Francis Boyle’s Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law

Francis Boyle is a distinguished University of Illinois law professor, activist, and internationally recognized expert on international law and human rights. He also lectures widely, writes extensively, and authored many books, including the subject of this review: Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law. In addition, he’s represented, advised and/or testified pro bono in numerous cases involving anti-war protesters and activists, the death penalty, human rights, war crimes and genocide, nuclear policy and bio-warfare, Canada’s Blackfoot Nation, the Nation of Hawaii, and the US Lakota Nation.

Boyle is currently a leading proponent of an effort to impeach George Bush, Dick Cheney and other administration figures for their crimes of war, against humanity and other grievous violations of domestic and international law. Earlier in 1987, he was the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) legal advisor in the drafting of its 1988 Declaration of Independence. Then from 1991-1993, he served in the same capacity for the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations in the run-up to the Oslo process.

On the issue of Israel, the following worthy to mention:
Israel is a serial aggressor, a rogue state, operating outside the law. Palestinians and others pay dearly. The world community must no longer tolerate it. Boyle suggests “new directions.”

1. Suspend Israel from all UN organs and bodies, including the General Assembly; its legal basis is simple; its UN admission basis was conditional on its accepting General Assembly Resolution 181 — the 1947 Partition Plan; Israel repudiated 181 and 194 as well — granting Palestinian refugees the right of return among other provisions; Israel chooses violence and spurns peace; the UN exists to maintain and enforce it; warrior states have no place in it; the General Assembly has UN Charter powers under Chapter IV; it must use them to expel Israel and send a message to other rogue states as well, one in particular.
2. Peace depends on strict observance of international law; the General Assembly must demand it and require Resolutions 181 and 194 to be the basis for further Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; also other appropriate Security Council resolutions, the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, the 1907 Hague Regulations, and other relevant international law.
3. America functions as a dishonest broker; it has no place in Middle East negotiations; it can resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if it wishes; it never has and never will.
4. The General Assembly should adopt “comprehensive economic, diplomatic, and travel sanctions” against Israel according to the terms of the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution.
5. The General Assembly should establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Palestine (ICTP) to prosecute Israeli war criminals; it can be done by majority vote under Charter Article 22; Boyle doubts the ICC will do it and notes that the Bush administration has done everything possible to sabotage it; its authorizing Rome Statute established the Court in July 1998; it became operative in July 2002; as of June 2008, 106 states are members; America is not; Israel first rejected the Rome Statute, then signed it, but in 2002 informed the UN it would not ratify the treaty using similar evasive language as the US.
   
6. The Palestinian government must sue Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for acts of genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention; after six decades of crimes of war and against humanity, Palestine’s claims are valid; Israel has willfully tried to destroy the Palestinian people and deny them any hope for a viable sovereign state; for aiding and abetting Israel, America is equally culpable; in Boyle’s judgment, taking action would send a powerful message and be “a severe defeat for Israel in the court of world public opinion;” for America also.
   
7. World governments and people of conscience should organize a comprehensive economic divestment and disinvestment campaign against Israel; it can be modeled after the successful anti-apartheid one; the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid is the standard; it applies to Israel; it defines apartheid as a “crime against humanity” and guilty parties international criminals; a grassroots campaign is already underway but it needs strengthening and official worldwide government support.
   

Read further here on his opinion USING INTERNATIONAL LAW TO CLARIFY AND RESOLVE THE ISRAELI/PALESTINIAN CONFLICT.