Holding Israel accountable, prerequisite for achieving peace

Middle East Monitor reported:

Political and human rights activists in Palestine believe that the absence of accountability, when it comes to Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians, disrupt the efforts to have a successful peace process in the region.

In their exclusive remarks to the Anadolu Agency, they emphasized the importance of holding Israel accountable before a peace process can be achieved.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, stated at the end of his trip to the Gaza Strip on Tuesday that he was committed to ending more than half a century of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and that he was also committed to ensuring Israeli security.

In fact, Ban also said that he believed the way to ensuring peace in the region was to make sure that all humanitarian needs in Gaza were met and that this would help everyone work to resolve problems that could potentially escalate into something greater.

According to Talal Okal, a political writer at the Ramallah-based Ayyam newspaper, if the international community truly wants to provide peace and security to the people of the region they must also demand that Israel be held accountable for its war crimes.

"It is essential that the international community steps in and forces Israel to put an end to Israeli aggression as it must be held accountable for its actions.

Without this sense of accountability, we will never see a fruitful political peace process and the catastrophic scenes that we have grown accustomed to will continue to unfold," Okal added.

Okal emphasized that Israel refuses to halt its settlement project and it will not stop its confiscation of Palestinian land or Judaization of Jerusalem and it will continue to hit Gaza if it does not begin to feel pressure from the international community.

Moreover, Okal sees it as important that the international community openly recognize that Israel was the party that destroyed the Gaza Strip and is responsible for the massacres that took place as a military institution.

And yet, in order for the policy of construction/destruction to stop, Israel must be held accountable for its actions and its war crimes, according to Naji Sharab, a political science professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

"Ban Ki-moon talks about peace in the region and he promises us that the United Nations will work on it but he does so without condemning Israel and without forming international commissions of inquiry that will hold perpetrators of war crimes accountable for their war crimes and for killing thousands in the Gaza Strip," Sharab added.

Issam Younis, director of the Mizan Centre for Human Rights, agreed with the idea that if the Untied Nations truly wants to apply human rights resolutions to the situation in Gaza, then Israel must be held accountable.

"If we want to achieve our goals for achieving both security and peace in the region, this outcome would require the use of international legal mechanisms that hold Israel accountable for its actions and put the country's leaders on trial for its violations against the Palestinians and Gaza.

Israel will continue to carry out more violations so long as it is not being held accountable for its actions," Younis warned.