“We must understand that war is incompatible with humanity,” Luis Moreno Ocampo, who was the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (2003-2012), said this Thursday in a meeting with the members of elDiario. is. “And for this, the development of new strategies to face war, but with justice, is essential.”
Ocampo, who has just published the book ‘War or Justice’ (Espasa), has emphasized the need to look for new “mechanisms so that international law is fulfilled.” His intervention took place in a conversation with Julio Rodríguez, former Chief of the Defense Staff and current Secretary of Peace and Security of Podemos, Olga Rodríguez, journalist specialized in international information, the Middle East and Human Rights, and Francesca Cicardi, the editor of elDiario.es specialized in the Middle East.
The meeting took place a day after the United States – along with 9 other countries, including Israel, Russia, Argentina and Hungary – voted again against the ceasefire in Gaza, a resolution demanded by the General Assembly of the UN. “Going from a world of tribalism, of all against all, to global unity is complicated. But we have to understand that a global solution requires global actions,” Ocampo concluded. “There is no chaos, the only thing there is complexity. We must bring creativity and art to military institutions.”
“The political leaders believe that they win with the war, there is a military strategy of confrontation with the enemy,” he continued. “However, the United States’ war on terrorism after 9/11 – which transformed the international world with a war – is not working. Terrorism will never be fought with war, otherwise, we are in the middle of the mathematics of insurgency. We have ten terrorists and we killed two. What do we have left? 20 more.”
In accordance with the need to find new mechanisms that favor policies for peace, Julio Rodríguez has pointed out that it is politics that in the end is above and that military strategy is the last step: “we have to change the way in which “We solve conflicts, and that happens by not using military tools: that happens when everything else has already failed.”
Furthermore, the man who was the highest-ranking military officer in Spain between 2008 and 2011, recalled that “it is always the country concerned that does not lose lives,” recalling that war is used as an instrument to achieve an end: “before of the war in Ukraine, in December there was an exchange of documents between the US, NATO and Russia, but Ukraine never entered into that negotiation, which already indicates who the true actors of this decision are and reflects the concept of proximity wars ”. “War does not begin with the first shot nor does it end with the last. “They are conflicts that arise sooner or later.”
Despite this, the former military man has insisted on the role of civil society: “Politics changes when there is citizen pressure,” as we saw with the United States invasion of Iraq, and on the need to act and make people act: “silence “It protects criminals and never victims.”
In the current context, in which Israel has already claimed the lives of 45,000 Palestinians after a year and a half of siege against the Gazan population, journalist Olga Rodríguez has pointed out that “the longer the war lasts, we cannot talk about of negotiation.”
In addition to warning of the dangers of silence and the importance of knowing what words to use when covering or talking about a conflict, journalist Olga Rodríguez has highlighted the speeches that “dehumanize the Palestinian population” that have been normalized, asserting that “ The best way is through diplomacy and international law. That’s the only place we win. When we think that all is lost, warmongering is embraced.”
Overcoming the opposition of those who consider pacifism to be “naive,” the journalist who has covered numerous international conflicts, such as the invasion of Iraq, has also stressed that, to end Israel and Netanyahu’s government backed by the United States, It is essential to understand that “it is not enough to vote in favor of the end of the occupation of Palestine and the sanctions against Israel. Either the tools that international law is giving to states are used or we continue with the policy of impunity.”
All analysts on security and international law have agreed on this need to “invent a system,” an idea that, according to the journalist, “is already within the internal circuits of the UN and the Hague Court. “It is being questioned who bells the cat,” but to do so, it is essential to enter into the promotion of “discourses on a culture of peace and human rights, each from their own discipline.”
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