AL QUDS: Two human rights groups, one Israeli and one Palestinian, have petitioned the High Court here to disallow the so-called targeted assassinations of Palestinian fighters by the army. In a statement the groups said that the killings are ”stretching the limits of self-defence beyond those of immediate threat is the most dangerous slippery slope a nation can tread upon and can quickly lead to the edge of the abyss of war crimes.”

The two groups, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel and the Palestinian organization, LAW, are not the only ones focussing on war crimes these days in Israel. The Israel Bar Association’s Human Rights Committee last year warned soldiers who carry out so-called targeted assassinations of Palestinian fighters, officers who order house demolitions and fighter pilots who bomb Palestinian cities can all be prosecuted for war crimes.

Even in cases where lives are not immediately at stake, the term war crimes is brandished by lawyers and human rights groups. One example is the attempted eviction by the government of a group of Palestinians, so-called cave-dwellers, from their land south of Al Khalil on the West Bank.

“Is this a life?” Mohammad Abdel Mehsen Rashid wailed last week amid the bulldozed remains of his house and stables on a windswept and rain-soaked hilltop in the West Bank. The 72-year old patriarchal figure pulled a loose stone out of a ramshackle wall. “We built this shack quickly before the winter after the Israeli’s bulldozed our homes last summer, it is not very good.”

The Al-Rashids are among some 80 families who live in a collection of hovels and caves, surrounded by modern, red-roofed Jewish settlements in an area that is under full Israeli control. For years the army has been trying to evict the approximately 3 000 Palestinians who live outside the established villages in the area.

In 1999 some of them were removed forcibly, only to be allowed back a year later, after the Israeli High Court granted them a temporary reprieve. Now the government is trying to get that decision overturned but it is running into a new obstacle: an increasingly lively debate in Israel over the issue of war crimes.

The cave dwellers’ Israeli lawyer is threatening to take file a war crimes suit in a Spanish court under a new provision there that allows prosecutions for acts committed outside its own territory and not involving its citizens. He claims the government last week delayed the planned evictions because of his threat. The lawyer and the Human Rights Committee of The Bar Association base their approach on the opinion among legal experts in Israel and abroad that the Palestinians are covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention that protects the rights of civilians in times of war and under occupation.

A small but active peace group called Gush Shalom, Hebrew for Peace Bloc, has picked up on the issue and is trying to use it for political purposes. In January the group took out an advertisement in Israel’s influential Ha’aretz daily newspaper with just two lines: “War crimes are being committed in the Territories. The people responsible for them will not escape judgment.”

“We are trying to use it to de-legitimize Ariel Sharon’s war option,” explains Adam Keller, the group’ spokesperson. The issue of war crimes and international law has gained more attention in Israel since Palestinian survivors of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Lebanon in 1982, last year filed a suit against Sharon who was Israel’s Defence Minister during that invasion.

Israel’s Justice Minister, Meir Sheetrit, on Israel radio called the war crimes discussion a ”very dangerous and pernicious idea, when the country is in such a difficult situation. If anybody should be prosecuted, it is these lunatic left-wing subversives, not the officers of our defence forces.”

Israel does not consider the West Bank and the Gaza strip to be occupied territories, but “contested” territories, explains an aide to the minister, so the Geneva Convention does not apply. Adam Keller of Gush Shalom is well aware of the outraged feelings his group’s campaign provokes in an Israeli society that feels under attack.

“Bombings in Tel Aviv and shootings in Al Quds that kill civilians are also war crimes,” he concedes. “But at the moment there is no balance. While the jails are full of Palestinians who allegedly have committed crimes against Israeli’s, our army’s behaviour is going virtually unchecked.”

Israel’s political parties and its main peace group, Peace Now, are for the moment steering clear of the controversial issue. “They are scared that the extreme Right, which is in power, will call them traitors,” says Shulamit Aloni, former minister and past leader of the left-wing Meretz party.

Aloni, who backs Gush Shalom on the issue, thinks the debate can affect the way the Israeli public perceives the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip. “The public is disappointed and apathetic at the moment,” she explains, “but if they are made aware that in their name war crimes are being committed and that people may be held accountable, it could help change the mood.” She favours Gush Shalom’s idea of drawing up indictments for future war crimes cases but does not support prosecutions in foreign courts for now. “We should bring the people the facts without yet clouding the issue with trials.”—Dawn/ InterPress Service.