Navi Pillay, a South African former judge who headed the international tribunal for the 1994 Rwanda genocide and also served as UN human rights chief, acknowledged that justice “is a slow process”.
“I consider it not impossible that there will be arrests and trials” in the future.
The investigators also concluded that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant have “incited the commission of genocide”.
But for Pillay, the parallels to Rwanda -- where some 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were slaughtered -- are clear.
“I see similarities” to what is happening in Gaza, she said, pointing to “the same kind of methods”.
Israeli leaders, she said, had made statements, including calling Palestinians “animals”, which recalled the demonising rhetoric used during the Rwanda genocide, when Tutsis were labelled as “cockroaches”.
'Traumatic'
Pillay said securing accountability would not be easy, highlighting that the ICC “does not have its own sheriff or police force to do the arrests”.
“I never thought apartheid will end in my lifetime,“ she said.
Her career has taken her from defending anti-apartheid activists and political prisoners in South Africa to the Rwanda tribunal, the ICC and on to serving as the UN's top human rights official from 2008 to 2014.
Since than, she and her two co-commissioners have faced a barrage of accusations of bias and antisemitism, which they deny, and a recent social media campaign urging Washington to sanction them, as it has ICC judges, Palestinian NGOs and a UN expert focused on the situation in Gaza.
“Watching those videos is just traumatic,“ she said, pointing to images of “sexual violence of women (and abuse of) doctors who were stripped naked by the military.”
Pillay said that going forward, the commission aims to draft a list of suspected perpetrators of abuses in Gaza, and also explore the suspected “complicity” of countries supporting Israel.
Before that, she said she had her visa ready to travel to New York to present her report to the UN General Assembly.
So far, she said, “I have heard nothing about that visa being withdrawn”.- AFP
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