Journal of International Criminal Justice Advance Access originally published online on March 3, 2009
Journal of International Criminal Justice 2009 7(1):155-175; doi:10.1093/jicj/mqp012
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Whose ‘Conduct Unbecoming’?
The Shooting of a Handcuffed, Blindfolded Palestinian Demonstrator
*Professor Orna Ben-Naftali is the Dean of the Law School, The College of Management Academic Studies, Israel. She is also a member of the executive board of B’tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. [obennaft{at}colman.ac.il]
**Noam Zamir is a research fellow at the Concord Center for the Integration of International Law into Israeli Law, the Law School, The College of Management Academic Studies, Israel. [sonicnoam{at}gmail.com]
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Abstract |
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The article focuses on the decision of the Israeli Military Advocate General (MAG) to charge an officer who ordered the shooting of a handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinian demonstrator, and the soldier who executed the order, for ‘conduct unbecoming’. It advances the following propositions: (i) from the perspective of the applicable international law, the facts of the case qualify the shooting as a war crime; (ii) said decision of the Israeli MAG is indicative of a policy of tolerance towards violence against non-violent civilian protest against the construction of the Separation Wall; (iii) the implication of such policy is twofold: first, it might transform ‘conduct unbecoming’ — which as a matter of law is a war crime — into a crime against humanity; second, it may well be construed as an invitation to the international community to intervene through the exercise of universal jurisdiction.