Palestine must take Israel crime cases to ICC: Academic

Press TV has conducted an interview with Saeed Nimer, professor of political science at Birzeit University in Ramallah, about a young Palestinian man, who was shot by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and hit with a military vehicle, being left under the car for three hours before Israeli forces allowed access to him.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Unfortunately we see this situation all too often and again now another Palestinian has been killed. How likely is it that the Israeli military soldier who appears lost control over his vehicle will actually be charged with anything?    

Nimer: Well unfortunately we are now used to the Israeli army and the Israeli … [regime], they do anything at all and it is very, very limited for the Palestinians to have cases to be investigated upon the Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. We know that the Israelis, maybe they will say that there would be an investigation but we know that there is not anything going to be really done in reality.

We know that the Israeli story said that there was an accident, and it is a vehicle accident, to discover later on that the young man, [Abdullah Iyad] Ghuneimat, he was shot by a bullet in his spine and later on he was run over by the vehicle and then there was the accident when the vehicle turned over him. But it is quite obvious that the intention of killing Ghuneimat because for more than two hours they did not let even the medical services to take him out from under the vehicle or to treat him and they let him there to die on his own which means that from the very beginning they do not care.

So we do not really think that there would be an investigation or more likely that the Israelis are going to do anything about it. But we are now demanding the Palestinian Authority to take this case and to do an investigation and to put it forward in front of the ICC, the International Crime Court and to show the atrocities, killing [in] cold blood against the Palestinians just because maybe sometimes the soldiers are bored.

Press TV: What does this do Mr. Nimer? We look at this, another young person has been killed and we see it as I said earlier just so often but despite if Israel is trying to use intimidation techniques, what we usually see that more and more people actually go to the scene.

Do you think that what Israel has been doing since its existence and especially now during this last decade, this hard grip that it has on the Palestinians is actually going to be something that totally goes against them and that will ultimately cause its demise because it is breeding generation after generation of Palestinians that have a defiant attitude?    

Nimer: Yes, we are witnessing that and we are witnessing lot and lots of personal actions not planned actions like what was going in Jerusalem and that is out of the frustration that the Palestinians do feel.

More and more young Palestinians are suppressed, they have no hope, there is no future from their point of view under the occupation. We know that the occupation is not going to be ended even with the peace process because they are seizing more than 60 percent of the West Bank and they do not want to give it back to the Palestinians.

So for all that, there is no light for the young people in Palestine or especially in the West Bank and that is why we say that there will be more likely that this situation will explode at some stage in a new Intifada or a new form of Intifada. We do not know but definitely all the circumstances are very ripe for a new phase to confront the Israelis and I do not think that the young people do believe that much in diplomacy and in politics and in addressing the ICC. They believe more in the ground what they are going to do against it and that is why we say there might be a kind of an explosion.   

AHK/KA

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