Leiden: Israel’s most recent bombing of a refugee camp in Rafah, which killed at least 45 Palestinians, flew in the face of international law.
The visuals of decapitated and incinerated Palestinians, including children, came days after the International Court of Justice (ICC) instructed Israel to halt its operations in Rafah and ICC prosecutor Karim Khan applied for arrest warrants against Hamas and Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The move was greeted with anger in the United States, a country not a party to the ICC with a record of hostility towards the Court. Last year, long before the recent ICC action, Republican Senator Tom Cotton proposed sanctions that would target ICC officials unless the court ceased action against people protected by the US and its allies. An updated version of Cotton’s proposal, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, was passed by the US House of Representatives on June 4.
Khan, he said, was like judges in Nazi Germany who denied Jews basic rights and enabled the Holocaust. His decision to seek arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister and defence minister was “callously pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism that are raging around the world.’
Netanyahu spoke English on the video that was released by his office. He does that when he wants his message to reach the foreign audience that matters most to him, in the US.
Reacting to the news, Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant on Tuesday described the arrest warrants against him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “disgraceful” attempt to interfere in the war.
“The attempt of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, to reverse the creation will not succeed – the parallel of the prosecutor between the terrorist organization Hamas and the State of Israel is despicable and disgusting.” he said in a post on X.
Before adding: “The State of Israel is not a party to the Court and does not recognize its authority.”
The outrage expressed by the prime minister, and echoed by Israel’s political leadership, was generated by pages of carefully chosen legal language in a statement issued by Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor who is a British King’s Counsel.
Word by word, line by line, they add up to a devastating series of allegations against the three most prominent leaders of Hamas as well as Israel’s prime minister and defence minister.
A determination to apply international law and the laws of armed conflict to all parties, no matter who they are, lies at the heart of Mr Khan’s statement in which he lays out his justification for requesting arrest warrants.
“No foot soldier, no commander, no civilian leader – no one – can act with impunity.” The law, he says, cannot be applied selectively. If that happens, “we will be creating conditions for its collapse”.
It is the decision to hold both sides’ conduct up to the template of international law that is causing so much anger, and not just in Israel.
