Sourani is the co-founder and director of the Gaza-based NGO, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR).
He has lived in the Strip for the past 37 years, bearing witness to different phases of the Middle East’s longest conflict.
He has also been subjected to Israeli administrative detention and, he claims, torture, in a career which saw him earn the 1985 Kennedy Memorial Award for Human Rights and saw him named Amnesty International’s 1988 Prisoner of Conscience.
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The 60-year old lawyer reserved his starkest criticism for what he calls Israel’s disregard for rule of law.
He said if the conflict is to ever end it must be governed by the rule of law, not the rule of the jungl”.
Sourani’s NGO, the PCHR, filed 225 cases to the Israeli military attorney general on alleged war crimes in last year’s Gaza conflict. It filed another 1,060 cases of redress/compensation to the Israeli minister of defence.
But looking at Israel’s track record, Sourani has little optimism for the outcome.
Looking back at the previous Israeli ground incursion - operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009, which cost 1,400 lives - just five of the 492 submitted cases ended in a positive outcome.
The five rulings saw Israeli Defence Force soldiers - who killed an unarmed Palestinian woman and her daughter while they were waving a white flag - suspended for just six months.
Sourani noted that Israeli due process is designed to deny justice to Palestinians.
He cited the fact that Palestinians, among the poorest people in the Middle East, have to pay a “guarantee fee” to Israeli courts to file cases.
In one Cast Lead case, the “Soumani” case, in which Israeli forces killed 27 members of one family, Israel insisted on 27 separate claims, raising the guarantee fee to over $100,000.
PCHR lawyers, claimants, and witnesses often cannot go to court proceedings due to Israeli restrictions on freedom of movement, while time limits on filing cases mean that 95 percent of claimants don’t make the deadline.
Sourani also warned that a recent Israeli legislative amendment, known as “amendment eight”, will create a new obstacle.
He said it “effectively states that if Israel declares a state of war, no one has the right to hold its army or politicians legally accountable for their actions”.
The lawyer noted that while the EU regularly criticises Israeli killing of civilians, it overlooks its day-to-day disregard for people’s rights.
