Human rights group calls on ICC to probe Israel’s “engineer of apartheid”

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) has filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC), calling for an investigation into the “engineer of Israeli apartheid” Eyal Toledano for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The US-based human rights group filed the submission on Monday after a months-long investigation into activities in the occupied West Bank between 2016 and 2020, placing them temporally and geographically within the scope of the existing ICC investigation into the Situation in Palestine, the group said.

Toledano was at that time Israel’s top-ranking legal authority and effective attorney general.

“In that role, Toledano was responsible for the legal planning and approval of all IDF non-combat activities and policies, including ones that violate international humanitarian law (IHL) and the Rome Statute of the ICC,” the group added.

“What makes the Toledano case so appropriate for the ICC is not just the crimes involved, but the opportunity for the court to show that international crimes cannot be ‘legalized’ through domestic legislation,” said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Director of Research for Israel-Palestine at DAWN in a statement.

“Bringing to justice someone like Toledano, an engineer of Israel’s apartheid, is the ICC’s raison d’etre and we believe the Prosecutor will see this evidence and reach the same conclusion.”

DAWN was founded by the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

DAWN said that as head of a legal team of 40 lawyers, Toledano oversaw the demolition of 618 homes, displacing 2,115 Palestinians, an action deemed as collective punishment by human rights groups and governments across the world.

Other acts committed by Israeli forces in the occupied territories include arbitrary restrictions on movement, facilitating the transfer of illegal Israeli settlers, advancing defacto annexations, and maintaining a system of apartheid, the group said.

“Toledano played a key role in planning, justifying, and defending the planned—but not yet executed—mass demolition and forcible transfer of the entire village of Khan al-Ahmar, which the former ICC prosecutor warned at the time could constitute war crimes.”

“Taken in the aggregate, when carried out to maintain a system of oppression or domination, these and other crimes for which DAWN’s investigation found Toledano culpable, amount to the crime of apartheid,” DAWN wrote in their statement.

“Under the Rome Statute, the crime of apartheid takes place when an inhuman or inhumane act is carried out in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.”

“It is rare that you find one person like Toledano tied to so many types of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and with so much documentary evidence freely available,” said Omer-Man.

“Usually the ICC would look at whether the state, Israel, conducted its own investigation into the crimes to determine if it has jurisdiction. In Toledano’s case, all his actions were legal under Israeli laws, a fact which should oblige the Prosecutor to make him a focal point of his Palestine investigation.”

In addition to filing a complaint to the ICC Prosecutor detailing these crimes, DAWN also relayed its investigation to the State Department, the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, urging them to include Toledano and his successors in their reporting and draw the connections between Israel’s apartheid and war crimes and the individuals implementing them.

DAWN also presented its findings to the U.S. Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center & School, asking them not to host Col. Toledano or others holding his role, in light of his culpability for grave violations of human rights and humanitarian laws. At least one former West Bank Legal Advisor has been hosted at the school.

Toledano now works as Israel’s Military Advocate General.

The Israeli military said in a statement it “thoroughly rejects” the”baseless” accusations, claiming its activities are carried out in accordance with international law and the ruling of the country’s Supreme Court.