“Preventing the arrival of aid” to the Gaza Strip “may constitute a crime,” the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has warned after visiting the Rafa border crossing in Egypt, where day after day they accumulate shipments of supplies from the international community to the Palestinians.
“Israel must make discernible efforts, without delay, to ensure that civilians receive basic food, medicine, anesthesia and morphine. News comes of operations that are being carried out without basic medicines, as if we were in the Middle Ages," Khan added on Sunday night in a speech from Egyptian territory loaded with religious references in which he reaffirmed that the Court has "jurisdiction" to investigate the crimes committed in Palestinian territory, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, or by Palestinian citizens against the Zionist state on October 7. Although Israel is not a signatory state of the Rome convention, Palestine is and in March 2021 the judicial institution opened a formal investigation into crimes committed in its territories, a decision that Benyamin Tetanyahu's executive called "anti-Semitic."
Khan had harsh words for those responsible for the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas and issued stern warnings to the Israeli Government regarding its obligations under international law towards the Palestinian population, “trapped” in a war for which it is not responsible. “Children, women, men, the elderly cannot simply be taken from their homes and taken hostage for no reason. They cannot not have an investigation and they cannot not have punishment, because these types of crimes (...) are serious violations of international humanitarian law,” he said of the brutal attack on October 7.
At the same time, the Israeli government and its army have “legal obligations” that it must comply with in its response to Hamas, he recalled. “They must demonstrate that any attack that impacts civilians or protected sites is carried out in accordance with international law and that they apply “the principle of proportionality.” Khan also expressed alarm at the increase in attacks against civilians in the West Bank. “We need the law more than ever, but not in abstract or theoretical terms” but rather “the law in action,” especially for the most vulnerable.
Khan, a British national, called on all actors on the ground to provide information on possible crimes and, in a subsequent video message recorded from the Rafa crossing, which Egypt keeps closed, asked the entire international community to support the investigations of The Hague on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute. “This must be a time when the international community and the institutional architecture built on the rubble of the Second World War” to ensure that those abominations did not happen again “make sure those promises are kept,” Khan claimed. British nationality, at the gates of Gaza.
