XPost: uk.legal, soc.culture.jewish, comp.misc   
   XPost: alt.politics.democrats, alt.atheism   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   The request for international arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime   
   Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and war minister Yoav Gallant, alongside   
   three Hamas leaders, came as a surprise to many, not least of which   
   Israel. For what was likely a first, its top leaders were being   
   confronted judicially for their violations of international law.   
      
    Although Israel had been spying on the International Criminal Court   
   (ICC) for years, as revealed in a recent exposé by The Guardian, the   
   outrage Netanyahu displayed betrayed indignation at the fact that the   
   wall of impunity for Israeli leaders was showing signs of cracking.   
      
   For Palestinians, the news was long-awaited. Palestinian human rights   
   groups have been tirelessly campaigning for such a move for years.   
      
   The door was opened for an investigation to take place of Israeli   
   crimes when Palestine first signed on to the Rome Statute in 2014,   
   which is constituent of the ICC. Israel refrained from signing that   
   same Statute in 2002 due to fears of being the subject of prosecutions   
   over the illegal status of its settlements in Palestinian territories.   
   But when Palestine joined, Israeli violations of international law   
   could be prosecuted because they took place on internationally   
   recognized Palestinian land.   
      
   Palestinian and international jurists have been building the case for   
   Israeli crimes that have been committed after 2014, since the court   
   only investigates crimes committed during the time of a country’s   
   membership.   
      
   “We have been submitting documentation of Israeli crimes during major   
   events that extend beyond the current genocide,” Tahseen Alian, senior   
   researcher at the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, told   
   Mondoweiss. “We’ve made this case at the ICC over crimes Israel   
   committed in military assaults on Gaza in 2014 and 2021, in the   
   killing and maiming of peaceful protesters during the Great March of   
   Return in 2019 and 2020, and in the ongoing settlement building,   
   confiscation of land, and population transfer — both the forcible   
   transfer of Palestinians out of their lands and the transfer of   
   Israelis into settlements in the West Bank.”   
      
   Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that it’s illegal   
   for an occupying power to transfer its own civilians to live in   
   occupied territory, making all Israeli settlements in the West Bank   
   and East Jerusalem illegal and amounting to a war crime, which has   
   been ongoing since 1967.   
      
   “The fact that the ICC focused only on the current period might seem   
   disappointing to some, but it’s very difficult to see a prosecution of   
   every Israeli crime and every Israeli official implicated at once,”   
   Alian said. “But this is a start. It is the beginning of   
   accountability for the occupation in an unprecedented way.”   
      
   The request for the arrest warrants is particularly significant given   
   the long and difficult process of Palestinian advocacy at the ICC. For   
   five years after joining the Rome Statute, Palestinians demanded the   
   ICC to open an investigation into Israeli crimes. Alian points out   
   that in private meetings, representatives of the ICC told Palestinian   
   jurists that they would need to wait many years before the court   
   decided to investigate Palestine’s case.   
      
   A legal field riddled with political landmines   
   The fact that this ICC case has even been able to get off the ground   
   is due to a confluence of factors that have not existed since 2014.   
      
   “These legal procedures are intertwined with politics,” Alian   
   explains. “And the entire international legal system is politicized,   
   so the political moment is important for any legal move.”   
      
   Changes in the political context, therefore, are what allowed for the   
   ICC case to move forward.   
      
   “A political moment was created in which the ICC could act,” Alian   
   says. “This includes the fact that, at this moment, there is a   
   disagreement between Israel and the U.S. on the way the war is being   
   conducted, and there is intense pressure from within Israeli society   
   and the Israeli political class on Netanyahu.”   
      
   Alian adds that the fact that the October 7 attacks caused so many   
   Israeli casualties enabled the ICC to also prosecute Hamas leaders,   
   which made it easier for it to claim to be “fair” when it chose to   
   prosecute Israeli leaders. This, in addition to U.S.-Israeli and   
   intra-Israeli conflict, is what made Karim Khan’s announcement last   
   week possible. But had the groundwork for it not been laid in previous   
   years, it might not have materialized.   
      
   Even though that groundwork started after Palestine joined the Rome   
   Statute, the first breakthrough for Palestine at the ICC began to   
   appear four years ago in December 2019. Then-ICC Chief Prosecutor   
   Fatou Bensouda announced the opening of a formal investigation into   
   potential war crimes in Palestine. Bensouda’s successor and current   
   chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, delayed the investigation on Palestine’s   
   file, moving it down the priority list ever since he took office in   
   2021.   
      
   “Karim Khan gave the impression that he was uninterested in the   
   Palestine file, but we know that the ICC came under huge pressure from   
   several countries to avoid investigating Palestine,” Alian indicates.   
   “This pressure has always been there, and was faced by the Palestinian   
   Authority, too, since 2009, when Palestine first requested to join the   
   Rome Statute and faced pressure from European countries to stand   
   down.”   
      
   “Palestine did not stand down,” Alian adds. “But the ICC refused its   
   petition to join on the grounds that Palestine wasn’t recognized as a   
   state.”   
      
   That same pressure continues and may, in fact, increase in the coming   
   months. In the days before the ICC prosecutor’s announcement, and as   
   Israel braced for the move, Israel told U.S. officials that if arrest   
   warrants were issued against its leaders, Israel would consider the   
   Palestinian Authority responsible and take retaliatory measures   
   against it. These measures would include the complete freezing of   
   customs money belonging to the PA (on whose behalf Israel collects as   
   part of the Oslo Accords, representing at least 61% of the PA’s   
   budget).   
      
   “This has always been a tool of political pressure in the hands of the   
   occupation,” Alian points out, explaining that in previous occasions,   
   Israel would choke the PA financially, and then European countries and   
   the U.S. would offer the PA to reanimate negotiations and increase aid   
   in exchange for dropping a legal case. “So far, the PA’s diplomatic   
   officials and legal experts have all affirmed that they are insisting   
   on going all the way at ICC.”   
      
   Since the PA is the signatory to the Rome Statute, it is Palestine’s   
   legal representative before member states of the ICC. But behind the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)