Aussie push for flotilla inquiry
A MELBOURNE-based legal expert has been appointed as the newest member of the Turkel Commission, which is investigating the 2010 Gaza flotilla.
A MELBOURNE-based legal expert has been appointed as the newest member of the Turkel Commission, which is investigating the 2010 Gaza flotilla.
Professor Tim McCormack (pictured), an expert in international humanitarian law at the University of Melbourne, has joined the commission as it embarks on part two of its mandate.
He has been appointed an international observer, alongside Lord David Trimble, a Nobel peace prize winner who was also an observer in the first phase of the Israeli investigation.
The Australian travelled to Israel last week to meet the other commissioners and said he was looking forward to the challenge of overseeing the inquiry into Israel’s military
justice system.
He will be involved in scrutinising the way Israel deals with complaints it has violated international law in the context of last year’s flotilla incident, which saw nine Palestinian activists killed in a clash Israeli soldiers who were attempting to uphold the blockade of Gaza.
Prof McCormack said that while as an observer he cannot vote on the commission’s recommendations, he did not intend on playing a “silent role”.
“The idea is for Lord Trimble and I to testify from an independent perspective that the comm-ittee is acting independently of government and having its own robust discussion,” the special adviser to The Hague said.
While Prof McCormack learned a bit of Hebrew during a year spent in Israel in 1989 as the inaugural Golda Meir Post-Doctoral Fellow, he said his work would begin in earnest once the Turkel Commission testimony was translated into English.
In the meantime, he will be studying the military justice systems of six countries – Australia, Canada, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands – in a bid to contrast them with Israel.
From an academic point of view, he said he was also keen to learn more about Israeli military investigations. “Israel has more extensive practice with regards to the implementation of international humanitarian law than anyone in the world,” he said. “Anyone who has studied international humanitarian law ought to be interested in this comparison.”
Phase one of the Turkel Commission was handed down by Justice Emeritus Jacob Turkel in January. It found that Israel’s naval blockade was legal and while the actions carried out by Israeli soldiers to enforce that blockade were regrettable, they were nonetheless, legally permitted.
NAOMI LEVIN
comments