ICC arrest warrants: Netanyahu is certainly a criminal, but …

Yesterday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued apprehension warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his erstwhile defence minister, Yoav Gallant, “for crimes against humanity and warfare crimes committed from astatine slightest 8 October 2023 until astatine slightest 20 May 2024”, arsenic per the ICC press release.

An apprehension warrant was besides issued for Hamas subject commandant Mohammed Deif, though this peculiar item volition proceed to beryllium wholly ignored by the Israeli establishment, which prefers to stay up successful arms implicit its allegedly singular victimisation. In the eyes of Israel, the ICC determination constitutes a horrifying show of anti-Semitism and adjacent enactment for “terror”.

Among the warfare crimes charges against Netanyahu and Gallant are that “both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian colonisation successful Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and aesculapian supplies, arsenic good arsenic substance and electricity, from astatine slightest 8 October 2023 to 20 May 2024”. The second day refers to the time that the ICC authoritative filed the applications for the apprehension warrants and is not, obviously, an denotation that Israeli warfare crimes successful the Gaza Strip person abated implicit the past six months.

Officially, the Israeli subject has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians successful Gaza since October 2023, though the existent decease toll is undoubtedly many times higher. And portion a United Nations committee precocious recovered Israel’s methods of warfare successful the Gaza Strip to beryllium “consistent with genocide”, the ICC has stopped abbreviated of calling Israel retired connected this front, alternatively specifying that the tribunal “could not find that each elements of the transgression against humanity of extermination were met”.

Of course, immoderate and each planetary designation of Israel’s transgression behaviour is morally important fixed the country’s modus operandi, according to which planetary instrumentality is made to beryllium breached – but lone by Israel itself. It’s nary mishap that neither Israel nor the United States, Israel’s superior backer and existent accomplice to genocide, are not parties to the ICC.

Were planetary “justice” not wholly selective and governed by an egregious treble standard, the US would person its ain plethora of warfare crimes to reply for – similar the wanton slaughter of civilians successful Afghanistan and Iraq nether the guise of the alleged “war connected terror”.

Meanwhile, it’s not rather wide wherefore the ICC has stopped abbreviated of detecting “all elements of the transgression of against humanity of extermination” connected the portion of Netanyahu and Gallant. After all, knowingly depriving a civilian colonisation of everything “indispensable to their survival” would look to beryllium a beauteous surefire mode of ensuring, well, extermination.

It’s besides benignant of “indispensable to survival” to not beryllium bombed to decease portion having your full territory pulverised. And to that end, perhaps, the ICC has “found tenable grounds to believe” that some Netanyahu and Gallant “each carnivore transgression work arsenic civilian superiors for the warfare transgression of intentionally directing an onslaught against the civilian population”.

But assigning specified idiosyncratic guilt is simply a specified driblet successful the bucket of “justice”. At the extremity of the day, the authorities of Israel arsenic a full bears “criminal responsibility” for usurping Palestinian onshore and engaging successful 76.5 years (and counting) of taste cleansing, displacement and massacres. All of this portion driving a assemblage of the Palestinian colonisation to equipped absorption and thereby converting them into targets for continued Israeli criminality.

Given Israel’s lengthy past of flouting United Nations resolutions, the country’s presumption that it should besides beryllium immune from ICC rulings comes arsenic nary surprise. While Israel does not recognise ICC jurisdiction domestically, Netanyahu and Gallant could successful mentation beryllium arrested if they question to immoderate of the court’s 124 subordinate states. Needless to say, this is not an eventuality that volition beryllium encouraged by the world’s reigning superpower.

And yet this is not Israel’s archetypal run-in with the ICC. Back successful 2019, aft astir 5 years of “preliminary investigation”, the tribunal announced that then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was “satisfied” that determination was a “reasonable ground to initiate an probe into the concern successful Palestine”.

This did not mean, of course, that said probe was acceptable to commence – eternal bureaucracy and foot-dragging being the hallmark of planetary transgression law. Rather, it had simply been established that determination was a “reasonable ground to judge that warfare crimes person been oregon are being committed successful the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip”.

Well, yeah. And that “reasonable basis” had already been astir for, oh, 7 decades oregon so.

Anyway, Bensouda’s ruminations were inactive much than the Israelis could handle. The Jerusalem Post, for example, ran a dispatch by Israeli lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner – titled “Refusing to Play the Palestinians’ ICC game” – successful which the writer accused the tribunal of serving arsenic a “concealed weapon” against Israel.

Contending that determination was “nothing sexier for Bensouda than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, Darshan-Leitner concluded: “We knew that Bensouda was bushed of pursuing African dictators and brutal tribal leaders, and wanted to amusement that the ICC was a tribunal with a genuinely planetary reach”.

Speaking of sexy, Al Jazeera has noted that, arsenic a effect of Bensouda’s ongoing perceived insolence, Israeli spy main Yossi Cohen “intensified the covert warfare connected the tribunal that Israel has been waging since Palestine joined the ICC successful 2015”. The Mossad went astir intercepting Bensouda’s communications, and she reported being “personally threatened”. She stepped down arsenic authoritative successful 2021, the aforesaid twelvemonth the “investigation into the concern successful Palestine” yet got nether way.

Now, it remains to beryllium seen conscionable what the Israelis person up their sleeves successful this latest planetary ineligible showdown. But arsenic the “situation successful Palestine” proceeds apace and genocide rages, there’s a tenable ground to judge justness is not yet an option.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.