20 May 2024. Chief Prosecutor of the global Criminal Court of the Hague Karim Ahmad Khan announcedthat he will shortly file applications for global arrest warrants for 3 ruling leaders in the Gaza Strip of Hamas and 2 of the highest representatives of the State of Israel on charges of a number of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The proceedings concern what the Court calls "a situation in the Palestinian State" — specifically the period from 7 October 2023, i.e. since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in the Gaza Strip, which the Western media call "the terrorist attack of Hamas". Hamas sideProsecutor of the Court intends to prosecute Jahja Sinwar (leader of Hamas in Gaza), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Deif (Commander of the Al-Kassam Brigade, Hamas' armed arm), and Ismaila Hanija (Chief of Hamas Politburo, mostly in Qatar for respective years). On the side of Israel: long-standing Prime Minister of the country, Binjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defence of his current government Joawa Gallant. Netanjahu and Gallant are accused, among others, of deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza as a method of conducting war, of carrying out their deliberate extermination, and of deliberately attacking civilians.
The planet was shocked, even though rumors of it appear to have been circulating for weeks.
Hague Courts
W The Hague has 2 permanent global tribunals, which are completely separate institutions. Both are now in parallel and independently different proceedings concerning the State of Israel.
More crucial is the global Court of Justice, located in a neoclassical building known as the Palace of Peace at Carnegieplein (Carnegi Square). It is inextricably incorporated into the structure of the United Nations and the modern order of global law established after planet War II.
MTS Statute forms part of the UN founding paper United Nations Charters (Chapter XIV), which means that each of the 193 associate States recognises its jurisdiction and authority and that its decisions and judgments are to be regarded as binding. The MTS settles disputes between States, issues judgments and deals with the work of States. He is the final instance of global law, and there is no appeal from his judgments.
In explanation towards a state that does not respect the MTS judgment, the United Nations safety Council should take action (from diplomatic and economical sanctions to sending global military missions there). In practice, the right of veto available to each of the 5 permanent members of the safety Council may proceed to be an obstacle.
MTS judges are elected for nine-year word of office by the safety Council and the UN General Assembly. all 3 years, a 3rd of the judiciary is listed, which is of a very global character. presently six judges come from the "Western Block" (one from the US and Australia, 4 from Europe), 9 from the remainder of the planet (Asia, Africa and Latin America). Although they are surely facing political pressures, MTS has repeatedly proved a advanced degree of objectivity in its decisions, issuing judgments not even in the United States – hence it is unfair to confuse it with the second Hague institution of a akin name, whose erstwhile achievements (and perhaps, as in its essay entitled "The Hague University of Technology". End of “world” shows Paweł Musciki, even the intentions leading at least any actors calling it into existence) leave much more to be desired.
The second institution is the global Criminal Court, whose prosecutor amazed the planet with his decision on 20 May. It is located further from the center of the Hague, in a modern office building that reflects the youth of this institution.
The ICC inaugurated its activity in 2002 based on The Rome Statute of the global Criminal Court 1998 The subject of his actions is criminal work of circumstantial individuals – for genocide crimes, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression crimes.
Its jurisdiction is now recognised by 124 states. It is rather crucial that the United States, which played a central function in the work on the Rome Statute, yet withdrew from the group of signatories. Not only do they not now admit his jurisdiction, but they even passed a bill at home with a small black humor called the "Invasion of the Netherlands Act" or "Invasions to The Hague".
It states that the U.S. will not back distant from anything if something threatens U.S. military or American politicians or 1 of Washington’s closest allies. This maneuver – the plan of the Court, and then the rejection of its jurisdiction towards the US – seems to support the allegations that the ICC, unlike the MTS, would from the beginning be another instrument of the power of Western powers over the remainder of the world, alternatively than trying to bring global justice mechanisms about universal intentions in order.
The ICC's achievements so far confirm this: he has judged so far almost exclusively African defendants, and of the leaders of the states strong in the state of charge, he only placed Vladimir Putin, a kind of "official enemy of the West". The crimes of the United States and NATO states in Iraq or Afghanistan have never been held in the Hague.
None of the crimes committed by Israel so far, either in Gaza or Lebanon in 2006. Therefore, with specified a large scepticism many observers have accepted the dense rumors of pending lawsuits against Netanjah and Gallant circulating throughout April.
Jurisdiction
Like the US, Israel does not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC and is not a organization to its global agreement. Can the ICC so have jurisdiction over the Prime Minister and Minister of the Israeli Government on the crimes committed by them at the office? The Court has decided that it may, on 2 grounds.
Firstly, the State of Palestine, which has no sovereignty and is entirely under Israeli occupation, and thus fundamentally inactive "theoretical", already has the position of an observer state within the UN and, in that capacity, has acceded to the Treaty and recognised the jurisdiction of the ICC. The Palestinian Authority did so in 2015 on the account of the pending state, in the hope that the legal instruments offered by the ICC would open a fresh fight for Palestinian rights. Vis-à-vis an Israeli occupier. The ICC yet recognised its jurisdiction with respect to Palestinian territories (‘Palestinian States’) in 2021.
On this basis, the crimes committed on the 1 hand by Netanyahu and Gallant on the territory of a organization recognising jurisdiction, that is, what the UN nomenclature calls the State of Palestine, specifically the Gaza Strip. On the another hand, the crimes that came out of this territory led by Hamas.
Secondly, the accusations made against Netanyahu and Gallant are based on global conventions, which Israel, regardless of what it thinks of the ICC, is 1 of the alleged advanced Contracting Parties (High Contracting Parts).
Pressures and intimidation
Although Israeli politicians have been speaking out for months with show disregard for the hazard of being prosecuted by the ICC (and besides of the ICC itself), Tel Aviv actually took this threat fatally seriously. So seriously that, from the very minute of the "submission" of the Palestinian Authority for the protection of the ICC in 2015, a close associate of Netanyahu – Jossi Cohen, the head of Mossad from 2016 to 2021, he campaigned continuously to derail the Court's investigations into Israeli crimes in Palestinians. We know that due to the fact that on Tuesday May 28th They saw the results of a journalistic investigation. conducted by a combined British force The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian +972 Magazine, and Hebrew language service Local Call.
One of the co-authors of the investigation is Yuval Abraham, an excellent writer who had previously revealed, among others, Israel's use, in the framework of the current genocide run in the Gaza Strip, artificial intelligence tools (about what We talked to Rafał Górski in the sub-cast ‘Civil Week’). Abraham is besides a documentary filmmaker, co-author of the movie We don't want another land. (No another Land), awarded last festival in Berlinand in Poland at a review Millennium Docs Against Gravity.
Since 2015, various Israeli intelligence units, coordinated by Cohen, campaigned to intimidate and blackmail the then chief prosecutor of the Court, Fatou Bensoudy, and spy on ICC officers investigating and collecting witness evidence and another evidence.
Israel was peculiarly easy to usage wiretaps due to the fact that it prevented investigators from entering the occupied territories, condemning them to telephone calls and correspondence. Israel has complete control over telecommunications in the territories it occupies: it passes entirely through Israeli infrastructure. It besides developed instruments of full and ubiquitous surveillance of the full Palestinian society.
Israeli intelligence so had a pre-emptive cognition of what crimes are subject to investigation and the office of the ICC prosecutor. He utilized this cognition not only to harass and exert force on witnesses, on Palestinian organizations gathering evidence and documentation (including deserved NGO Al-Haq), but besides to sabotage the work of the ICC by appealing to the alleged rule of complementarity. The point is that the ICC has a mandate in cases that do not anticipate the anticipation of a appropriate judgement within the justice systems of their respective states – for example, due to the fact that the accused protects a circumstantial local power system, or the justice strategy is dysfunctional, unremitting hope of a fair trial, paralyzed by war action, etc.
Israel has, akin to Western liberal democracy, an effective justice strategy – at the disposal of its full (Jewish) citizens only. However, this is only a fragment of Israeli justice. Palestinians in the West Bank (Even childrenAfter all, surviving under the same sovereign, they are subject to military courts which conviction them for everything as they fly and almost from a vending device (95% of cases end in convictions) on horrendously harsh sentences, and on the another hand Israeli military always release from all charges of harm to Palestinians (and families murdered by Israeli military global activists, specified as Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, have found that foreigners alike).
Thousands of Palestinians (again – even children) sat or are inactive in Israeli prisons without even knowing any charges: by administrative decision to detain until further notice.
EstimatedThat 40% of Palestinian men erstwhile went to Israeli prison. For decades Israeli propaganda has succeeded in convincing a vast part of the planet (certainly governments and a large part of the public opinion of the Western states) that a part of its liberal-democratic part, which is available only to Jews, is an Israeli justice strategy in general, and it is simply a scandal of systemic injustice that the Palestinians are subject to.
On the news of the crimes being investigated by the ICC, the Netanjahu government mobilized its prosecutors to open a mock investigation, then referred to the reputation of the Israeli justice strategy and sought to derail the proceedings of the ICC prosecutors on the basis of the "principle of complementarity". After all, the law-abiding Israeli justice strategy is already on the case.
ICC and the Empire
A kind of reflection of the neocolonial imperial intentions that were sewn up in the way the ICC was designed is the fact that it employs a very international, "global" staff – prosecutor Bensouda comes from Gambia – but seemingly they are equal and equal there. The investigation of Yuval Abraham and his colleagues indicated that she reported the pressures and incidents of intimidation, besides measured at her family, but never received the same protection from either the ICC or the Dutch judiciary as European or North American advanced officials of the Court.
Bensouda is no longer the chief prosecutor of the ICC. Karim Ahmad Khan, who replaced her in that position in 2021, is simply a British lawyer (born in Scottish Glasgow in 1970), which may make his position stronger. In announcing his intention to apply for arrest warrants on 20 May this year, he besides mentioned the force on the Court and on himself in decisive terms. W CNN interview He besides said – without mentioning by name who – that after the announcement he received a call from a high-ranking planet leader who scolded him that it was expected to be a tribunal for Africa and "such robbers as Putin" alternatively than allies of the West. specified pressures and attempts to derail global justice investigations are themselves crimes that should be the subject of an global investigation.
In the already cited essay Paweł Muscicki – quoting Ali Abunimah from Electronic Intifada portal – notes that Prosecutor Khan's motion is both cynical and historic. It is cynical due to the fact that it puts desperate opposition on the part of the population surviving under the "longest and most brutal military occupation" of the modern era (The words of historian Avi Shlaim) equal to the genocide run carried out by Israel in retaliation. The accusations against Sinwar, Deif, and Hanija besides include the inventions of Israeli propaganda, whose falseness has already been shown in various places, e.g. the communicative of Hamas' usage of sex force 7 October 2023.
The comparison of Hamas' wines with Israel's wines is unfair, but the opposite, than Joe Biden and Donald Tusk wanted, is injurious to the Palestinian side. Israel had already murdered more than 30 times as many Gazans as the Israelis were killed in Operation Hamas of 7 October 2023.
Aside from the fact that respective 100 of these victims are the uniforms of the business government on duty, which constitute a legitimate mark for an attack within the meaning of global law. Aside from the fact that we inactive don't know precisely how many of these Israeli victims were actually killed by Fire by your own army.
Palestinians have been surviving under military business for more than half a century and have the right to fight it “any means available”, as well as A corresponding United Nations General Assembly resolution is entitled of 1990 Hamas, due to the fact that it is an organization created for this intent by Palestinians, is the bearer of this law as well as Fatah or the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Referring to spiritual ideology does not invalidate the right to self-determination.
The 4th Geneva Convention imposes obligations concerning the protection of civilians by both parties in the situation of military occupation: the occupier and the occupied. However, its Article 6 sets a time limit: the obligations under the Convention include the occupier and occupied for the first year of occupation. The point is that a legitimate and honest business should have a reasonable end at that time. From that minute on, only the occupier is bound. The occupiers are entitled to armed resistance.
The prosecution besides lacks Israeli crimes older than in October 2023. besides many of them, specified as the cyclical bombings of Gaza over the past fewer years, for its blockade or for the colonization of the West Bank, are besides liable for Netanyahu.
The prosecution of both parties is so cynical due to the fact that it sets a sign of equality between the victims of the business and their occupier. Worse than a sign of equality, for the 2 accused Israeli leaders account for 3 accused Hamas leaders. But it's inactive historical. For the first time in the state of prosecution, it is trying to put the leaders of a state that is simply a peculiarly close ally of the United States. For the first time, Israel’s leaders have been tried to get distant with everything.
Karim Khan at the same time announces that the prosecution is not closed and investigations are underway, the evidence is increasing.
Nor can it be ruled out that erstwhile demanding global warrants for the arrest of both parties' leaders, Prosecutor Khan is acting strategically: he wants to overtake upcoming accusations of bias and anti-Semitism (this is even Israel's instinctive reaction to any criticism from global institutions). Like the tactical nature – calculated to precede another wave of force on the ICC – she had a public announcement that she would file applications for global arrest warrants (such an announcement is not a standard step in ICC procedures).
Israel War on global Law
Israel's 9-year run of pressure, intimidation and spying on the ICC must be seen in the wider context of its behaviour towards global law and its institutions. Israel has always disregarded his elements and organs with which he was not along. He was admitted to the UN on condition that he would supply Palestinians exiled in 1948 with the right to return – he never intended to comply with that condition, and he got distant with it. Since then, he has ignored all the resolutions of the United Nations that concern him. However, if for the first 2 decades after the 1967 Six-Day War, i.e. the First Intifada, he tried to at least keep towards the Palestinians decorum a somewhat more civilized "enlightened occupation" (determination of Neve Gordon's political scientist), in the 21st century, and in fresh years more and more, Israel seems to be in an open war against global law.
Israel is accusing the General Assembly and another UN bodies of anti-Semitism at all turn. As of October, Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip have already murdered nearly 200 workers from 1 of the UNRWA agencies, to deter the global community from providing active assistance to Palestinians.
Since December 2023, erstwhile South Africa to the elder of the Hague tribunals, MTS, charged Israel with genocide, Tel Aviv uses further methods to blackmail and intimidate the global community, for which precedents are hard to find. Israel responds to any movement from an instance of global law by intensifying offensive actions in the area of the besieged enclave. This was the case at the first hearings of the parties in January 2024, in consequence to any decision taken by the Court on Israel. In consequence to issued by MTS May 24th. order for complete cessation of military activities and withdrawal from Rafah (at the border of the Gaza Strip with Egypt), Israel bombed a shelter camp there, where refugees from previously bombed towns were protected, utilizing missiles weighing 1,000 kg. Shortly thereafter, Israel’s army shot up a infirmary where injured people in that attack had found their way.
This pattern repeats besides regularly to be believed in coincidences. Israel wants to intimidate global law, its institutions and the community. He wants to say something to all of us, “for all decision you make to defend the Palestinians, we will answer by asking them even more suffering until you halt resisting.”
Prosecutor Karim Khan says that 1 of the rates he is fighting for is – nothing less, not little – the defence of global law as such, against its embarrassment and dismantling.
He said this due to the fact that he understands perfectly well that the discredit and dismantling of global law are present the apparent goal of Israel and the government of Binjamin Netanyahu. If Joe Biden's administration is so actively helping him on this project, seemingly the United States is besides hoping for this dismantling and wanting Israel to do the dirtiest part of the work for them. As if to confirm this hypothesis, on 4 June this year the home of Representatives of the American legislature passed a bill (which inactive has to pass through the Senate) on sanctions against representatives of the ICC, for which this is to be a punishment for putting the beloved ally of the American Empire in an unpleasant state of prosecution.
