A prominent Palestinian human rights lawyer whose Gaza home was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the early weeks of the war has called on western powers and global institutions to do more to prevent the territory becoming “the graveyard of international law”.
Raji Sourani, who founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in 1995 and was a key member of the South African legal team that took Israel to the international court of justice on a charge of genocide, met the UK attorney general last week to urge him to assume a leadership role in defending humanitarian law.
At the age of 70, Sourani has spent more time battling Israel in the domestic and international courts than probably any other Palestinian lawyer. He believes the world is at a turning point.
In October 2023 his two-storey home in Gaza was blown up with a 900kg bomb shortly after he gave an interview to Amy Goodman, the founder of the leftwing independent broadcaster Democracy Now. Sourani escaped with his wife and son and returned to inspect the ruins the following day. He is sure that his house was deliberately targeted. Like many, he had vowed never to leave Gaza, but he was persuaded that if he stayed he would be killed, and now lives in exile in Cairo.
Imprisoned six times, he has been accused by Israel of being a terrorist in a suit and tie. Sourani argues that if his faith in the power of law to bring accountability had been better rewarded in the Israeli and international courts, the violence of the last year might not have happened.
Last week, delivering the Edward Said lecture in London, Sourani shifted from quietly spoken wonder at the double standards of the west over Ukraine and Gaza to an angry prediction that Israel still intended to expel all Palestinians into the Sinai.
Speaking to the Guardian, he said he was not sure of the extent to which the west was aware it was jeopardising something precious by shielding Israel from the legal consequences of its actions.
“The situation is bleak, black and bloody,” he said. “There are people who want Gaza to be the graveyard of international law. In whose interest is that? Either you have the rule of law or you have the rule of the jungle. There is no in-between. At present it is the powerful and mighty that are winning.”
Sourani reserves some of his strongest criticism for the international criminal court (ICC), with which his centre has been formally engaging about the occupation since January 2015, long before the Israeli response to Hamas’s 7 October attack led the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, to accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of collective starvation and crimes against humanity.
Sourani said he was aghast when the first ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, told him he could not act against Israel without US permission. “He said ‘I am a polite man’ but I said to him you are meant to be the global guardian of international law, you are the legal conscience of victims across the globe, and you are telling me if the Americans do not give you the green light then you’re not going to move anywhere? I mean, I am shocked, and shame on you.”
He fears Khan is being too cautious and continues to criticise him, even though Khan has sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu on the basis of imposing collective punishment and starvation.
“He [Khan] did not meet us for two years, even though we are a treasure trove of evidence. I have told him in person that if the ICC had moved earlier, in 2015, 2020, 21 or 22, perhaps this would not have happened. The message Israel heard all along is that [it is] untouchable and above accountability. That has encouraged them to continue,” Sourani said.
He finds it ironic that Israeli lawyers now oppose Khan’s request for arrest warrants on the grounds of complementarity – the principle that the ICC cannot take up a case until credible domestic legal avenues to redress have been exhausted.
He said: “I know the Israeli courts. Everyone used to say to me the Israel legal system, it’s sophisticated, it’s nice, it’s independent. Try it. Yes, and we tried, thousands of cases – for instance against Israel’s killing of 228 Palestinians during the Great March of Return in March 2018. It was then that we realised the limits of the Israeli legal system. Not just us, everyone concluded the Israeli system is genuinely unwilling and genuinely unable to deliver justice to Palestinians. Israel will never hold anyone accountable. It’s mission impossible.”
On his own future, he said he had “no right to surrender”. He said: “They want us to give up. We do not have the luxury of choice. We have to call for the upholding of international law. It is the west’s invention. But are we going to liberate Palestine with a court judgment? Never. We know our weight and volume. We are not replacing political parties. We are not replacing their role, but we are asking them to think what it means if Gaza becomes the graveyard of the law.”
