‘One of the direct consequences of impunity is the fact that criminals consider that they can always escape justice, and always negotiate a compromise making them untouchable as they are protected by superpowers with no one daring to accuse them or bring them to court.’
Impunity therefore became part of the political culture of the ruling elite. In the sense that, the more you show power and showcase that no one will be able to harass or threaten you, the more protected you are within the clientelist system and culture of nepotism.
Ziad Majed is a Franco-Lebanese researcher and political scientist. Majed is an associate professor of Middle Eastern studies at the American University of Paris. He has authored and co-authored books and studies on reforms, democratic transitions, elections, civil society and citizenship in Lebanon, Syria and the Arab world.
Interview by Lynn Elhadjali, Angela Khalife, Jemima Maycock and Layan Wahidi (April 2024).
The interview was conducted in April of 2024 and has been edited for clarity
According to your professional experience, is there hope for victims, specifically journalists and their families in Lebanon that have been targeted by the Israeli forces ? How have governments in the Middle East either advanced or hindered justice for its people in the region?
May 6 is the Journalism Martyr’s Day in Lebanon. It is a yearly event that L’Orient Le Jour always prepares to shed light on the impunity and political assassinations linked to journalists in general.
What might be interesting, if you limit your case to Lebanon, is that you have a kind of semi democratic state, where impunity has imposed itself throughout the years. While if you move into the region, you will have dictatorships and authoritarian rules, where, by definition, impunity is part of the way they control their societies. In addition, in the Palestinian case, you also have an apartheid state that is now in a war, where impunity is not only part of its internal mechanisms, but also been supported by the international community through the vetoes (supported 51 vetoes so far).
It is important to take these regional distinctions into consideration, and although I have explored more the impunity in Palestine and Syria, I would be happy to also delve into Lebanon’s case.
As per your legal and historical perspective, what have victims’ rights and justice for victims of war crimes looked like in Lebanon and in the region more broadly?
If we take the Lebanese case, you do have three different historical phases– you have the pre-war, we're talking from the independence of the country in 1943 to the war in 1975. Then you have the war itself 1975 to around 1991. And then you have the post war.
I am saying that because the conditions are different in these periods. You cannot talk about the rule of impunity or the problem of impunity in the middle of a civil war, where people are killing each other and when violence is imposing its own dynamics and processes on the society.
Before the war, what is schizophrenic or flagrant in the Lebanese political configuration is that while most Arab regimes accepted the fact that Beirut is a capital of Arab dissident intellectuals, they used to come to Beirut to publish when they were censored in Syria or Iraq or the Gulf countries. Beirut became a capital for Arab dissident intellectuals. Beirut became, in terms of its newspapers, the capital of Arab journalism. And Beirut also became the capital of publishing houses in the region.
Arab regimes allowed Beirut to continue having this role, as it was also a place for certain forms of Arab tourism and a destination where you could safely deposit your money in banks, while a military coup d’état and new regimes were on the rise in the Arab region. Many bourgeois industrial individuals, families, even those money laundering, would transfer their money and put them into the Lebanese banking sector. Therefore, tourism, culture, private and public freedoms were all tolerated and acceptable, except when you crossed specific red lines-- red lines related to the head of a regime; red lines related to considerations within the Arab Cold War framework between the Gulf countries, Nasser and between the Syrian regime and the Iraqi regime. In that case they would resort to assassinating, with many journalists in the pre-war era who were assassinated. The most known is Kamel Mrowa, the founder of Al Hayat newspaper. The message was that we will respect your freedoms, but don't cross certain red lines. These assassinations became the alternative or rather extreme form of censorship. In fact, none of these assassinations lead to serious legal consequences or to arrest. We did not have justice when it came to the victims of those assassinations. In addition, it is important to bear in mind that many Palestinian intellectuals were also assassinated in Lebanon during that period of time.
Ghassan Kanafani, one of the most prominent Palestinian novelists, along with his 17-year-old niece, was assassinated in Beirut in 1972 by the Israeli Mossad. You also have another three intellectuals who were assassinated in Beirut in 1973 by Ehud Barak who will later become Prime Minister in Israel.
In addition to those Israeli assassinations, Arab regimes also assassinated journalists, militias committed war crimes, in some cases, crimes against humanity, with many people who disappeared and never returned. To this day, there are numerous mass graves in Beirut, Mount Lebanon and other areas that we do not know of. This once again reinforced the systems of impunity and some laws that were even approved at the end of the war, such as the amnesty law, giving immunity to warlords who committed war crimes or who ordered war crimes, as long as they would not commit crimes in the post war era.
This was later used against Samir Geagea who was accused at the end of the Civil War for committing war crimes. They justified opening a series of dossiers and cases accusing him of committing war crimes and he was arrested with a life sentence. However, despite the crimes he committed after the war, he was incarcerated for 11 years and then released, while other war lords in the government held immunity.
Lebanon’s warlords were not brought to justice, nor were they forced to apologise, nor did they have the truth and reconciliation process that in some cases might replace technical justice or what we might consider transitional justice. All of that did not happen. And these very same warlords who are accused of war crimes and atrocities are now in power. They have been governing the country since 1991, supported by the Syrian occupation, and later, after the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, supported by a certain sectarian balance of power.
There is of course, also the impunity of the Syrian regime, who did commit many political assassinations and many crimes during the war. There is also the impunity of Israel that committed many war crimes in Lebanon, both during and following the war.
Throughout the years of occupation, the massacre of Qana in 1996, that I witnessed personally while working with the Red Cross, was a stark example. They bombed a UN camp with displaced people and killed 106 civilians, burning them in just a few minutes in the camp, and nothing happened, not even an investigation or an international commission, even though the camp is a UN protected camp. It gives you an idea of the impunity of many actors in the region, but also during the Civil War and in Lebanon itself.
Considering the targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists and writers in Lebanon by Israel across time, how can you link what happened in the past to what is happening now and at such an extreme rate, whether it is in Palestine or in Lebanon, with such impunity?
One of the direct consequences of impunity is the fact that criminals consider that they can always escape justice, and always negotiate a compromise making them untouchable as they are protected by superpowers with no one daring to accuse them or bring them to court.
If you talk about the Lebanese situation, impunity is the cancer of the country, when it comes to assassinations, corruption, and even the explosion that devastated the capital of the country in 2020. To this day, there is no serious investigation into it and the judge Tarek Bitar, who initiated a legal investigation, was not allowed to continue. He was even forced to resign, which he refused to do. And until today, we don't publicly know, in terms of judicial procedure, who is responsible and what exactly happened.
This culture of impunity, became part of the Lebanese political culture, where you can commit a crime or be corrupt or be responsible for an assassination, or of an explosion directly or indirectly, and get away with it. Worse, you might become more powerful, if you are enjoying impunity. Why? Because people consider it so strong that they can protect themselves and assume that, as their supporters, they will be protected too. Impunity therefore became part of the political culture of the ruling elite. In the sense that, the more you show power and showcase that no one will be able to harass or threaten you, the more protected you are within the clientelist system and culture of nepotism.
This translates into the overall culture of impunity in the region. For example, if you take the crimes of the Assad regime now, the fight against impunity in Syria is slowly starting to bring some results, because of many refugees in Berlin, Stockholm, Paris etc. But if you take the case of Israel, it has been violating international law, UN resolutions, and has been committing war crimes regularly. People forget as events are not as well documented as they are today. But I am also a witness of this as I lived through the whole invasion of 1982. We were besieged in Beirut, we were bombed in Beirut, the Israeli Air Force destroyed parts of Beirut, and that happened from June to August and even in September, following the Sabra Shatila massacre. No less than 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians were killed in one summer at that time, with less technology and less firepower, etc. And what happened? Nothing. What happened to Sabra and Shatila? Nothing. What happened to the series of massacres during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon? Once again, nothing.
Today, you have something exceptional, with South Africa bringing Israel to court. That is maybe a beginning towards justice. Even if Karim Khan has not shown signs of courage and credibility just yet, there are now more and more rumours that things are taking place in the investigations of the ICC. They might accuse a few Israeli officers of committing war crimes. There are Palestinians who have another nationality, documenting what happened to their families and trying to bring Israeli officials to court in countries like the US, Britain, etc.
Things are moving a little bit, although it took hundreds of thousands of victims in the region for the question of impunity to become a central one in debates. The fact that you have one state, in this case that of Israel, enjoying full impunity, has led many Arab regimes to follow that path and commit crimes against their own peoples and against other peoples. Many do so, under the assumption that everything will be negotiated by the West. For instance, take the case of Hezbollah, Bashar Al Assad in the past, the Gulf countries or Oman Al Bashir, in a certain period of time in Sudan– many of them committed crimes, or at least were accused of committing crimes, and then negotiated deals with Western countries.
In the case of Israel, it is the weaponization of the antisemitic rhetoric whenever you criticise or you accuse of war crimes. In the case of Arab regimes, they might sometimes use this as an imperialist attempt at weakening us, or it is part of those Western governments attempts to impose their values on us.
The double standards in the West and the Security Council veto power, has allowed them to continue having a strong influence. The Russians, for example, used the veto 14 times in the case of Syria to protect the Assad regime, with America using it more than 50 times to protect Israel from sanctions or even from a resolution that evokes their violation of international law. That is another problem: how international powerful actors protect regional powerful actors who might then protect local actors. It is a chain and culture that we need to fight and raise awareness about, even through student activities.
When it comes to seeking justice for victims, and given how it has historically been unattainable, who do you think holds that responsibility? How do you think we can move forward with it?
I think there is a new trend that we have seen in Syria and we are seeing more and more in Gaza. But you can also definitely find it in other places, through documentation. Documentation is a pillar. In the past, we did not have YouTube, mobile phones, the cameras or the phones, all social media, etc. Documentation today is shaping the way we see and cover most conflicts. There are more and more trained people that can go into the fact checking and be part of preserving the memory of the victims, so that one day when the balance of power will change, and the ICJ, ICC and other international and regional courts will be able to practise and to impose the rule of law, you will have a database that is extremely important. Today, for instance, in the Palestinian case there is a database of all declarations made by Israeli political officials, military officials, in the parliament, public intellectuals, media etc. covering almost 500 genocidal declarations that are documented with videos showcasing the genocidal intent. Proving the intent to commit a genocide will be the real struggle in the ICJ. The struggle or the fight will be around that, as Israelis will claim that they have sent proofs, memos, papers, and orders, asking the soldiers to respect the Geneva Conventions and the intent is thus not there. For this reason, documentation is extremely important.
When it comes to the Lebanese civil war, we do not have real documentation of those who disappeared or were killed by snipers or those killed in car bombs in different neighbourhoods, or number of massacres or the mountain war. You do have lots of databases that are missing. There must be in the archives of newspapers, pictures and information, daily developments of the war created by people and victims themselves.
On the other hand, the Syrian war is very documented. You know, it may be sometimes overwhelmingly documented that you finish by not looking and verifying whether it is accurate or not. And you do have this project about the memory of the Syrian revolution, trying to investigate all that happened during those 11 years.
I therefore think that databases and documentation, the work to preserve the memory and to defend it are a good basis to bring justice one day, or at least symbolic justice, one day, in the absence of credible mechanisms.
This being said, we should try the existing mechanisms, whatever the situation is, and even if we do not really trust them. It is important to keep the pressure on the ICC and ICJ to investigate, continue dealing with the South African case, and to keep the pressure on the Paris tribunal that will be taking place here on May 21. It will address the war crimes in Syria and the case of father and his son, who are French and Syrian, while the father was the director of at the Lycee Francais in Damascus. They were both killed under torture, in one of the Assad's prisons. In both Germany and Stockholm, there are also cases. You can use national justice systems in democratic countries that are locally nationally democratic to a certain extent, even if they have double standards in their international policies. We should use whatever is possible and prepare for whatever will be possible.
Through the very important documentation that is taking place, people can no longer be censored. If there are journalists in France and Germany who do not want to go to our region or put pressure on the Israelis to go and film in Gaza, Palestinians themselves will do it. You have Palestinian citizen journalists documenting everything on the ground and sending their documentations through satellite connections. That is what Christiane Amanpour is doing in CNN, Al Jazeera is doing too, Channel Four in England etc. So you do have alternatives if you have the political will. Many are either lazy or complicit with the perpetrators, depending on the political case.
I would also like to assert that these double standards are not only Western, they are also Russian, Chinese, it is everywhere. These double standards can lead to severe consequences on international policies, depending on who holds them.
We see these double standards more than ever, everywhere. I think it os beautiful what you say about memory, with memory being a kind of beacon of hope, a tool and a weapon. And I think that's exactly why journalists are targeted so systematically.
Exactly, journalists and all those might document. Many of them were targeted on purpose. There are witnesses, when it comes to the case today in Gaza, where many journalists received SMS messages on their phones warning and threatening them.
In Syria for example, immediately at the beginning of the revolution, the Syrian regime understood that documentation is the real enemy. When it wanted to commit a massacre behind closed doors as they did in Hama in 1982, what did they do? The first thing they did is to arrest activists and start torturing them to get their sensitive information and access every material that was already documented or filmed or that might be sent.
It is an obsession with documentation for those who commit crimes and it is part of the struggles of the victims who want to one day bring the criminals to court.
Under International Humanitarian Law we know that medical personnel are granted special protection, but that is not the case for journalists. To what extent do you think it important under international law to grant journalists special protection? What do you think of this lack of classification of journalists?
In the Geneva Conventions, especially the fourth convention, but also in the thirds Geneva Convention, journalists are considered civilians. So, any attack on them is a war crime.
Recently, international organisations such as MSF, UN agencies, the Human Rights Commission and other organisations have called for the need to address our positions, considering that harming or attacking journalists is not only a war crime but even more than that, symbolically speaking.
It is not only about committing war crimes, but about silencing those who are writing and those who are reporting and those who are documenting what is taking place. That is exactly why you now have, in many countries, either regulations or organisations aiming to protect journalists and reporters. That is why you also have prizes, yearly prizes for journalists for best documenting, opinion pieces, films, and pictures. So, the culture of protecting journalists is trying to impose itself and to make it even more criminal to attack a journalist, even if under international law once again, it is a war crime, because the journalist is a civilian, but it is not a category on its own. Legally speaking, it is part of the civilian category, that you are not supposed to harm in a war or in any armed conflict.
To conclude, as the International Justice Case triggered by South Africa was not done by directly affected countries, reparations cannot be made. In that context, what are your thoughts on the importance of reparations for victims and their relatives?
Reparations hold a symbolic meaning because you are recognising a certain responsibility, and you are recognising the fact that you unfairly harmed a population, either through a crime or oppression or jail, etc.
The South African case was a leading case when it comes to transitional justice, truth and reconciliation.
The Moroccan government in the late 90s, did something similar that did not go through if you want, did not develop enough, but there was an attempt also of having at least reparations for political prisoners, for people who lost their jobs because of the political position they took.
You do have experiences where you try, through reparation, whether it is symbolic, when it comes to justice and to recognising that you were harmed, or through financial reparation or through making the acknowledgement of committing a violation public through a discourse, etc. You do have different cases.
For now, the issue is: what if you recognise that you committed a crime? What will happen next? There was a debate in France, when Macron, before becoming President, in his first campaign in 2017, said that colonialism was a crime against humanity. Okay, he withdrew it later when he became president. Then people started saying that if he recognises this, then reparations are needed then France must go and pay the Algerians, the Cameroonians, etc. And then this leads to several questions; What would happen if they recognised it as a crime against humanity? How would you do it? What kind of reparations do you do? Is it just moral, symbolic, or it should be financial? Should you restore the part of what you stole?
You do have lots of debates, and it is not yet clear legally how you proceed after that. In the case of Israel, if you take the 194 resolution, the Israelis say that they cannot recognise the right of return or the compensation because if they pay compensation it means they are responsible for expelling Palestinians in 1948, while they pretend that Palestinian left and that they are not responsible. So, you do have lots of different cases. And in Lebanon, there was no reparation, in many places there were no reparations.
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