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By Ramzy Baroud
The current resolution by the US Division of Justice to open an investigation into the killing, final Could, of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is just not a game-changer, however essential and worthy of reflection, nonetheless.
Primarily based on the lengthy trajectory of US navy and political assist of Israel, and Washington’s fixed shielding of Tel Aviv from any accountability for its unlawful occupation of Palestine, one can confidently conclude that there is not going to be any precise investigation.
An actual investigation into the killing of Abu Akleh might open up a Pandora’s field of different findings pertaining to Israel’s many different unlawful practices and violations of worldwide – and even US – regulation. For instance, the US investigators must look into the Israeli use of US-supplied weapons and munitions, that are used day by day to suppress Palestinian protests, confiscate Palestinian land, impose navy sieges on civilian areas and so forth. The US Leahy Regulation particularly prohibits “the US Authorities from utilizing funds for help to models of international safety forces the place there may be credible data implicating that unit within the fee of gross violations of human rights.”
Furthermore, an investigation would additionally imply accountability, if it concludes that Abu Akleh, a US citizen, was intentionally killed by an Israeli soldier, as a number of human rights teams have already concluded.
That, too, is implausible. The truth is, one of many predominant pillars that outline US-Israeli relationship is that the previous serves the function of the protector of the latter on the worldwide stage. Each Palestinian, Arab or worldwide try at investigating Israeli crimes has decisively failed just because Washington systematically blocked each potential investigation underneath the pretense that Israel is able to investigating itself, alleging at occasions that any try to carry Israel accountable is a witch hunt that’s tantamount to antisemitism.
In keeping with Axios, this was the gist of the official Israeli response to the US resolution to open an investigation into the homicide of the Palestinian journalist. “Our troopers is not going to be investigated by the FBI or by some other international nation or entity,” outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid mentioned, including: “We is not going to abandon our troopers to international investigations.”
Although Lapid’s is the everyday Israeli response, it’s fairly attention-grabbing – if not stunning – to see it utilized in a context involving an American investigation. Traditionally, such language was reserved for investigations by the United Nations Human Rights Council, and by worldwide regulation judges, the likes of Richard Falk, Richard Goldstone and Michael Lynk. Again and again, such investigations had been performed or blocked with none Israeli cooperation and underneath intense American stress.
In 2003, the scope of Israeli intransigence and US blind assist of Israel reached the purpose of pressuring the Belgian authorities to rewrite its personal home legal guidelines to dismiss a battle crimes case in opposition to late Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.
Furthermore, regardless of relentless efforts by many US-based rights teams to research the homicide of an American activist, Rachel Corrie, the US refused to even take into account the case, relying as a substitute on Israel’s personal courts, which exonerated the Israeli soldier who drove a bulldozer over the physique of 23-year-old Corrie in 2003, for merely urging him to not demolish a Palestinian dwelling in Gaza.
Worse nonetheless, in 2020, the US authorities went so far as sanctioning Worldwide Prison Court docket (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and different senior prosecution officers who had been concerned within the investigation of alleged US and Israeli battle crimes in Afghanistan and Palestine.
All of this in thoughts, one should then ask questions relating to the timing and the motives of the US investigation.
Axios revealed that the choice to research the killing of Abu Akleh was “made earlier than the November 1 elections in Israel, however the Justice Division formally notified the Israeli authorities three days after the elections.” The truth is, the information was solely revealed to the media on November 14, following each Israel and US elections on November 1 and seven, respectively.
Officers in Washington had been eager on speaking the purpose that the choice was not political, and neither was it linked to avoiding angering the pro-Israeli foyer in Washington days earlier than the US elections nor to influencing the outcomes of Israel’s personal elections. If that’s the case, then why did the US wait till November 14 to leak the information? The delay suggests critical backdoor politics and big Israeli stress to dissuade the US from making the announcement public, thus making it not possible to reverse the choice.
Realizing {that a} critical investigation will almost certainly not happen, the US resolution will need to have been reasoned upfront to be a merely political one. Possibly symbolic and finally inconsequential, the unprecedented and decided US resolution was predicated on strong reasoning:
First, US President Joe Biden had a tough expertise managing the political shenanigans of then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throughout his time as vice chairman within the Obama Administration (2009-2017). Now that Netanyahu is poised to return to the helm of Israeli politics, the Biden Administration is in pressing want of political leverage over Tel Aviv, with the hope of controlling the extremist tendencies of the Israeli chief and his authorities.
Second, the failure of the Republican so-called ‘Crimson Wave’ from marginalizing Democrats as a large political and legislative drive within the US Congress has additional emboldened the Biden Administration to lastly reveal the information concerning the investigation – that’s if we’re to imagine that the choice was certainly made upfront.
Third, the robust exhibiting of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian candidates within the US Mid-term Elections – in each nationwide and state legislative elections – additional bolsters the progressive agenda throughout the Democratic Get together. Even a symbolic resolution to research the killing of a US citizen represents a watershed second within the relationship between the Democratic Get together institution and its extra progressive grassroots constituencies. The truth is, re-elected Palestinian Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was very fast to answer the information of the investigation, describing it as “step one in direction of actual accountability”.
Although the US investigation of Abu Akleh’s homicide is unlikely to end in any form of justice, it’s a essential second in US-Israeli and US-Palestinian relationships. It merely signifies that, regardless of the entrenched and blind US assist for Israel, there are margins in US coverage that may nonetheless be exploited, if to not reverse US backing of Israel, a minimum of to weaken the supposedly ‘unbreakable bond’ between the 2 nations.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He’s the writer of six books. His newest e book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Imaginative and prescient for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Communicate out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Analysis Fellow on the Heart for Islam and International Affairs (CIGA). His web site is www.ramzybaroud.web
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