- Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops engage in fierce clashes at the key southern Lebanon town of Khiam and in the coastal Bayada area as Israel’s army attempts to gain ground.
- At least 120 Palestinians have been killed and 205 others wounded in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 48 hours, the Health Ministry says.
- Lebanon’s Health Ministry confirmed at least 15 people are killed and dozens injured in an Israeli attack on the Basta neighbourhood of central Beirut.
- Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed at least 44,176 Palestinians and wounded 104,473 since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day with more than 200 taken captive.
- In Lebanon, at least 3,645 people have been killed and 15,355 wounded in Israeli attacks since the war on Gaza began.
Rayhan
Uddin
When
Palestine formally joined the International Criminal Court (ICC) nine years
ago, officials were keen to stress that the effects take years to materialise.
“I
don't want to disappoint our people, but the ICC procedures are slow and long
and might face lots of obstacles and challenges and might take years,” said
Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian National Authority,
better known as Palestinian Authority (PA), at the time.
That
lengthy, obstacle-filled process bore fruit on Thursday as the ICC handed out
arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
The
indictments of the Israeli prime minister and former defence minister mark a
historic milestone in the pursuit of justice for Palestinians.
The
decision to go down the route of international legal justice was a long time in
the making.
Husam
Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, explained that steps were
taken to join the ICC following the first Israeli war on Gaza, which began in
December 2008 and lasted three weeks.
“We
needed a) justice mechanisms and b) deterrence mechanisms. And the best way to
do justice and deterrence is to hold war criminals to account,” Zomlot, one of
the most prominent Palestinian officials abroad, told Middle East Eye.
“And
the most internationally agreed way to hold criminals to account is the
International Criminal Court.”
Three
days after the war ended, on 21 January 2009, the PA filed a declaration with
the ICC seeking to allow the court jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian
territories.
Under
Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute - the treaty that established the ICC -
non-members of the ICC can file a declaration granting the court jurisdiction
to investigate crimes committed within their territory after a specified date.
Ukraine has adopted this approach to address alleged Russian crimes.
'To
whom are we to complain?'
After
much deliberation, the ICC rejected Palestine’s declaration on the grounds that
Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute only applied to “states”.
However,
when Palestine was recognised as a non-member observer state at the UN
following a General Assembly vote in late 2012, it opened up the possibility
not only of filing a declaration with the ICC but also of attaining full
membership.
It
would, for the first time, open up the possibility of Israel, which is not a
signatory of the Rome Statute, being investigated for crimes committed on
Palestinian soil.
PA
President Mahmoud Abbas was strongly deterred from signing the statute by
Israel and the US, both of which threatened crippling sanctions.
However,
in 2014, after Israel withdrew from US-backed peace negotiations and launched a
devastating war that killed 2,310 people in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian minds
were made up.
“They
attack us and our land every day. To whom are we to complain? The Security
Council let us down. Where are we to go?” Abbas told a group of Palestinian
leaders as he sat down to sign the Rome Statute in December 2014.
The
move was supported by all political factions in Palestine, including Hamas,
which knew that its own leaders and actions would likely face investigation by
the ICC in future.
“We
want to refer to international institutions, and this is one we are referring
to, and we’ll complain to these people,” Abbas added before signing the
document.
Four
months later, the state of Palestine officially became the 123rd member of the
ICC.
Israeli
and US threats
“The
PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation], the PA and all the national
institutions endured a huge cost for that decision,” said Zomlot.
Israel
withheld $400m of the PA’s own tax revenues in early 2015 as punishment for
pursuing international legal justice.
It
even had personal consequences for Zomlot, who previously led the PLO’s mission
in the United States.
“Congress
made it clear that if the PLO accedes to the ICC and ratifies the Rome Statute,
their offices in Washington would be shut.”
This
threat was acted on under President Donald Trump’s administration.
“They
actually closed the office. And as a result, they kicked me out of the US,”
Zomlot said.
He
described the US and other Israeli allies as having acted “like The Sopranos”,
issuing threats not only against Palestinians but also against ICC judges and
prosecutors for investigating Israel.
The
years of threats did not stop the ICC from carrying out its work.
'Only
the beginning'
In
2021, the ICC opened an official investigation into allegations of war crimes
and crimes against humanity committed by Israel and Hamas since June 2014.
Last
year, chief prosecutor Karim Khan said the court also had jurisdiction over
crimes committed by Hamas in Israel and
It
culminated in indictments being sought for the two Israeli leaders and three
Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif.
Haniyeh,
the head of Hamas' political wing, was assassinated in Iran on 31 July, and his
successor, Sinwar, was killed in Gaza in October. Israel claimed in August to
have killed Deif, though Hamas denied the claim.
All
124 members of the Rome Statute are now compelled to arrest Netanyahu and
Gallant and hand them over to the ICC.
As
they did a decade ago when Palestine signed the Rome Statute, Israeli officials
have once again threatened to take action against the PA for its role in the
warrants.
Israel's
far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, called for “painful sanctions on
the PA and its leaders to the point of its collapse”.
Zomlot
said such sanctions formed part of Israel’s “war of extermination” on
Palestinians, which included “collapsing the nucleus of the state of
Palestine”.
He
viewed the arrest warrants as evidence that the slow and arduous process of
seeking international legal justice was bearing fruit.
“It
was a big sigh of relief for the many, many people who have worked tirelessly
towards this,” Zomlot said. “The effort was immense, relentless and
accumulative.”
However,
he stressed that this was only the beginning of accountability for Israeli war
crimes against Palestinians.
“It
will end when we see Netanyahu, Gallant and all the war criminals actually
behind bars.”
(
Middle East Monitor ) – US Senator, Tom Cotton, has threatened military action
against the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants
for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defence Minister,
Yoav Gallant, invoking a controversial US law known as “The Hague Invasion
Act”.
In
an inflammatory statement on social media, Cotton, who is funded by the
notorious The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), declared: “The
ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic. Woe to him and
anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a
friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion
Act for a reason. Think about it.”
The
American Service-Members’ Protection Act, nicknamed “The Hague Invasion Act”,
was passed in 2002 to shield US personnel and allies from ICC prosecution. The
law authorises the US President to use “all means necessary and appropriate” –
including military force – to free any American or allied personnel detained by
the ICC in The Hague.
Cotton’s
threat comes after ICC pre-trial judges issued arrest warrants yesterday for
Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of using starvation as a method of warfare and
crimes against humanity including murder, persecution and other inhumane acts
in Gaza. The Court determined there were “reasonable grounds” that Israel’s
siege and assault on Gaza “created conditions of life calculated to bring about
the destruction of part of the civilian population”.
The
Biden administration swiftly rejected the ICC’s decision, with White House
spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, expressing “deep concern”. US politicians from
both major parties have condemned the Court’s ruling, with Senator Lindsey
Graham, an ally of President-elect Donald Trump, calling for sanctions against
ICC officials.
ICC
member states including France, UK and Canada have indicated that Netanyahu
would be arrested if he entered their country. “If Netanyahu comes to Britain,
our obligation under the Rome Convention would be to arrest him under the
warrant from the ICC” said Emily Thornberry, Labour Chair of the Foreign
Affairs Committee.
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