Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Maliki has called on foreign governments to investigate their citizens who serve in the IDF for war crimes in Gaza, according to a report in Britain’s The Guardian.
The newspaper reported that Malki, a member of Fatah, the supposedly “moderate” Palestinian movement, has approached the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada, South Africa and five Latin American countries on Tuesday, as well as to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In a letter to the 11 heads of state, Maliki said that under international law they are required to investigate their citizen’s alleged violations of international law.
Maliki is a close ally of Palestinian Authority President Abu Mazen, tauter by left-wing Israelis as Israel’s great peace partner.
Significantly, Maliki has never called for war crimes trials Arab states and organizations that have abused (and continue to abuse) Palestinians around the Middle East. Since 1948, two generations of Palestinians have been born and raised in Lebanon and Syria, with severely limited employment and residence rights and without citizenship.
Later, in 1991, the government of Kuwait summarily expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom had lived in that country for decades, when PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat threw his support behind then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had recently invaded the tiny Gulf state.
Even in Gaza, Maliki and Abu Mazen tacitly accepted Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in 2006. Then, PLO offices were ransacked and looted, Fatah members were tortured, summarily executed and thrown off the tops of buildings in Gaza City, but the PLO never suggested charging the Islamist group – and Fatah’s arch rival with war crimes.
The Guardian reported that Maliki’s letter asked the countries to identify their bi-national citizens who serve in the IDF, to investigate and possibly prosecute them.
Israeli troops have “committed war crimes during the repeated assaults on Gaza in the present, as in the past,” Maliki said. “They have engaged in indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. Such actions have caused death and injury to thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, and massive destruction to civilian properties, in grave breach of international humanitarian and human rights law.”