaled by anyone who was not president.

He and Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the secret negotiations that produced the 1973 Paris agreement and ended U.S. military participation in the Vietnam War. His famous “shuttle diplomacy” after the 1973 Middle East war helped stabilize relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

As the impresario of Nixon’s historic opening to China and as the theoretician of détente with the Soviet Union, Dr. Kissinger earned much of the credit for seismic policy shifts that redirected the course of world affairs.

When he was appointed secretary of state, a Gallup poll found him to be the most admired person in the country. But he also became the target of relentless critics.

On the left, loud voices accused him of a coldblooded pragmatism that put strategic gains ahead of human rights. Some of his critics said the Paris agreement left a longtime ally, the government of South Vietnam, to a dark fate as the North Vietnamese seized control. Others accused him of letting the war continue for three years while he negotiated a deal that he could have had from the beginning.

Throughout his life, Dr. Kissinger ruminated on power and strategy in philosophical and even existential terms, but he always described himself as a realist, able to see which risks were worth taking.

“Policy is the art of weighing probabilities; mastery of it lies in grasping the nuances of possibilities,” he wrote as a young man. “To attempt to conduct it as a science must lead to rigidity. For only the risks are certain; the opportunities are conjectural.”

By Thomas W. Lippman, a former Washington Post reporter who covered Dr. Kissinger’s diplomatic activities in Vietnam and the Middle East.

Read more: Henry Kissinger, who shaped world affairs under two presidents, dies at 100.
https://s2.washingtonpost.com/3bf32b1/6568175fee20006aed835632/596b79f3ade4e24119b43ed3/26/61/6568175fee20006aed835632

Angústias dos humanistas com respeito à resposta brutal de Israel contra Gaza - Ishaan Tharoor, Sammy Westfall (The Washington Post)

Para reflexão aprofundada... 

Israel’s bombing of Gaza undercuts the West’s Ukraine moralism

By Ishaan Tharoor
with Sammy Westfall 
The Washington Post, Oct 23, 2023

 

Last week, President Biden delivered an impassioned speechlinking the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel. Speaking from the Oval Office, Biden said both the dictatorial regime in the Kremlin and Islamist militant group Hamas “represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.” Extending support to Kyiv’s fight against Russian invasion and Israel’s campaign against Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip were essential, Biden insisted, in showing nations elsewhere that “American leadership is what holds the world together.”

The president made these remarks ahead of unveiling a new $106 billion funding proposal, chiefly in defense spending to back Ukraine and Israel. Biden argued that the world was at yet another “inflection point in history,” with the decisions made by global leaders now likely “to determine the future for decades to come.”

Politicians and diplomats elsewhere also recognize the fraught state of world affairs, but they aren’t all drawing the same conclusions as the White House. Some see an American greenlight in Israel’s pounding of Gaza, and call into question an apparent double standard that Biden’s rhetoric can’t mask.

There was universal revulsion and outrage in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 strike on southern Israel, which saw the brutal slaughter of some 1,400 Israelis and marked the bloodiest single day in the Jewish state’s history. But sixteen days of Israel’s campaign of reprisal in Gaza has already killed 4,651 Palestinians, according to local authorities, including close to 2,000 children. Whole neighborhoods in the crowded territory have been flattened, more than a million people are homeless and a humanitarian crisis veers from bad to worse with fuel stores close to running out. Israeli demands for the mass evacuation of parts of Gaza have raised the specter of ethnic cleansing.

Yet on Wednesday, a day before Biden’s speech, the United States deployed its veto at the United Nations Security Council to shoot down a mildly worded draft resolution put forward by Brazil calling for a humanitarian pause. It was the sole “no” vote on the table, with even allies including France voting in favor. The United States has long shielded Israel from censure at the United Nations, but the recent precedent of its scolding of Russia in the same forum makes the current moment more conspicuous.

U.S. and Western officials have decried the Russian invasion as a breach of international law, a shattering 0f the principles of the U.N. charter and a challenge to the global rules-based order writ large. Many governments in the Middle East and elsewhere in the so-called “Global South” have also condemned Russia’s aggression, but been more cautious to see Ukraine’s plight in the same moral frame as their Western counterparts. They point to the legacy of the United States’ 2003 “preemptive” invasion of Iraq, the West’s comparative indifference to hideous conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere and the hypocrisy of abetting the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories while cheering for the freedom of peoples elsewhere.

On Friday, Jordan’s King Abdullah II described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “a war crime.” He said Israel was carrying out “collective punishment of a besieged and helpless people,” which ought to be seen as “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”

That may not trouble an Israeli leadership bent on retribution, argued Marc Lynch, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, but it’s a problem for the United States. “It is difficult to reconcile the United States’ promotion of international norms and the laws of war in defense of Ukraine from Russia’s brutal invasion with its cavalier disregard for the same norms in Gaza,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs.

While it seems the Biden administration is working behind the scenes to attempt to restrain Israel’s war cabinet, Gaza’s more-than 2 million people are living in a nightmare of airstrikes and explosions and are running out of food, water and places for safe sanctuary. In his speech, Biden stressed the gap between Hamas and the ordinary Palestinians in their midst. “We can’t ignore the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace and have an opportunity,” he said, pointing to the U.S. efforts to bring in humanitarian assistance — deliveries which aid groups say are staggeringly short of what’s required.

But that rhetoric rings hollow when set against the record of U.S. actions. “If the U.S. and other Western governments want to convince the rest of the world they are serious about human rights and the laws of war, principles they rightly apply to Russian atrocities in Ukraine and to Hamas atrocities in Israel, they also have to apply to Israel’s brutal disregard for civilian life in Gaza,” Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement after the U.S. veto.

A senior diplomat from a country in the Group of 20 major economies told me that “it’s this kind of behavior that had the Global South so cautious about what the West was doing” when they were cajoling foreign governments to follow their lead on Ukraine. The current U.S. role in blocking action on Gaza, the official added, speaking this weekend on condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to brief journalists, shows “how much of a double standard the U.S. or West’s strategy relies on.”

In Europe, there’s a growing recognition of this tension, too. “What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility,” a senior G-7 diplomat told the Financial Times. “The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?”

It is also a reminder of the failure of the international community — but chiefly, the United States — to revive the dormant peace process between Israelis and Palestinians. “Today, Western governments are paying for their inability to find, or even to seek, a solution to the Palestinian question,” noted an editorial in French daily Le Monde. “In the current tense climate, their support for Israel — which is perceived as exclusive by the rest of the world — risks jeopardizing their efforts to convince Southern countries that international security is at stake in Ukraine.”

The diplomat speaking to the FT gloomily summed up the latest Gaza war’s impact: “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost … Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”

Why the Israel-Gaza war represents a broader crisis for the Global Justice - Adam Taylor (The Washington Post)

Why the Israel-Gaza war represents a broader crisis for the Global Justice

Adam Taylor

The Washington Post, October 19, 2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2023/10/20/israel-hamas-war-crimes-gaza-justice-genocide-international-criminal-court/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3b85c45%2F65320227b55654324faa000f%2F596b79f3ade4e24119b43ed3%2F11%2F65%2F65320227b55654324faa000f

The bloody Hamas-led attack on Israel and the subsequent bombardment of Gaza have led to rival accusations of war crimes and calls for the International Criminal Court to do something. But what can The Hague-based court actually do? Few know the answer better than Luis Moreno Ocampo. Close to four decades ago, the then-32-year-old Argentine lawyer was thrust into the global spotlight as the deputy prosecutor of the “Trial of the Juntas,” beating Argentina’s former military dictatorship in the courts — a landmark case that was made into an Oscar-nominated film released last year. He went on to have a long and storied career in global justice, becoming the inaugural chief prosecutor for the nascent ICC in 2003. There, he indicted both Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, though neither lived to face trial. Now 71, Moreno Ocampo finished serving at the ICC 11 years ago. However, he is still active in the world of international humanitarian law and has been closely watching the war in Israel-Gaza. He spoke to Today’s WorldView this week, not long after the office of current ICC prosecutor Karim Khan confirmed that the court had jurisdiction over the conflict in Israel-Gaza. International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo listens to testimony at the Organization of American States in Washington on Sept. 14, 2017. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images) The conversation took place the same day as the strike on al-Ahli Hospital, though he said it was too early to talk “with precision about this specific incident because we don’t know the facts.” Moreno Ocampo spoke on the phone from Brazil, where this month he took up a new academic role. “I’m in São Paulo because I spent six years at Harvard,” he said later. “American thinks of America solutions. That was the Second World War. Now the world is different.” The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Links have been added where appropriate. Today’s WorldView: First off, given what you’ve been seeing and your own time as chief prosecutor of the ICC, how likely is it that we’ll see the ICC open prosecutions in the Israel-Gaza war? Moreno Ocampo: Well, that is absolutely at the discretion of the prosecutor. And he can also decide where to investigate, what crimes to investigate and when to present charges. What is clear is that after a long process, starting in my time, Palestine became a state party in 2015. In 2021, the court’s judges confirmed to the prosecutor, that Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, are part of the territory of Palestine. Therefore, that means that any genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes committed in that territory could be investigated by the ICC and the investigation is open. Q: And this means the ICC can prosecute Palestinians, too, for crimes committed outside of those territories, right? A: Absolutely. The [Oct. 7] Hamas attack was absolutely committed from Gaza, so it’s absolutely under the jurisdiction of the court. It’s absolutely clear that the ICC could say, okay, we’ll start with the crimes committed by Hamas. The prosecutor could choose for his first case to be the Hamas case. Q: In terms of potential crimes that the ICC would investigate — crimes against humanity and war crimes — what have you seen so far that stands out? A: Well, the Hamas attack is clearly a crime against humanity, meaning a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population. Taking hostages is also a war crime. It’s also possibly genocide because Hamas has the intention to destroy Israelis. The problem is that the response from Israel … it’s complicated. Just the blockade of Gaza — just that — could be genocide under Article 2(c) of the Genocide Convention, meaning they are creating conditions to destroy a group. There’s forced displacement, another problem. Here, it’s more complicated. Israel has the right to defend itself, even to attack those who attack Israel from a different territory. I agree with that. But Israel has a right to kill Hamas members. It cannot kill civilians and it cannot forcibly displace civilians from that. And that’s a problem. I think, of course, Hamas is using the Palestinians as shields. Therefore, it’s very difficult to discriminate between civilians and combatants. But that does not give [Israel] permit to kill combatants and civilians at the same time. You have to discriminate. Israel cannot pretend it’s just destroying Hamas because in the meantime it is killing masses of civilians. That is a crime for a crime. These are war crimes, possibly a crime against humanity. And then there’s the starvation in Gaza, also possibly a genocide. Q: How could Israel avoid these accusations? A: Well, the most important part is to stop the crimes. That’s complicated because Western politicians are not talking about stopping the crimes, they are talking about opening a humanitarian corridor. That’s not the problem. This is not a natural disaster. This is because of the decision of Israeli officers. So they should put pressure on Israeli officers to not commit crimes. And look, it’s not just because its illegal or legal. History should teach us but humanity is not learning. When Americans were attacked in the twin towers, if we didn’t attack Afghanistan, they could have had prosecutions. Send the troops to arrest Bin Laden, arrest his people and then prosecute them. That is legal. But instead, President Bush decides war. Because war sounds more powerful — but it’s not. Afghanistan is a great example, because 20 years later the Taliban is back in power. Al-Qaeda has allies around the world now. Stanley McChrystal, the head of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said that when you kill massively, you create retaliation. It’s “insurgency math” — you have 10 terrorists, you kill two and you end up with 20. You multiply the fighters. And obviously, that will happen here. Q: What role can global institutions like the United Nations or the ICC play? A: The U.N. Security Council is divided because of Ukraine, so they will do nothing here. The case is showing how primitive our global institutional system is. We saw the same in [Nagorno-Karabakh] just two weeks ago. Azerbaijan committed genocide against Armenia and nothing happened. We really need to adjust our institution and invent new things. Right now, the only invention is the ICC. And the only one who can investigate today is the ICC. But even if they do, it will be too late. We have to prevent the crimes. We need to oppose the cycle of violence. That is the missing part. Q: What practical issues do you think that the ICC will face in any investigation into the conflict? Israel isn’t a party to the Rome Statute that founded the court. And Gaza is controlled by Hamas, who don’t seem likely to cooperate either. A: It’s not just about the court itself, it’s about how states support courts. There are Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, for example. If the Arab countries agreed, they could push these leaders to surrender themselves to the court, to argue their cases. If you are willing to die, you should be willing to face justice. Q: But do you think that could happen? And even if that happened, would Israel cooperate? A: No. Look, I’m telling you what should happen. When I was a prosecutor, for three years I was involved in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Eventually, I ruled that when Palestine becomes a state recognized by the U.N., it could come back. During that time, I had a conversation with a high-ranking Israeli official because they were pissed off it took me three years to make their decision. He told me: Look, we believe that you are impartial. We believe in your impartiality. The problem for us is that we don’t like impartiality. We like partiality. I have the life of my kids at risk. I don’t like to put the life of my kids in the hands of an impartial person. I like a partial person. That idea, that its just me against the others, has created this impossible conflict. The Palestinians feel the same. Q: There’s a lot going on it the world now for the ICC. Outside of Israel-Gaza, there’s the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. There’s the prosecution of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. There’s plenty of other situations where the ICC might get involved, such as the war in Ethiopia. A: Yes, Yes. There’s Sudan, India and Pakistan … Q: There’s so many. How can the ICC possibly do everything it should do? How will it have the bandwidth? A: Well that’s the point. We need more. We need to keep evolving and creating other systems to create solutions to conflicts. We did nothing else [after the ICC]. Because there are no global solutions, the world has become more tribal. Everywhere, tribal leaders are flourishing. They promise to protect their own people and people need protection. The lack of global solutions is moving the world toward tribal solutions. The problem is politicians have a different mandate. So we’ve got a problem. And the Gaza-Israel conflict is just a very bad example of a problem.

1,000 Words Portraits of Israelis killed, missing or abducted in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, are placed on auditorium seats at Tel Aviv University. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images) Tents for Palestinians seeking refuge in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday. (Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images) At least 1,400 people in Israel have been killed and more than 4,500 injured since the unprecedented cross-border Hamas attack on Oct. 7, Israeli authorities said. Hamas is also holding 203 hostages, according to the IDF. Palestinian officials said 3,785 people in Gaza have been killed and more than 12,400 wounded in strikes.