Volume 45, February 2008

Virtual Roundtable
Hala Khoury-Bisharat
Lecturer in International Criminal Law in the Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University and the College of Management School of Law, and is a member of Adalah’s Board of Directors.

Human rights organizations should continue to file petitions to the Supreme Court in OPT cases if they also seek to utilize alternative routes offered by international law to combat  domestic impunity, and to seek international justice and accountability.

The recently established ad hoc international criminal tribunals have made important contributions to the rule of law. However, they are limited in territorial scope and time. Further, the International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks jurisdiction over Israeli violations of IHL in the OPT, since Israel has not ratified the Rome Statute, and the possibility of acquiring jurisdiction through UN Security Council’s referrals is unrealistic. Thus the only international prosecutorial option for holding Israel to account is universal jurisdiction.

Universal jurisdiction is the principle of international law that allows national courts to prosecute serious international crimes regardless of where they were committed, the nationality of the perpetrator or the victim, or any other special link to the prosecuting state. Thus it is a significant instrument for bringing perpetrators of serious crimes who were otherwise likely to escape prosecution to justice. Nevertheless, before resorting to this ultimate instrument, human rights organizations should first exhaust local remedies in Israeli courts, as, in accordance with international law, states need to first be given the chance to redress an alleged wrong within the framework of their own domestic legal systems.  Moreover, in order to ensure that the universal jurisdiction instrument serves justice and is not abused by, for example, politically motivated prosecutions, the state wishing to assert universal jurisdiction must first offer to the national state of the accused the opportunity to act upon the relevant charges. By continuing to file petitions to the Israeli Supreme Court, human rights organizations also satisfy this safeguard against the abuse of the doctrine of universal jurisdiction.