The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision on Friday confirming its jurisdiction over war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has made waves in Israel, Palestine, and abroad in recent days, with Israeli leaders working tirelessly to discredit the court and reject the decision.
Friday’s announcement came as a result of a January 2020 request by the ICC Office of the Prosecutor to confirm the scope of the court’s mandate in Palestine, and confirmed the court’s territorial jurisdiction, “to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
The court has been conducting preliminary investigations into potential war crimes committed by Israel in the oPt since 2014, and in December 2019, ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda concluded that there was a basis to investigate Israel, and Palestinian authorities, for criminal actions in the West Bank and Gaza.
At the time, Bensouda said “there is a reason to believe that war crimes were committed,” highlighting Israel’s 2014 offensive in Gaza, settlement construction in the West Bank, and the gunning down of Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border during the Great March of Return protests of 2018.
The court’s jurisdiction will also encompass potential crimes committed by armed Palestinian factions in Gaza.
The court emphasized that Friday’s decision, while paving the way for a formal investigation into potential war crimes in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, was not a decision on Palestinian borders and statehood.
Palestinian response
Despite a full criminal investigation potentially having implications for Palestinian officials as well, Palestinian leadership in both the West Bank and Gaza welcomed Friday’s announcement.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh commended the resolution “as a victory for justice, humanity and freedom,” and “a message to the perpetrators of crimes, that their crimes will not be subject to a statute of limitations, and that they will not go unpunished.”
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki expressed the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) willingness to cooperate with the court — something their Israeli counterparts have vowed not to do — and praised the decision for opening the door “to the pursuit of criminal accountability for the most egregious crimes…which have been and continue to be committed against the Palestinian people.”
The Hamas movement, which could be directly implicated for potential crimes committed against Israeli citizens, praised the decision as “an important step” towards achieving “justice for the victims of the Zionist [Israeli] occupation”.
“It’s high time that Israeli and Palestinian perpetrators of the gravest abuses – whether war crimes committed during hostilities or the expansion of unlawful settlements – face justice,” Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said in a statement.
HRW added that both Israeli and Palestinian officials’ failure to investigate and prosecute alleged serious crimes among their own forces only serve to reinforce the important role that the ICC could play in holding the perpetrators of such crimes accountable.
Israeli response
While it could be years before any Israeli leaders or military and security officials (both past and present) are charged and tried for their crimes before the court, Israeli officials have come out in full defiance of the court’s decision.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hearkened back to his previous criticisms of the court and it’s pursuance of investigations into Israeli war crimes, condemning Friday’s decision as “pure anti-semitism.”
In a video released over the weekend, Netanyahu called the Israeli crimes in questions “fake war crimes,” and accused the court of specifically targeting Israel. Netanyahu promised Israelis that as their prime minister he will “fight this perversion of justice with all our might,” while shaking his fist at the camera.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said the decision “distorts international law and turns this institution into a political tool of anti-Israel propaganda.”
On Sunday, Israel’s security cabinet doubled down on Netanyahu’s criticisms, describing the “outrageous” ruling as one that “exposes the court as a political body, standing in one line with international organizations driven by antisemitic principles.”
The cabinet argued that the ICC has “no authority” to declare its territorial jurisdiction in the oPt, due to the fact that Israel is not a member state and that Palestine is not internationally recognized as a sovereign state, Haaretz reported.
Despite refusing to recognize the court’s authority, Israeli officials are seemingly still rather disturbed by Friday’s decision, with Haaretz reporting on Sunday that “hundreds of senior Israeli security officials, past and present, are expected to be called in for briefings, fearing they may be arrested abroad.”
The report added that some individuals whose names are on a confidential list of officials potentially wanted for war crimes by the court, could potentially be asked by security officials to refrain from traveling abroad to avoid arrest or trial.
Meanwhile, Israel is reportedly working hard to stave off future investigations by the ICC by working with its allies that are state parties to the Rome Statute to pressure the court not to pursue criminal investigations against Israeli officials.
According to Haaretz, some ICC member states have already agreed to warn Israel in advance of “any intent to arrest Israelis on their arrival in those countries or if a request for an arrest warrant is issued against them.”
Israel’s hopes at thwarting an ICC investigation seemed to get a boost after the US objected to the court’s decision, with U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price saying “We will continue to uphold President Biden’s strong commitment to Israel and its security, including opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.”
The Biden administration’s response to the ICC’s decision, coupled with the fact that it has yet to repeal Trump-era sanctions on the court, seems to have provided some temporary relief for Israel.
“The ICC has a critical role to play as a court of last resort in situations like Palestine where recourse to domestic justice has been foreclosed,” Jarrah of Human Rights Watch said. “The court’s member countries should stand ready to fiercely protect the ICC’s independence in the face of ongoing pressure and hostility to an investigation of Israeli and Palestinian conduct.”
Part of Israel’s defense will be that the ICC has no jurisdiction in the West Bank. This analysis from B’Tselem from last year puts it succinctly:
https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20200312_ag_objection_to_icc_jurisdiction_in_palestine_divorced_from_reality
B’Tselem’s analysis finds AG’s claims, that the ICC has no jurisdiction in Palestine, rely on intentional misquotation, disregard for international law and an absurd misrepresentation of reality. Contrary to the AG’s position, the ICC has jurisdiction to carry out the necessary investigation of the situation in Palestine….
For those who want to get into the legal nuts and bolts, here’s B’Tselem’s position paper on the ICC’s jurisdiction –
https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202003_position_paper_on_israel_ag_icc_memorandum_eng.pdf
O/T but had to share. In case anyone has not viewed this Mehdi Hassan debate, watch Doctor Ghana Karmi tell off an Israeli settler/official about Israel stealing her family property and lands, which he has no rights to. He seems to be speechless. She is so outspoken and passionate.
Great lady.
https://www.facebook.com/Africa4Palestine/videos/251288646352451
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Off topic, but historically, very important!!
https://www.soas.ac.uk/religions-and-philosophies/events/jordan-lectures-in-comparative-religion/14may2012-opening-lecture-how-islam-saved-the-jews.html
“So, what did the Muslims do for the Jews? – How Islam Saved the Jews.”
Lecture by Professor David J Wasserstein.
David J Wasserstein is the Eugene Greener Jr. Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. This article is adapted from his May, 2012, Jordan Lectures in Comparative Religion at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Excerpt:
“Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity – also in Christendom – through the medieval period into the modern world.
“By the fourth century, Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. One aspect of this success was opposition to rival faiths, including Judaism, along with massive conversion of members of such faiths, sometimes by force, to Christianity. Much of our testimony about Jewish existence in the Roman Empire from this time on consists of accounts of conversions.
“Great and permanent reductions in numbers through conversion, between the fourth and the seventh centuries, brought with them a gradual but relentless whittling away of the status, rights, social and economic existence, and religious and cultural life of Jews all over the Roman Empire.
“A long series of enactments deprived Jewish people of their rights as citizens, prevented them from fulfilling their religious obligations, and excluded them from the society of their fellows. (cont’d)
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“Had Islam not come along, Jewry in the west would have declined to disappearance and Jewry in the east would have become just another oriental cult. This went along with the centuries-long military and political struggle with Persia. As a tiny element in the Christian world, the Jews should not have been affected much by this broad, political issue. Yet it affected them critically, because the Persian Empire at this time included Babylon – now Iraq – at the time home to the world’s greatest concentration of Jews.
“Here also were the greatest centres of Jewish intellectual life. The most important single work of Jewish cultural creativity in over 3,000 years, apart from the Bible itself – the Talmud – came into being in Babylon. The struggle between Persia and Byzantium, in our period, led increasingly to a separation between Jews under Byzantine, Christian rule and Jews under Persian rule. Beyond all this, the Jews who lived under Christian rule seemed to have lost the knowledge of their own culturally specific languages – Hebrew and Aramaic – and to have taken on the use of Latin or Greek or other non-Jewish, local, languages. This in turn must have meant that they also lost access to the central literary works of Jewish culture – the Torah, Mishnah, poetry, midrash, even liturgy.”
The (in)famous statement most certainly applies here: repeat a lie often enough and it will be believed.